Qualcomm Introduces $300 Laptops With Snapdragon C, Outruns Intel N250 by Up to 67%

Qualcomm is finally unveiling the specifications of its entry-level, low-cost Snapdragon C platform. According to the specifications, the platform features up to eight Arm cores for systems expected to start around the $300 mark. In a market where DRAM and NAND Flash are extremely expensive, Qualcomm aims to give students, families, and basic office workers a modern laptop at a low price of just $300. Snapdragon C uses Qualcomm's Kryo CPU architecture, with frequencies reaching up to 3.0 GHz for single-core workloads and 2.0 GHz for multicore scenarios. The chip also includes 2 MB of cache, an integrated Adreno A643 GPU clocked at up to 900 MHz, and surprisingly a Hexagon NPU for lighter AI workloads. Qualcomm supports up to 16 GB of LPDDR4x, LPDDR5, or LPDDR5x memory, along with PCIe 3.0 NVMe storage, UFS 2.2/3.1, and a wide range of connectivity options. Interestingly, LPDDR4x memory might be less expensive compared to the others, which could make a $300 laptop dream feasible.

The company is comparing Snapdragon C against Intel's N250 "Twin Lake" platform and claims significant performance advantages while running on battery. Depending on the workload, Qualcomm reports gains ranging from 24% to 67%, with Cinebench showing the largest differences at 50% faster single-threaded performance and up to 67% better multithreaded performance. Geekbench and Speedometer, which may better represent everyday laptop usage, are also claimed to favor Snapdragon C. Qualcomm's figures also indicate substantially better efficiency, including 106% higher efficiency during Netflix playback, 68% during web browsing, and 74% during Teams video calls. The company promotes this chip for all-day battery life, although real-world runtime will heavily depend on the configuration chosen by each manufacturer.