Reliability Matters (Premium)

I’ve spent the past several weeks using two nearly identical x86-based laptops side-by-side. And I have some thoughts, mostly about reliability, as this is a concern that’s come up again and again in my reviews.

To be clear, this isn’t really about these two specific laptops. I typically review over 20 laptops each year, and I’ve been building an understanding of where each processor maker–Intel, AMD, and, now, Qualcomm–is with their respective products. And how their respective processor architectures–x86 and now Arm–compare.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X is a revelation. Some mistakenly believe that this chip is somehow several generations in, and that it took Qualcomm–and Microsoft, which delivers the necessary software platform advances–almost a decade to be competitive on PCs. But Snapdragon X is a new architecture, the result of an acquisition, and while it did take a few years to come to market, the results are much better than anyone expected. So much so that Qualcomm has since begun shifting its much higher volume mobile chips over to this new architecture as well.

And while there are many ways in which one might compare chips like these, or the PCs that are built around them, the central issue I keep coming back to is perhaps best summed up by a single word.

Reliability.

Reliability is an interesting thing, and using the Intel- and AMD-based OmniBook X Flip laptops side-by-side over the past several weeks was enough recent experience to help me clarify my views on where x86 is in general and where current-generation Intel and AMD chips land on a spectrum. And it’s not pretty.

Generally, x86, whether it’s Intel or AMD, is less reliable than Snapdragon X/Arm across the board.

One obvious example is the experience you get opening the laptop lid. There’s some amount of time it takes for the display to come on and then some more time for the webcam to wake up, see you, and sign you in, or fail and prompt for a PIN. I think of this process as instant-on reliability.

Snapdragon X/Arm instant-on is almost universally immediate and highly reliable, with the system slipping back into a wake-from-sleep, short boot process only after several days of inactivity. In other words, with Snapdragon X, instant-on actually works.

With x86, the instant-on experience is like spinning a roulette wheel in that you could get almost anything. Sometimes it just works. Sometimes, there’s a short boot process, and then the webcam works well. Sometimes it comes right on, but the webcam never initiates correctly, and you have to use a PIN (this is perhaps most common). Sometimes it sits there, doing nothing for several seconds, and then it finally launches into a full boot process as if the PC had been shut off. Predicting which you’ll get is impossible, and the time the laptop sat there unused before you opened the lid doesn’t really matter. You could have used it last night, and you’ll still get a full boot sequence the next morning. For some reason.

From there, I can offer further generalities about the latest Intel and AMD chips within the x86 space.

The latest Intel Core Ultra Series 2 V-family chips, meaning “Lunar Lake,” are less reliable than the latest AMD AI-300 series (“Zen 5”) chips in this way. So Snapdragon X is much more reliable than both, but AMD is more reliable than Intel.

General day-to-day performance is another obvious example. And it’s obvious because the respective experiences across laptops based on these chips is so different. This is a bit odd to me given that Windows and the PC matured quite some time ago, and we’re in an era in which just about every laptop with a mid-level or better processor, 16 GB or more of RAM, and any SSD should provide good enough performance to the point where most users wouldn’t think about this issue at all. That’s mostly been the case for several years or more, based on the dozens of laptop reviews I write each year.

And yet. The recent few processor generations have introduced some curious issues, especially from Intel, that I feel are tied to these companies trying to catch up to Arm as quickly as possible. Windows users put up with so many problems that we stop thinking about them sometimes. But the introduction of viable Arm-based chips, from Qualcomm with Snapdragon X, has shone a light on the terrible general reliability that we always get with x86. Once you use a Snapdragon X-based laptop, going back to x86 is immediately and obviously worse. And if you live on a PC all day long, every day, as I do, it’s become unacceptable.

Put simply, Snapdragon X/Arm provides the best general performance, which means while engaged in the day-to-day productivity work–web browsing, writing, graphics editing, and so on–that most mainstream users are familiar with. But this is also true across more demanding workloads like software development with Visual Studio, video editing, and the like. And from a reliability or consistency perspective, this is all true whether the PC is attached to power or on battery. I’m sure there is a single-digit percentage difference between the two, but I have never noticed it, and neither will anyone else.

The instant technical success of Snapdragon X triggered changes to x86, with Intel and AMD both doing what they can with this creaky architecture to close the gaps in efficiency and battery life, two other Arm strengths, while meeting Microsoft’s spurious Copilot+ PC NPU specifications. But Intel and AMD also have some strengths that they can and are taking advantage of. Both offer terrific integrated graphics in their latest x86 chips, AMD even more so than Intel, that are capable of playing modern AAA at solid resolutions, frame rates, and quality levels. This is the one area in which Snapdragon X struggles, not so much because of the graphics chip quality, but because games are so tightly optimized for these x86 chips and graphics, including the even more powerful dedicated graphics chipsets that are uncommon in laptops and impossible on Arm today.

Intel and AMD have also worked over several years to change the architectures of their respective chips to become more Arm-like, thanks at first to competition from Apple and the Mac, with multiple cores that are either dedicated to specific scenarios (performance, efficiency, and maximum efficiency, as with Intel) or can adapt on the fly to accommodate whatever scenarios (as with AMD). This was and is necessary work to modernize x86. And the resulting chips deliver improved battery life over their predecessors, in general. But there are problems, too. Intel chips perform dramatically slower on battery than when plugged into power. And AMD chips perform more slowly on battery too, though not as badly as with Intel. You really notice the difference on Intel. You don’t notice it as much on AMD, sometimes not at all. (Again, you never notice this with Arm.)

To further generalize, you get the best overall experience with Snapdragon X. You get the best and most consistent performance, on battery or power, in day-to-day productivity activities. You get the best reliability across the board. You get the best efficiency and battery life, and by a wide margin. You get the best instant-on performance and reliability. The only thing you don’t get is is a consistent and reliable experience playing modern videogames. You shouldn’t even try.

AMD is the best option if you need x86, which is only true for gamers and those with extremely out-of-date hardware and software requirements. It offers better general performance than Intel, on battery or power, though it’s a wash with the latter. It’s x86, so the reliability is spotty and unpredictable, but less so than with Intel. The instant-on performance and reliability are likewise spotty and unpredictable, but again, less so than with Intel. The battery life is generally about two-thirds of what I see on Snapdragon–so 7 to 8 hours instead of 11 to 12–and better than on Intel. And the videogame experience is superior, and especially so with the higher-end PRO-series chips.

Once-mighty Intel brings up the rear in every way imaginable. The latest Core Ultra Series 2 chips offer noticeably inferior performance on battery power, in some cases with the PC being rendered unusable. Overall reliability is poor and unpredictable, as is instant-on performance and reliability. Battery life is roughly 50 to 60 percent of what we see on Snapdragon and perhaps two-thirds of what you get with AMD, so in the 5-6 hour range, generally. And though the videogame experience is perfectly acceptable, it’s not as good as with AMD.

There are so many other ways to compare these chips, of course. But some initial comparisons are now moot–early hardware and software compatibility concerns with Snapdragon X/Arm have melted away, and quickly, killing that presumed x86 advantage–allowing us to focus on more substantive matters. And each of these chip makers has work to do. Today, you’ll have a much easier time finding Intel-based PCs than anything else, and that’s a problem.

And while Qualcomm has made x86 look silly and antiquated, Snapdragon X still lags Apple Silicon across the board, meaning performance, battery life, efficiency, reliability, and whatever else. And though it can’t solve this problem by itself, Qualcomm’s chips do lag x86 in gaming and by a wide margin. Improvements to the graphics chipset will help, but it and Microsoft have their work cut out for them in convincing game makers to support Arm in meaningful ways. Dedicated graphics is, for now, a pipe dream. And Snapdragon still isn’t available on a single shipping mainstream desktop PC, mini or otherwise.

x86 may be dead chipset walking, but it’s healthy for Intel and AMD to try, and perhaps they will eventually see the light and adopt Arm. In the meantime, AMD needs to continue working on battery life, efficiency, and reliability. Intel is in a tougher spot, and while early indications suggest some positive advances coming in the next-generation Core Ultra chips, I will need to see this to believe it. Intel acted like it hit one out of the park with Lunar Lake, and then we started using these chips and discovered that the real-world experience was deeply lacking and quite troubling.

The good news? We don’t have long to wait to see what each is up to. IFA 2025 is back in Berlin in early September, and this is when AMD and Intel typically announce new PC chips. And then Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit is back in Hawaii in late September, and that’s when we’ll get our first real look at the next-generation Snapdragon X. My plan is to attend both shows.

Will Intel turn it around? Will x86 even survive? Or will Windows finally just transition to the Arm architecture like the rest of the personal computing industry? These are perhaps longer-term questions and more difficult to answer with any accuracy. But I know where things stand today. I know change is coming.

And that’s what this industry is all about, when you think about it. It can only get better.