Qualcomm unveils detailed specifications for its budget-oriented Snapdragon C laptop chip, targeting low-cost Windows devices with improved efficiency, AI capabilities, and enhanced battery performance, signalling a shift in the entry-level market.
Qualcomm has finally set out the specifications for its Snapdragon C laptop chip, three months after first announcing the platform for low-cost Windows machines. The company is positioning the ARM-based processor for notebooks starting at about €300, with the pitch centred on better efficiency, quieter designs and longer battery life than similarly priced Intel systems. Tom’s Hardware reported that the platform is aimed squarely at the budget end of the market, where on-device AI hardware is still rare.
According to details published by Notebookcheck, the chip carries 8 CPU cores with boost clocks up to 2.0GHz and a single-core peak of 3GHz. It also includes an Adreno graphics unit reaching 900MHz, an AI accelerator and support for up to 16GB of LPDDR5X or LPDDR4X memory. Storage can be connected through PCIe 3.0 x2 or UFS 3.1, while wireless support covers Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6.0. Hardware decoding is also listed for HEVC, VP9 and AVC at up to 4K and 60 frames per second.
Tom’s Hardware said the Snapdragon C uses a custom Kryo design derived from Qualcomm’s mobile chip architecture and is intended for fanless or near-silent laptops. It also includes a neural processing unit, or NPU, for local AI tasks, which may help with features such as transcription or image processing without sending data to the cloud. Even so, the platform does not support Microsoft’s Copilot+ feature set, which keeps it outside the company’s premium AI PC tier.
Acer’s Aspire Go 15 is among the first laptops announced on the new platform, with fuller specifications expected at Computex 2026, according to Tom’s Hardware and TechTimes. Qualcomm’s move suggests it wants to broaden Windows on ARM beyond premium devices and into the entry-level segment, where battery life and price often matter more than raw performance. The key question now is whether the software compatibility and day-to-day responsiveness will be good enough to persuade buyers in a market that still defaults to low-end x86 laptops.
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