The electric vehicle has introduced a new stressor into society: “range anxiety.” It’s defined as the fear that an EV won’t have enough juice to get the driver to their destination.
Mobile workers can relate to this feeling when it comes to their laptops.
Most mobile workers have probably faced a scenario where they’re on a train, at a customer site, or on a service call with no power source and an urgent need to connect with colleagues or the home office, finish a presentation, or access cloud- or web-based resources. As the battery meter trickles down, “you start to compromise what you can do because you’re trying to conserve the drips of power left on your PC,” says Craig Tellalian, director, field applications engineering for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “So you’re running in a less productive, less efficient way, all in the hopes of stretching the battery an extra hour.”
Battery life and performance versus increased mobility has been a longstanding trade-off for knowledge workers, sales teams, and field technicians alike. The challenge has heightened as mobile users – and their laptops – take on increasingly heavy workloads and multitasking becomes the norm. At the same time, user expectations have changed, driven by the consistent performance and long battery life of their mobile phones.
“Workers want a device that runs cool and can handle all of their multitasking workloads,” says Tellalian.“ It needs to stream video and audio really well and get me through at least a full day running on a battery. That’s the new expectation, and it’s forcing a lot of IT teams to accelerate their PC plans, because those communities of users can’t get their work done unless they’re on newer technology.”
Snapdragon® X Series is the performance leader in Windows AI PCs, offering a path to better battery life and productivity improvement. While these PCs are positioned as “AI-enabled” devices, their benefits extend beyond AI capabilities. The addition of a neural processing unit (NPU) dedicated to AI workloads frees up the CPU and GPU, putting less strain on battery life and improving overall system performance for unplugged devices.
For example, CoPilot+ PCs powered by Snapdragon X Series provide up to 22 hours of battery life on a single charge1. With highly optimized CPU, GPU and NPU engines working together, power is designated where and when needed, improving performance of all workloads, not just AI tasks. Qualcomm Technologies research quantifies some of the benefits of the Snapdragon X Elite processor:
- 2 times longer battery life on Teams calls
- 58% longer battery life for web browsing
- 40% longer battery life for Office 365 apps2
“When you have freedom from your power cord and still keep your performance, that’s a game changer,” says Carmen True, VP, product marketing with Qualcomm Technologies. “Now you can walk around the building to all your meetings, or to the coffee shop and back, and still do the hard processing workloads – all without killing your battery. Once you have that, there’s no turning back.”
Microsoft’s plans to end support for Windows 10 in October 2025 are likely to serve as a catalyst for PC fleet refreshes to support the transition to Windows 11, which opens the door for AI PC growth. IDC predicts that AI PC shipments will grow from nearly 50 million units in 2024 to more than 167 million in 2027, when they will represent nearly 60% of all PC shipments worldwide.3
“A lot of companies will be looking to refresh their four-year-old PCs, and Windows 10 end of service is an opportunity to start putting AI PCs into the installed base,” says Tom Mainelli, IDC’s group vice president for device & consumer research.
Given the approaching Windows 10 end of service, now is an opportune time to reevaluate and choose Snapdragon as the heart of your PC. Snapdragon presents unparalleled performance without compromise, helping to reduce “range anxiety” for the modern worker.
Snapdragon branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
1Battery life varies significantly based on device, settings, usage, and other factors.
2Snapdragon X Elite was tested using a Qualcomm reference design on Windows 11 OS. The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H (16 core) was tested using an Asus Zenbook14 OLED (UX3405) laptop on Windows 11. Power comparison reflects results based on measurements of given devices.
3IDC, IDC Forecasts Artificial Intelligence PCs to Account for Nearly 60% of all PC Shipments by 2027, February 7, 2024, https://my.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS51851424