Asus told reviewers that its Zenbook A16 laptop, one of the first with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite inside it, would be $1,599. A day after the launch, it raised the price. Is that fair, even in the age of shortages?
Snapdragon X Elite Laptop Performance On Linux Ends 2025 Disappointing
Hopefully in 2026 we’ll see X2 Elite support morph into a more formidable contender for Linux use but as it stands now the Linux support and performance is better off with AMD Ryzen AI and Intel Core Ultra laptop options.
For ARM Linux comparison, I ran the Speedometer 3.0 benchmark the author uses on my daily driver Macbook Air M2 (24GB RAM) running Asahi Linux Fedora Remix 42 (KDE). I used FF 149 which is just what I had installed. It scored 22.0 which apparently was better than this Zenbook and even beat out several Ryzen 7 and Core i7 offerings:
A used M2 Air with my spec mine (24GB RAM 2TB SSD) is $800-$900, which is a fraction of the $1600 Asus wants for their slower unit new, but the Asus does have more RAM.
searches
As of Christmas, several months back:
https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x-elite-linux-eoy2025
For ARM Linux comparison, I ran the Speedometer 3.0 benchmark the author uses on my daily driver Macbook Air M2 (24GB RAM) running Asahi Linux Fedora Remix 42 (KDE). I used FF 149 which is just what I had installed. It scored 22.0 which apparently was better than this Zenbook and even beat out several Ryzen 7 and Core i7 offerings:
A used M2 Air with my spec mine (24GB RAM 2TB SSD) is $800-$900, which is a fraction of the $1600 Asus wants for their slower unit new, but the Asus does have more RAM.