Surprise! Why 2022 is shaping up as the year of the laptop

AMD says that laptops based on its Ryzen 6000 chip will offer 24 hours of battery life—a dubious claim derived from low-impact benchmark tests, but one that should at least translate to all-day computing in the real world. The company is also promising double the gaming performance compared to previous-generation chips, allowing laptops with integrated graphics to function as decent gaming machines. Intel, meanwhile, has boasted that its 12th-generation H-Series processors can outperform Apple’s M1 Max, even if they’re not as battery efficient.

The laptop revival has also piqued the interest of mobile chip makers such as Qualcomm, whose Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 notebook chips promise an 85% performance boost over the previous generation. MediaTek is also looking to move upmarket with its Kompanio 1380 processor, which will debut in the Acer Spin 513 Chromebook.

Carolina Milanesi, president and principal analyst at Creative Strategies, expects laptops based on the new Qualcomm chips to arrive later this year, offering the kind of multiday battery life and instant wake times that have never quite been possible with Intel- or AMD-based laptops.