Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme review: More powerful than ever
Late last year, Qualcomm showcased their next generation Snapdragon X2 series of processors at their annual Snapdragon Summit. At the very top of that lineup was the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, and after some number of months, laptops powered by it finally arrived on shelves in Malaysia earlier this year.
That laptop is none other than the Asus Zenbook A16, an ultraportable 16-inch laptop that packs the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme X2E-94-100 processor, along with 48GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 1TB SSD. We’ve been eager to try one ever since Qualcomm unveiled it, so when Asus and Qualcomm offered us a review unit, we jumped at the opportunity.
Second time’s the charm
First though let’s dissect what exactly this chip offers. If you originally heard of Snapdragon for Windows chips during its first run, you would’ve known that the Elite model was its top-of-the-line processor in the original X-series.
Not anymore though, as the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, as its name suggests, is a step up from the regular Elite chips. Built on a 3nm TSMC process, it features 18 Oryon CPU cores, split between 12 Prime and six Performance cores. It’s worth pointing out that this is the ever so slightly step down Elite Extreme processor; the very top X2E-96-100 SKU features boost speeds up to 5.0GHz, while the one we have here boosts up to 4.7GHz.
Other than that, the X2 Elite Extreme also features a Hexagon NPU capable of up to 80 TOPS, an Adreno X2-90 integrated GPU running at 1850MHz and support for LPDDR5X memory as well as an up to 228GB/s bandwidth.
On paper at least, this seems to be a very solid improvement over the last generation Snapdragon X Elite lineup, and indeed the benchmarks seem to concur. In Cinebench 2026, it notched single thread scores of 626 points and 5985 points in multithread. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t actually hit the numbers Asus themselves claim, but still significantly beats the X1 Elite in multithread, while getting close to the Apple M4 lineup in single thread.
Mind you, it also comfortably beat the likes of the M3 Ultra and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K in single threaded scores. While yes these are older processors, it’s still a great improvement over the original Snapdragon for Windows chips, and in day to day use the X2 Elite Extreme was snappy and responsive.
Compared to the first run of Snapdragon X laptops, software compatibility seems to be better too thanks to the Prism translation and more native app support, with the only things that refused to run being PCMark and League of Legends. Personally, I’d double check if the games you intend to play have anti-cheat systems that work with Snapdragon on Windows first.
As for its NPU, running the Geekbench AI benchmark, it hit a quantized score of 91,750, more than 10x the score it got when running the same benchmark on its CPU.
One thing I was curious though going into this review was how good it would run games. While Qualcomm has made great strides in making these processors, their original run of Snapdragon X chips was marred by dubious driver support especially when it came to gaming. Synthetic benchmarks were a bit mixed at first, with the 4K Steel Nomad 3DMark benchmark scoring less than average, though it did significantly better in the lower resolution Steel Nomad Light test.
Benchmarks aside, I was actually quite surprised to see that, despite being an Arm CPU in a thin-and-light laptop, the X2 Elite Extreme was indeed able to play some games. And I don’t even mean lightweight indie titles either, with the Zenbook A16 able to run games like Black Myth Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 reasonably fine, albeit with some settings tuned down.
I hit a couple of snags trying to get Marvel Rivals to run smoothly though, as even after switching to the absolute lowest settings on an FHD+ resolution with FSR3 turned on it still only gave me a 51FPS average with 1% lows of 30FPS. I had a much more playable experience at 720p, racking up 73FPS average, but at such low graphics settings you might want to stick to Rocket Raccoon.
Starfield though was a bit too much of an ask from the Zenbook A16 and its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, failing to hit anything more than 10FPS on average even at 720p with everything turned to low and FSR3 switched on. Nevertheless, if you mostly stick to slightly older triple-A titles, supported eSports games or slower strategy-like games such as the Civ series, you’ll probably be surprised by how well it runs.
As for battery life, it’s good enough, if perhaps not as good as you’d expect from an Arm processor. The Zenbook A16 with its 70Wh battery will comfortably last a whole day of work and then some, but considering that I can get more or less the same battery life from the MacBook Neo with a tiny 36.5Wh battery, it’s not a particularly impressive showing in this regard.
Hampered by its surrounding hardware
Despite how impressed I was with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme under the hood, the rest of the Zenbook A16’s hardware leaves a lot to be desired. Design-wise, I’m a fan of the beige-brown look, but the chassis itself isn’t the most confidence-inspiring, as it can flex under use. If I were to rest my hand on the lower half of the keyboard, it can sometimes even flex to the point where I can no longer click the touchpad, especially when used on my lap.
Speaking of the touchpad, there’s a weird squeaky noise that crops up only when I click on a specific section on it. It’s a large touchpad and—when it works—is pretty decent, so hopefully it was just an issue with my specific review unit and not a production issue.
One other minor issue I found—and I’m not even sure if this is Asus’ fault—is that the Zenbook A16 doesn’t like to wake from sleep or hibernate properly. There’s been a couple of times when after sleeping or hibernating it, hitting the power button results in the fans turboing up to max speed and max volume, the keyboard would light up, but there is nothing on the screen. I had to then hold the power button down and boot it up again before it loads up perfectly fine as though nothing ever happened.
Those quirks aside, the rest of the Zenbook A16 is fine for the most part. The 16-inch, 3K OLED display is very nice to stare at, with its 1,100nits of peak brightness, full coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and inky blacks as well as its 120Hz refresh rate working well to ensure I won’t need a secondary display. Its six speakers meanwhile offer fairly decent sound, definitely on the nicer end of what you’d expect from a thin-and-light.
I also quite liked the amount of I/O on the Zenbook A16, as despite being positioned as an ultra lightweight ultraportable, it still manages to pack two USB4 ports, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm combo audio jack on top of an SD card slot.
Snapdragon is on the right path
Overall though, going back to the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, I have to give it credit where it’s due. Qualcomm has clearly managed to patch what the original Snapdragon X chips lacked by making it significantly more powerful and better supported, even if it doesn’t quite see as much improvement to its already satisfactory battery life.
And as for the Zenbook A16, if you can get one with a touchpad that works, the laptop itself mostly achieves what it offers: a large 16-inch OLED display, a powerful processor, a whopping 48GB of memory and incredible lightness at just 1.2kg, similar to most 14-inch laptops. That being said though, it won’t come cheap: at RM7,999, there are clear comparisons that can be made to the 15-inch MacBook Air.
Nevertheless, the Zenbook A16 remains the only laptop that we can find in Malaysia packing a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, so if you want to experience the best Qualcomm has to offer, then you know where to find it.
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