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By Robby Payne Leave a Comment
We’re all patiently – or not so patiently – awaiting the full arrival of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks into the market. The Acer Chromebook Spin 513 is already hitting some regions, but wide roll-out is still likely a few weeks away at this point. Additionally, detachable tablets like the upcoming ‘Coachz’ and ‘Homestar’ devices have us very excited about the future of Chromebooks with Qualcomm silicon inside.
Hottech has run a full-blown analysis of the Snapdragon 7c in a few reference devices and created an impressive report that shows the 7c favorably stacking up against the likes of the current-gen Pentium Silver N5030 while besting chips like the current MediaTek MT8183 and Intel Celeron N4020. Across a host of benchmark tests including Octane V2, Speedometer 2.0, JetStream 1.1, Geekbench 5.3, GFXBench and battery tests using Zoom calls, the Snapdragon 7c ends up the victor in most categories.
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For performance tests, the Snapdragon 7c is the outright winner in Octane with a score of 22,486 and in Geekbench 5.3 with a single-core score of 594 and multi-core score of 1654. In GFXBench (which leans more heavily on GPU performance), the Snapdragon 7c runs far away from the competition, nearly doubling up what even the Pentium Silver N5030 is capable of as the closest competition. It is quite clear that from a graphics standpoint, the Snapdragon 7c will be much more capable than other mid-range Chromebooks.
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Things weren’t as favorable with Speedometer and Jetstream, however, with the Snapdragon 7c coming in after the Intel Pentium Silver N5030 on both web-based benchmarks. Jetstream 1.1 was a close matchup with the Pentium Silver N5030 only edging out a 4% victory with a score of 108.47 versus the Snapdragon 7c’s 103.93. However, with Speedometer 2.0, the gap was wider. With the N5030 pulling out a 61, the Snapdragon 7c was definitely behind with a 49.7.
The Snapdragon 7c definitely holds its own is in the battery life department, however, besting even the low-performance MediaTek MT8183 by about 2 full hours. In the test, a Zoom instance was run on each device at 150 nits of brightness on the same call with none of the devices acting as the host. For reference, the Celeron N4020 saw only 4 hours of runtime while the Snapdragon 7c reference device hit 11 hours of this type of use. Remember, with video calls you are leaning on the camera, video rendering, uploads, downloads and a screen powered on at all times. This is not a light task and 11 hours is pretty bonkers to go nonstop.
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So, what does this all mean?
In the end, all of this adds up to tell us we should expect mid-to-high-end performance once we have the Snapdragon 7c out in the wild. Will it match up to a 10th or 11th-gen Core i3? Nope. But it should perform in such a way that you won’t think too often about how things are getting along. I’ve worked from a handful of Pentium N5000 Chromebooks and I can attest that performance with those machines is quite good. You notice stutters here and there, but standard Chromebook tasks get handled in stride and the speed of the device doesn’t get in the user’s way.
I think that’s what we’ll be expecting with devices like the Acer Chromebook Spin 513 and ‘Coachz’ when we finally get our hands on them. Solid performance, exceptional battery life, and thin form factors will be the markers of the first Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks, and I’m very excited by the proposition of all these elements in a future device. Especially thinking of tablets/detachables, I think the Snapdragon 7c is going to be a real success provided the prices stay in check and we don’t have a bunch of operational quirks with the new chips. If these benchmarks are anything to go by, it’s worth getting hyped for the Snapdragon Chromebooks coming soon.
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About Robby Payne
As the founder of Chrome Unboxed, Robby has been reviewing Chromebooks for over a decade. His passion for ChromeOS and the devices it runs on drives his relentless pursuit to find the best Chromebooks, best services, and best tips for those looking to adopt ChromeOS and those who've already made the switch.
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