I tested laptops for a living and the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks aren't as scary as they appear

Some early benchmarks for Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processor are worse than the Apple iPhone 12 Mini. At least, at first glance.

Geekbench 6 results for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chipset are popping up in the Geekbench archives, as some customers and reviewers receive the laptops ahead of next week's official launch. We've covered why some of these benchmarks aren't worth worrying about, as the capped CPU speed on the Galaxy Book4 Edge was well below what the Snapdragon X Elite is rated for.

However, we don't need to go on that speculation alone, there are additional benchmarks on the Geekbench archives now with performance more closely aligned to Qualcomm's specifications.

Geekbench isn't everything

As a former lab tester, this one physically pains me to write. But it is true. While Geekbench is an industry-standard benchmark, the synthetic test results are a bit opaque. Geekbench results can help determine that something is wrong with a computer, but it takes a bit of institutional knowledge to make that determination and plenty of factors can impact Geekbench scores.

Because Microsoft has delayed the Copilot+ Recall feature until after the launch of the Snapdragon laptops, many of those laptops will receive various software updates and even BIOS updates on June 18.

Of course, those iPhone 12 Mini-like Snapdragon benchmarks (1,841 single-core and 11,537 multicore) were quickly buried under a slate of new Geekbench 6 results including benchmarks that hit well within the expected ranges (2,200-2,450 single-core and 13,300-14,800 multicore). It is also important to note that there are three different versions of the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, in addition to the Snapdragon X Plus.

On top of all that, with any Geekbench benchmarks, it is difficult to determine the conditions under which the benchmarks were run. Depending on system settings, Windows operating system, and BIOS versions, the final results can change drastically. At Laptop Mag we have an external testing facility to ensure our laptops are benchmarked identically every time. So the ultimate determination of the Snapdragon X Elite's performance will have to wait until we've got a few units through our battery of carefully regulated Geekbench tests.

So while it is always good to be skeptical of a company's benchmark boasting, the first set of benchmarks that hit the Geekbench archives aren't definitive either.

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