After over a month of unveiling its affordable AI PC chipset — Snapdragon X — at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier in January, Qualcomm has launched the chipset in India. With India fast becoming the fastest growing consumer electronics market globally, Qualcomm is looking to bank on the AI wave, at an affordable, accessible price point. Asus opened pre-reservations for the first two laptops — Zenbook A14 and Vivobook 16 — that were equipped with this chipset.
The pricing — which mostly forms the centrepiece of this announcement — is lucrative and one that could well give much needed boost to India’s stalling PC shipments. The Asus laptops come with a starting price of ₹65,990 (~$660) for the Vivobook 16 and a pricier Zenbook A14 model at ₹99,990 (~$1150).
The affordable X chip is built on a 4nm fabrication process and is specifically designed for mainstream and budget laptops. Despite not offering the same performance as the X Plus or X Elite processor variants, the new Snapdragon X chip features an identical design. It comes with Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU, featuring an 8-core count and a maximum clock speed of 3.0GHz.
