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If Lenovo was not physically present at the MWC show in Barcelona, the manufacturer still held a virtual event to present many PCs and tablets, including the ThinkPad X13s. This model is the first to integrate a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC.
Announced in December 2021, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 chip has been waiting for some time to finally renew a timid Gen 2, present on a handful of PCs at most. Its fineness of engraving in 5 nm against 7 nm previously should allow it to embed more cores and thus give it much better performance and better energy efficiency. What in particular improve the autonomy of the equipped computers. In fact, Qualcomm’s SoCs have so far not really delivered on performance, further marred by unstable Windows app emulation in its early days.
It is Lenovo that opens the ball for this 3rd generation with the announcement of its ThinkPad X13s at MWC 2022. This PC intended for professionals promises to operate for several days without needing to be recharged (28 hours in video playback according to the manufacturer), enough to satisfy a good number of mobile users. With barely 1.06 kg on the scale and its 13.3-inch screen (in 16:10 format), the PC could indeed be taken anywhere without asking too many questions.
On the component side, the maximum configurations can carry up to 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD to which must be added a 6E wifi and a state-of-the-art Bluetooth 5.2. A 5 Mp webcam compatible with Windows Hello should also ensure a good image for video conferences.
It is hoped that the Snapdragon 8cx gen 3 will live up to its promises and that the Arm emulation will run smoother than before, although more and more applications are now natively supported. We will closely follow the computer’s first benchmarks to keep you informed of the possibilities offered by this new SoC which, we remind you, will not really tickle Apple’s M1, chips also based on the Arm architecture.
The ThinkPad X13s will in any case be available from May for a base price of €1,399.