Samsung's Snapdragon X Elite-powered Galaxy Book 4 Edge will reportedly cost as much as premium Intel and Apple alternatives

Samsung Galaxy Book
(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung is planning to release a new ARM-based laptop, the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, that will compete in the high-end thin-and-light space. 

Samsung's notebook will come with Qualcomm's new 12-core Snapdragon X Elite chip designed for laptops, WinFuture reports, which purportedly boasts more performance than Apple's previous-gen M2 chip. The new notebook will reportedly launch for "around €1,800" — that's $2,074, although it's fair to expect actual U.S. retail pricing will be somewhat different due to tax and import regulation differences between Europe and the U.S.

This new laptop should be the first in Samsung's portfolio to sport the X Elite, which looks to be a massive step up from Qualcomm's previous ARM-based laptop CPUs,  which have struggled to compete due to mediocre performance and compatibility issues. The X Elite promises compute performance on-par with recent Intel and Apple platforms. Clearly, Qualcomm is hoping its silicon will run some of the best premium laptops of the not-too-distant future. 

The X Elite features twelve of Qualcomm's new 'Oryon' performance cores, clocked at up to 3.8GHz, with single- and dual-core turbo boost frequencies tuned even higher, at 4.3GHz. The integrated graphics is a Qualcomm's Adreno part that tops out at 4.6TFLOPs. Similar to AMD's new Ryzen 8000 mobile CPUs and Intel Meteor Lake chips, the X Elite also comes with an NPU featuring an impressive 45 TOPs of performance.

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ProcessorGeekbench 6.2 STGeekbench 6.2 MTCinebench 2024 STCinebench 2024 MTUL Procyon AI
Snapdragon X Elite (Config. A)2,94015,1301321,2201,750
Snapdragon X Elite (Config. B)2,78014,0001229501,750
Apple M22,65810,088121572N/A
Core i7-13800H2,75514,342115996232
Ryzen 9 7940HS2,69512,181109979172

According to Qualcomm's own benchmarks, the X Elite is incredibly quick for an ARM-based CPU. The chip's twelve Oryon cores were able to outperform an Intel Core i7-13800H, Ryzen 9 7940HS, and Apple M2 in several CPU- and AI-intensive benchmarks. In Cinebench 2024 specifically, the Snapdragon X Elite was able to outperform the Apple M2 by over a factor of two. The X Elite looks to be the first non-Apple ARM-based CPU to boast competitive performance to Intel and AMD x86 chips. But of course, it's unclear under what thermal conditions Qualcomm ran these benchmarks, so them (and all company-provided test results) with a heaping helping of salt.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge will come in a 14-inch form factor, featuring 16GB of RAM (a minimum requirement for AI PCs) and a 512GB SSD. Sadly (though not unexpectedly) the RAM will not be user-expandable, as has become the norm with thin-and-light notebooks. Images of the Qualcomm-powered laptop were not shared, but we can expect the Book 4 Edge to share a similar design as Samsung's outgoing Book 4 Ultra and Book 4 Pro featuring a thin metal chassis and a Moonstone Gray finish.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    So the TL;DR is: If you work with AI, buy it, else buy anything else because the Intel 14900HX and Apple M3 beat it otherwise for less money.
    Reply
  • ivan_vy
    tbf it must be compared with Apple M3, Intel 14000 and AMD 8000 not last gen iterations, new CPUs are AI focused with NPU.
    Also comparison with wattage for battery life, thermals for sustained performance and price/perf ratio.
    let's wait for real world scenarios and hope it's a worthy contender.
    Reply
  • SonoraTechnical
    Of course it's going to cost as much as premium offerings from Apple and Intel.... Samsung Galaxy branding has star power.... They'd be foolish not to exploit it... If it doesnt beat them... no worries... you have v 2.0 (see Fold.. which didn't really get it right until v 3.0).
    Reply
  • Notton
    Ooph, US$2000 is a hard pill to swallow for something that doesn't have the full Windows x86 ecosystem.

    However, IDK if a Galaxy Book is the best metric for pricing, as they tend to have premium pricing considering the specs.
    Reply
  • PEnns
    SonoraTechnical said:
    Of course it's going to cost as much as premium offerings from Apple and Intel.... Samsung Galaxy branding has star power.... They'd be foolish not to exploit it... If it doesnt beat them... no worries... you have v 2.0 (see Fold.. which didn't really get it right until v 3.0).
    I guess you forgot the part where Android fans call people who pay Apple prices "lemmings".

    And furthermore, to put Samsung in the same Apple & intel league and claim it has "star power" is a big stretch.
    Reply
  • jlake3
    ivan_vy said:
    tbf it must be compared with Apple M3, Intel 14000 and AMD 8000 not last gen iterations, new CPUs are AI focused with NPU.
    Also comparison with wattage for battery life, thermals for sustained performance and price/perf ratio.
    let's wait for real world scenarios and hope it's a worthy contender.
    At approximately $2000 USD you're well above the entry point for an M3, and now up against the base model of M3 Pro.

    And on the PC side you can get a LOT of hardware for $2000, AND not have to run through a translation layer.

    For a company who's previous Snapdragon 7c and 8xc weren't exactly runaway successes, they really seem to think they're up there with the best and can demand premium prices.
    Reply
  • usertests
    That's what I was afraid of. Same failed strategy again.

    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    So the TL;DR is: If you work with AI, buy it, else buy anything else because the Intel 14900HX and Apple M3 beat it otherwise for less money.
    When do these launch? Because AMD Strix APUs will have around the same or better AI performance by Q3/Q4.
    Reply
  • Sluggotg
    I would love to see a review when they come out. Can it handle gaming? Obviously there is no independent benchmarking right now, so we will see. If it is as good as they say, it could be a winner.
    Reply
  • purposelycryptic
    Do these benchmarks really matter, when 99% of PC software is written for x86, meaning you'll never actually see the native performance they are showing?
    Reply
  • purposelycryptic
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    So the TL;DR is: If you work with AI, buy it, else buy anything else because the Intel 14900HX and Apple M3 beat it otherwise for less money.
    If you're working with AI, you're probably not working on it on a laptop, period, but a workstation, and definitely not on one of these wafer-thin, ultra-lightweight fashion-statement machines.

    This isn't an AI development machine, it's something you write some notes on while you're on your way to your development machine.
    Reply