Monday, March 24th 2025
Qualcomm Snapdragon X-Powered Laptops Flagged with "Frequently Returned Item" Tag
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform is hitting more road obstacles as the platform matures. First, it was low sales in the third quarter of 2024, and now it is the latest flag from the world's largest online retailer—Amazon. According to Windows Central, Amazon has flagged Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 AI PC with the "Frequently Returned Item" flag. Being pretty much self-explanatory, the flag marks items "with the highest return rates for their product category." Presumably, Amazon's algorithm has weighted out return rates of AI PCs, and it turns out that Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered Surface Laptop 7 has not stuck with consumers for long. Amazon's return policy allows product returns 30 days after receiving an item, and it seems like customers aren't pleased with it.
However, the laptop currently maintains a 4.2/5-star rating based on 360 ratings. 12% of these are one-star and 71% are five-star ratings. A sudden spike in returns may be boosted by Microsoft updating the Surface Laptop 7 with an Intel Core Ultra series of processors, so customers are returning their Arm-based laptops for x86 variants. We need more data to make further conclusions. As a reminder, despite sequential growth of 180% in Q3 2024, Snapdragon X-powered devices represent less than 1.5% of the Windows market, according to research from Canalys. Qualcomm sold around 720,000 Snapdragon X devices, accounting for only 0.8% of all PCs sold in Q3 2024. We are waiting for new data to compare to the rest of the ecosystem.
Sources:
Windows Central (Source and Images), via Tom's Hardware
However, the laptop currently maintains a 4.2/5-star rating based on 360 ratings. 12% of these are one-star and 71% are five-star ratings. A sudden spike in returns may be boosted by Microsoft updating the Surface Laptop 7 with an Intel Core Ultra series of processors, so customers are returning their Arm-based laptops for x86 variants. We need more data to make further conclusions. As a reminder, despite sequential growth of 180% in Q3 2024, Snapdragon X-powered devices represent less than 1.5% of the Windows market, according to research from Canalys. Qualcomm sold around 720,000 Snapdragon X devices, accounting for only 0.8% of all PCs sold in Q3 2024. We are waiting for new data to compare to the rest of the ecosystem.
38 Comments on Qualcomm Snapdragon X-Powered Laptops Flagged with "Frequently Returned Item" Tag
they should offer something in the iPad price range
Do people just buy things by looking at a picture?
There are no recalls for Nvidia 3090 ti / 4090 / 5090 yet. People buy it and seem to be happy.
And this is the con pilot.
I'm really not seeing the sell with this whole AI bullshit. We have the internet, guys.
Its almost as if Microsoft is just throwing shit at the wall; well almost... actual.
Devices with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (2) would be compelling for me, if they ran Linux out of the box. Ubuntu 25.04 is supposed to finally ship with some support. I'm pretty sure in that case more Linux users would buy them than Windows users currently do.
You can get a 16GB Macbook air M4 for almost the same price is probably not helping things either.
The real problem here is not qualcomm, it's the fact people think they are buying a regular PC to find out they have an arm variant running on windows which has reduced capabilities compared to the regular x86 variants.
Qualcomm CPUs work quite well. Got one in my tablet (Snapdragon 8 gen 1) and it's pretty fast for its price range.
I'd put the blame on microsoft rather than qualcomm. They are selling windows arm PCs without proper warning to buyers. Apple can afford arm based cpus in their device because they forced the developpers of apps to release arm versions as well. Microsoft didn't as they dont have that kind of ecosystem.
They're still weak performers unless plugged in. They're still barely serviceable or upgradable. The quality of them for the price you pay is so-so. The lifetime of your average laptop is still far lower than you'd want. A lot of them are a somehow just not high on quality of life when using them. They all invite you to neck problems.
I mean look at phones. They've eliminated all those issues minus the neck problems over the years, well and the planned obscolecence.
They lost an opportunity here by being shortsighted, arrogant and greedy. Laptops with Snapdragon SOCs should had prices from $300 to $800. No more than that.
I've been using ARM hardware for almost 8 years now to run Linux and it's been a fairly smooth experience, as all the latest software is available for it. The situation is different but also improving for Windows. It will surely take years for Windows on ARM to gain a foothold, if it ever happens at all.
Soldered systems will gain a few percentages of market share and that's it. It just creates more e-waste as consumers cannot upgrade almost anything.