In the last few months Qualcomm announced a pair of updated Snapdragon ARM CPUs made for use in PCs, and now Samsung has announced new laptops featuring both of them. The new Galaxy Book Go promises instant-on performance and 18 hours of battery life with a Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 chipset. The thin and light 14-inch laptop runs Windows 10 and can be had with 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and either 64GB or 128GB of built-in storage. It’s set to go on sale June 10th with a price starting at $349.
If you’d like something a bit more powerful, then it sounds like the Galaxy Book Go 5G could be a good option when it arrives later this year with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 chip inside that’s designed to compete with Intel’s i5 Core CPUs. There’s no word on its specs or pricing yet, but both laptops have a silver finish, 180-degree folding hinge, Dolby Atmos audio and “military-grade durability.”
Previous Snapdragon-powered laptops have come through on their promises of long battery life, but required compromises on performance and app compatibility. Meanwhile, Apple has shifted its laptops to ARM CPUs without problems on either front with the M1 family of chips, although all of its devices are much more expensive. We’ll find out soon if a new SDK and upgraded hardware are enough to change things for Windows on ARM this time around.
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