The Qualcomm Snapdragon C (Compute) Arm SoC is designed for entry-level Arm Windows laptops, or “mobile PCs” in marketing speak, with prices starting at $300, which should compete against entry-level laptops using Intel Alder Lake-N or Twin Lake processors.
The company didn’t provide many technical details, but we do know the Snapdragon C comes with an NPU for AI acceleration, and said it’s based on Kryo mobile cores rather than the more recent Oryon cores at a media event. Qualcomm still promises all-day battery life, smooth web browsing, video streaming, and productivity for students, families, and small businesses.
I’m not sure what kind of announcement that is, as Qualcomm didn’t provide any specifications. However, they did mention Acer, HP, and Lenovo will offer Snapdragon C laptops, and we have some specifications for the upcoming Acer Aspire Go 15 (AG15-Q31P).
- SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon C
- CPU – Unknown number of Kryo cores at an unknown frequency…
- GPU – Qualcomm Adreno GPU
- AI accelerator – Built-in NPU with unspecified performance…
- System Memory – Up to 8GB RAM
- Storage – Up to 512 GB storage
- Display – 15.6-inch Full HD (1920×1080), 16:9 aspect ratio
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4 port
- Camera – 1080p FHD webcam
- Networking – Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 or above
- Audio
- 3.5mm audio jack
- Dual speakers (and I assume a microphone somewhere)
- USB
- 2x full-function USB Type-C ports
- 1x USB Type-A port
- Misc – Copilot key, AcerSense, Acer My Key
- Battery – 53 Wh battery
- Dimensions – TBC
- Weight – TBC
The Acer Aspire Go 15 will run Windows 11 Home. Those will be useful for browsing the website, watching videos, checking emails, and running office suites, but like other entry-level laptops, you won’t be able to run the latest AAA games, and it won’t be ideal for video editing or running local AI models.
This was probably a rushed announcement for Computer 2026, which explains why details are rather light. Availability is also unclear, with Qualcomm and Acer simply stating that Snapdragon C devices are expected to hit the shelves later this year.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Using “Kryo” only says it could be anything from similar to the Raspberry Pi 4 level of performance up to nearly the Cix P1. (Reference cores from Arm would be anything from A73/A53 to A78/A55 with A710/A510 at the upper end.)
Based on the price point I wonder if anything better than a A78/A55 will be delivered. Which would imply that these solutions might compete with the RK3588 rather than the to be announced RK3688.
That said, Qualcomm holds very good technology, among others Atheros wifi which became less open in the process. One of the issues with the Snapdragon Elite apparantly was the mandatory use of proprietary PMIC’s. Wonder if they allowed for 3rd party PMIC’s, which might lower the costs by quite a margin.
Don’t think this will be going against Rockchip, but a rushed response to the MacBook Neo and basically copying Apple’s A18 strategy, which seems to be working well for Apple and pulling all interest in ARM laptops away from Qualcomm. Sounds like Qualcomm’s laptop division are in big trouble and this is them running around like a headless chicken having failed miserably to gain traction in the laptop market, twice now, and burning through a lot of investor money. They got to make up something new to keep fooling those dumb investors its all under control. However doubt Apple’s strategy will work the same for Qualcomm though, because you know – Windows. That was stupid for Qualcomm to rely solely on Microsoft to optimize Windows for ARM instead of also supporting Linux on the Elite chips. Now Windows is going to run even more crap on the mobile chips. MacOS at least has bsd/unix underneath that Apple can leverage.
Qualcomm laptops made more than 8% of a premium (>$800) laptop sale in 2025 bringing in around $1B revenue, pretty good chunk to me. And now they want to eat into cheaper segments. Earnings per share for QCOM is one of the best in the industry. Do you people just make these claims up, or get them on reddit or something? Just open their shareholder reports for God’s sake.
Yes. But useless and thus costly for laptop makers to bring something to market that won’t sell. So unlikely it’s Raspi4 performance.
Plus ” which should compete against entry-level laptops using Intel Alder Lake-N or Twin Lake processors.” … so could be nice. I see Intel N based laptops start around 300 Euro inc. VAT.
Both the Radxa Neo12L (MT) and Dragon Q6A (QC) can ship with a Windows for Arm systems. So that’s probably the bottom-line.
Perhaps some Taiwanese or Korean vendors will ship with Linux when governments require systems save from the US (without Microsoft and the Cloud Act). That market seems to be expanding.
Yes, but then Linux is the essential part. And not per se the underlying CPU.
… unless they switch to RISCV … but that is mostly (mainland) China technology.
> Up to 8GB RAM
How on Earth should this run Windows?
Nice, but without Linux support, I won’t buy.
Does it run vanilla mainline linux?
Let me answer myself: its a qualcomm…
Why isn’t there a laptop maker (HP, Dell, etc) that has contracted Canonical/Ubuntu to make their Snapdragon laptop work with Ubuntu and thus Linux?
Forbidden by Qualcomm (and/or Microsoft)? Too much hassle? No commercial relevance?
Well laptop makers don’t seem to work in a high margin environment… So wasting alot of money on a niche use case makes not that much sense economically