AI PC buying guide: what Snapdragon actually means for your next laptop

It’s that time of year. Tax time. Which for a lot of Australians also means laptop time.

If you’ve been putting off a PC upgrade, EOFY is genuinely one of the best moments to pull the trigger. Businesses can claim the deduction, and retailers are competing hard on price.

But this year there’s a new wrinkle. Everywhere you look, laptops are being marketed as “AI PCs.” Some carry a badge called Copilot+ PC. Others talk about TOPS and NPUs and on-device AI. It’s a lot of noise.

Here’s what it actually means, and how to cut through it.

What is an AI PC, and do you actually need one?

An AI PC is a laptop that includes a dedicated AI processor called a Neural Processing Unit, or NPU. Your standard laptop uses a CPU for general computing and a GPU for graphics. Both can handle AI tasks, but they do it inefficiently and at the cost of battery life.

An NPU is purpose-built for AI workloads. It handles those tasks faster, with significantly less power draw, which means better battery life and more consistent performance whether you’re plugged in or not.

Think of it this way: your Teams background blur, your photo recognition, your noise cancellation on a video call – all of that is AI. On a laptop without a proper NPU, those tasks are quietly draining your CPU or GPU at the cost of battery life. On a laptop with a capable NPU, they run locally, quickly, and cheaply in terms of battery.

The measure you’ll see thrown around is TOPS, which stands for Trillion Operations Per Second. It’s essentially AI horsepower. The current benchmark for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC certification is 40 TOPS. First-generation Snapdragon X Series chips deliver up to 45 TOPS. The new Snapdragon X2 Series chips jump to 80 TOPS.

One important thing to watch: some manufacturers quote total system TOPS, which adds up the CPU, GPU, and NPU together. That number can look impressive but is less meaningful than the NPU TOPS figure on its own, because the NPU is the engine that actually handles AI tasks efficiently.

The biggest myths about AI PCs

“It’s just marketing.”

It’s a fair reaction given how much hype has surrounded AI lately. But there’s a real technical difference here. On a laptop without a dedicated NPU, AI features either run slowly, chew through battery, or push your data to the cloud to get processed on someone else’s server. With a capable NPU, those same tasks run locally, faster, and without the power penalty.

“The battery life claims aren’t real.”

According to Qualcomm, first-generation Snapdragon X Series laptops have recorded 12 to 15.5 hours in real-world battery testing, typically 2 to 4 hours ahead of comparable machines with competitor processors tested under the same conditions. For most people with a full working day of video calls, documents, and browsing, that means getting through the day without hunting for a power point.

“Performance drops when you unplug.”

This is true of a lot of laptops, but ARM-based chips like the Snapdragon X Series are designed to deliver more consistent performance across both plugged and unplugged states. It’s the same architecture philosophy that makes your phone fast without being plugged into a wall.

“AI PCs are only for tech people.”

If you use Teams, Zoom, Word, or any camera-based app, you’re already using on-device AI. An AI PC just does those things better and for longer.

What to look for when you’re shopping

Battery life

All Snapdragon X Series laptops offer all day to multi-day battery life in real-world use. The new X2 Series pushes that further – the X2 Plus consumes 43% less power than the previous generation at equivalent performance. If you regularly work long days away from a charger, that’s a meaningful difference.

Performance

Look at two things: peak performance under load, and on-battery performance consistency. For most people – productivity, creative work, video calls – it’s the second one that matters more day to day. The X2 Elite can sustain up to 28W of performance even in a slim form factor.

Fanless vs fan-cooled

Many Snapdragon X Series laptops are fanless, which means silent operation and a slimmer design. That’s great for portability. But if your work regularly involves long video exports or heavy rendering, a fan-cooled design will sustain peak performance for longer. Worth checking before you buy.

Connectivity

Snapdragon X Series laptops come with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 built in. What varies by model is the port selection. Thin designs sometimes mean fewer USB-A ports, no HDMI, or no SD card slot. Check the specific model, not just the product family.

Copilot+ PC certification

This is Microsoft’s designation for laptops with an NPU above 40 TOPS. It unlocks AI features built into Windows 11 including real-time translation, live captions, and AI Recall. If you’re buying a new laptop in 2025-26 and it doesn’t carry the Copilot+ badge, it won’t get these features regardless of what version of Windows it runs.

Building your shortlist

The Snapdragon X Series is available across a broad range of devices from ASUS, HP, and Lenovo. Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s out there and who each one suits.

The good news is the major brands have this covered across a wide range of price points and form factors. 

ASUS has three Snapdragon X series devices spanning everything from the featherweight Zenbook A14 at under 1kg through to the Vivobook and the flagship Zenbook A16 with the most powerful Snapdragon chip available.

HP covers the spectrum from the OmniBook 3 and OmniBook 5, to the ultra-slim OmniBook Ultra.

Lenovo rounds it out with the Yoga Slim 7x for creatives, and the IdeaPad range for everyday and student use. Whatever your budget or workload, there’s a Snapdragon X Series device in the mix worth considering.

The bottom line

If you’re buying a laptop this EOFY, here’s the short version: look for Copilot+ PC certification to get the best AI PC experiences. It’s the simplest way to ensure your laptop is ready for how people work and create today, and into the future, rather than defaulting to the most expensive option.

For everyday use – browsing, email, video calls, Office – the Snapdragon X series devices are more than enough, and the battery life alone is worth the upgrade from an older machine. For creative work, content production, or demanding multitasking, the X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme options in the ASUS and HP premium range are genuinely impressive machines.

The best bit? You’re getting all of that in laptops that often weigh under 1.2kg and run all day without a charger. That’s not marketing. That’s just where laptops have arrived in 2026.

This guide was written with the support of Qualcomm, helping us write the content we want to write by giving us the time to dedicate to content – this article and more of what you read on EFTM