Surface Laptop 6 with Snapdragon X Elite, 16GB RAM, Windows 11 spotted

2024 is the year of Windows on ARM, and another new piece of hardware from Microsoft, the “Surface Laptop 6” with the flagship Snapdragon X Elite, has been spotted in four new benchmarks. The Surface Laptop 6 runs the Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100, which was previously spotted in the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge (another Windows on ARM PC).

As Microsoft watcher Zac Bowden previously reported, Microsoft has been working on two new Surface products – the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6. Windows Latest has already posted benchmarks of the Surface Pro 10 with Snapdragon X Plus.

Thanks to new Geekbench listings, we know more about the Surface Laptop 6.

Laptop 6 benchmarks | Image Courtesy: WindowsLatest.com

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According to Geekbench listings, as many as four devices codenamed “OEMBR OEMBR” have been benchmarked. The device scored close to 14,100 in multi-thread tests and up to 2,745 in single-core tests, which is impressive. The device is running in a “balanced” state, and the numbers may go higher in performance mode.

Surface Laptop with Snapdragon X Elite is as powerful as the Apple MacBook Pro with M3 Pro chip.

Here’s a table created by Windows Latest that compares the two devices:

The listings do not mention Microsoft or Surface branding for obvious anti-leak measures.

In fact, the device is shown as running “snapdragon 8cx gen 3 4012 MHz”, which doesn’t even exist.

That’s not the first time Microsoft has faked the CPU in the benchmarks, and it’s all part of the anti-leak measures. The benchmarked device in question is the Surface Laptop 6 running Snapdragon X Elite 12-core chip with 16GB of RAM, NPU, and Windows 11 version 24H2.

“OEMxx” is a codename typically used for all Surface products where the “xx” represents different Surface products:

• OEMBR – Surface Laptop with Qualcomm
• OEMMN – Surface Pro 10
• OEMSA – Surface Laptop SE
• OEMML – Surface Laptop

Microsoft doesn’t want you to know the specs of the Surface Laptop 6, so it even tried to fake the CPU information, which is why you’d see “Snapdragon 8cx gen 3 4012 MHz” in the above benchmark screenshots.

However, Microsoft’s benchmarked laptop uses Snapdragon X Elite (X1E80100, specifically), which also powers the Galaxy Book4 Edge.

How powerful is the Surface Laptop 6 ARM compared to the Intel edition?

The Snapdragon X Elite inside the Surface Laptop 6 is powerful and does a better job than the Intel Core i7 155h.

In our tests, we observed that Snapdragon completes 7-Zip File Compression task in 18.98 seconds, while the Intel chip takes slightly longer at 21.09 seconds. During the Visual Studio Code Compilation, the Snapdragon finishes compiling in 30.56 seconds, significantly quicker than Intel’s 68.14 seconds.

Here are our tests comparing the two processors:

As you can see above, for graphics performance, measured by the 3D Mark GPU Benchmark, the Snapdragon achieves 39.11 frames per second (FPS), outperforming Intel’s 33.98 FPS.

In the Speedometer 2.0 benchmark, which measures web application responsiveness, the Snapdragon scores 438 on Edge and 457 on Chrome, whereas the Intel scores 376 and 413, respectively.

You can expect even better performance when Windows 11 on ARM becomes stable on Surface Laptop 6 and other devices by September or October.