In the past year since Qualcomm launched its Snapdragon X Elite phone for the first time, the competition has not been quiet. Intel released Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake chips, with the latter appearing as a legitimate response to the advancements Qualcomm has made in battery life and efficiency.
However, Qualcomm is not impressed with Intel’s latest offerings.
Qualcomm does not have any new computer chips to announce at its annual summit – instead, the company spent some time with journalists to point out that some of the claims made by Intel overlook important details.
Qualcomm has two main criticisms of how Intel talks about its new Lunar Lake chips or Core Ultra Series 2. First, Intel stopped directly comparing its top configurations against Qualcomm’s X1E-84-100. Instead, Intel relies on the X1E-80-100 and X1E-78-100 in its comparisons. According to the numbers provided by Qualcomm, as seen in the chart below, leaving out the X1E-84-100 allows Intel to take the lead in some performance metrics. The other slight flaw, according to Qualcomm, in Intel’s marketing is that its advanced configuration, Core Ultra 9 288V, is not yet available in retail. This raises doubts about Intel’s claim that this is the “fastest core.”
The biggest argument, of course, is that Qualcomm still provides better power efficiency. Specifically, Qualcomm points to the fact that Lunar Lake chips consume 38% more power at peak performance.
Of course, performance was not Intel’s main demand with the Core Ultra Series 2. It was all about battery life. And in the test conducted, they were quite impressed with how long these laptops lasted, especially under demanding workloads. Currently, battery life takes the crown.
Qualcomm does not doubt Intel’s ambitious claims, but notes that Intel is not telling the whole story. As we have learned in our tests, Core Ultra Series 2 chips do not perform well on battery power, which is the strength of Arm chips, including Snapdragon X Elite and Apple Silicon. Qualcomm shows that in all areas, Intel’s latest chips suffer a serious drop in performance when using battery power, dropping by up to 54% in some tests.
To be fair, this has always been true for Intel chips, but Qualcomm is right. As long as Intel’s battery life is also true, you lose a significant amount of performance. This is not the case with Snapdragon X Elite.
However, for most people, they may choose extra hours of battery life over some performance. Let’s not forget: we are talking about small, thin, and lightweight laptops, not high-performance devices. This equation may change in larger, more powerful laptops. But for now, Intel’s focus on battery life seems to be the right choice – even if it is somewhat misleading when compared to Qualcomm.
