At day two of Snapdragon Summit 2026, Qualcomm briefly spoke about its Snapdragon X2 Plus platform for laptops. There are no new processors in this category, to be clear, but it has extended its portfolio for its platform to three new laptops: two from Microsoft, and a Googlebook from HP.
Snapdragon X2 Plus For Microsoft Surface
In conjunction with the announcement, Microsoft announced that it has refreshed two of its Surface products with the Snapdragon X2 Plus processor. Technically speaking, they are new and the latest addition to the X2 Series lineup, but again, this is a platform that was announced at last year’s Snapdragon Summit.
The laptops in question are the smaller Surface Pro 12 and larger Surface Laptop 13, two of Microsoft’s smallest laptops in its lineup. Specifically, the Surface Pro 12 boasts the 12-inch form factor, while the Surface Laptop measures in at 13.8 inches.
There are two major differences for the Snapdragon X2 Plus laptops, though. Firstly, there’s the price: due to the ongoing memory crisis, RAM-mageddon, Microsoft has had no choice but to raise its prices for both laptops. The Surface Pro 12 now retails at a starting price of US$1,150 (~RM4,698), while the Surface Laptop 13 currently retails from US$1,199 (~RM4,898). Second, and also due to the memory crisis (sort of), Microsoft isn’t offering any of the devices with a memory configuration lower than 16GB, and both can be configured with a maximum capacity of 24GB. That said, it isn’t clear if the configuration options are only for selected markets, and if other markets – Malaysia being one of them – would be getting configurations with less than 16GB RAM as a base model.
Regardless of the configuration, the Snapdragon X2 Plus is the same in both laptops, offering a 6-core configuration and what Qualcomm says is 18% better power efficiency, 60% faster graphics performance, and up to 95% faster local AI inferencing than its predecessor.
Googlebook 14
Announced before the start of the Snapdragon Summit, the Googlebook 14 is another laptop Qualcomm is adding to its portfolio. However, unlike the Surface devices, the Googlebook 14 is packing the older, previous-generation Snapdragon X Elite, which we reviewed a couple of years prior.
As previously reported, HP and Dell are the first brands set to launch their books, and we actually got a quick look at the former’s product, and it looks and feels premium.
The embracing of the Snapdragon X Elite processor opens the door for both Qualcomm and Google, the latter primarily because the Googlebook 14 is also set to ship out with Intel Panther CPU options. Basically, consumers will have a choice between ARM and x86 Googlebook options.
