We’ve been visiting the booths at CES 2025 and have encountered some of the first desktop PCs on the market with Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X processors. Lenovo also showcases two new mini-PCs using the Arm architecture: the ThinkCentre Neo 50q QC and the IdeaCentre Mini x, equipped with Qualcomm’s first-generation Snapdragon X chips.
Although compact, these mini-PCs deliver enough performance without a massive cooling solution. The ThinkCentre Neo 50q QC has a base Snapdragon X chip, but you can get the Snapdragon X Plus if you need more firepower. Its Hexagon NPU can deliver 45 TOPS, which is more than enough for your AI needs. It has up to 16GB of LPDDR5X memory and two M.2 SSD slots.
This mini-PC has numerous ports: one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and another USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C in front, alongside a 3.5mm combo audio jack. Looking at the back, you’ll see two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, one DisplayPort 1.4a, and a 1G RJ45 Ethernet jack. You also get Wi-Fi 6E for wireless connectivity, ensuring that you won’t have any issues with this device regarding productivity.
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Because of its Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor, the ThinkCentre only requires 90 watts of power. Unfortunately, though, it has a proprietary power plug. If you could power it via USB-C, you could likely use a 20,000 mAh power bank to run this mini-PC.
Lenovo also introduced the IdeaCentre Mini x, which is about the same size as the ThinkCentre but is built for professionals and creatives. Because of this, the company is limiting the processor for this mini-PC to the more powerful Snapdragon X Plus. We’re still hoping the company will release a more powerful Snapdragon X Elite variant, allowing us to get the best performance in such a small package.
Nevertheless, we want to see how these mini-PCs perform versus their laptop counterparts. After all, a Snapdragon X Elite chip pushed past 100 watts only delivered modest gains of 10% to 30% compared to four times more power consumption. So, we’d love to see what kind of optimizations Lenovo did on these Snapdragon chips.
