The Snapdragon X2 Series processors, designed to power Windows 11 PCs using Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC brand, are part of Qualcomm’s revitalized push to take CPU market share away from Intel and AMD—and create more competition for Apple’s Mac computers.
Announced at CES 2026, the Snapdragon X2 Plus processors are expected to land in select devices from leading OEMs by June and represent the middle of the pack for the Snapdragon X2 Series the chip designer revealed last September. Qualcomm is also targeting “aspiring creators” and “everyday users” with the new chips.
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The product line, designed to power PCs using Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC brand, represents Qualcomm’s revitalized push to take CPU market share away from Intel and AMD—and create more competition for Apple’s Mac computers. The company has made substantial investments to enable channel partners to market and sell Snapdragon-powered PCs, but it has lost two top channel leaders—Jeff Monday and Kyle Houser—over the past four months.
“This momentum is really building on the growing confidence in Snapdragon as the engine driving broader collaboration and a clear shift toward the kind of performance per watt leadership that only Snapdragon can deliver,” said Rachel Lemire, a senior product marketing manager at Qualcomm, in a briefing with journalists last month.
Compared to the Snapdragon X Plus chips that debuted in 2024, the new mid-range processors improve CPU single-core performance by up to 35 percent, CPU multi-core performance by up to 17 percent, GPU performance by up to 29 percent and NPU performance by up to 78 percent, according to the company.
“Snapdragon X2 Plus brings many of the architectural breakthroughs of our flagship platforms to a broader range of devices delivering high performance, intelligent features and exceptional battery life in everyday form factors that people rely on,” Lemire said.
The Snapdragon X2 Plus segment consists of two processors, with one sporting up to 10 of Qualcomm’s third-generation Oryon cores along with a 1.7GHz GPU frequency and the other featuring six cores along with a 900MHz GPU frequency. The GPU is based on the company’s next-generation Adreno graphics architecture.
While Qualcomm did not make any competitive comparisons in a pre-brief with journalists last month, the company said the chips—like the flagship Snapdragon X2 Elite products—feature the “fastest NPU in a laptop,” capable of 80 trillion operations per second.
Both Snapdragon X2 Plus processors offer a maximum multi-threaded frequency of 4.0GHz and a transfer rate of 9,523 megatransfers per second with the LPDDR5x memory type.
Like the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processors, the mid-range chips will feature an option for Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Guardian out-of-band PC management, which is the company’s answer to Intel’s vPro platform.
