Qualcomm officially released the Snapdragon X2 Plus range, a more affordable version, during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026.
The launch comes after the release of the Snapdragon X2 Elite last September as part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ AI PC ecosystem.
These new chips aren’t considered a fresh design—they’re essentially X2 Elite models with some cores, cache, and GPU units disabled.
The X2 Plus series includes models like the X2P-64-100 with 6 Prime cores, 4 Performance cores, 34 MB total cache, and a 1.7 GHz GPU, and the X2P-42-100, which has no Performance cores, 22 MB cache, and a 0.9 GHz GPU.
Despite some lesser specs than the previous generation, the company claimed nearly 35% single-core performance gains, mainly because of more powerful Prime cores, additional branch units, minor pipeline tweaks, and faster LPDDR5x RAM.
Furthermore, X2 Plus uses TSMC’s N3P process, providing nearly 43% reduced power consumption, in contrast to X Plus chips.
Performance cores, while weaker as compared to the prime cores, are optimized for low-power operation.
On the GPU side, both X2 Plus models use the X2-45 Adreno GPU, projected to have 1024 shaders, support DirectX 12, Vulkan, and ray tracing, and feature around 11 MB of specialized cache.
With a 10–20 W power window, the chip is considered perfect for handheld gaming PCs, offering greater competition to AMD and Intel in portable devices.
While X2 Elite devices are yet to be released, the X2 Plus promises affordable, efficient performance for the growing Arm-based PC market.
