PC World - USA (2020-01)

12 PCWorld JANUARY 2020

NEWS HANDS ON WITH THE SNAPDRAGON 8C AND 7C

two. I found Asphalt 9 already loaded on the

demo machine when I tried it; I was told later

that the game ran much more smoothly on an

entirely different map.

HANDS ON WITH THE

SNAPDRAGON 7C

The 7c, I think, is where Qualcomm’s taking

the biggest risk. Sub-$500 PCs, especially

Chromebooks, dominate Amazon’s list of

most popular laptops. But Qualcomm hasn’t

said anything about pushing either the 7c or

the 8c to the Chromebook market, leaving its

slowest chip in the hands of PC makers eager

to save whatever pennies they can—and a

customer base that can quickly turn on you

with unfavorable reviews.

For me, the 7c and 8c experiences

seemed roughly the same. The difference

between the two machines, though, was that

Here are the specs of the Qualcomm Snapdragon

8c reference unit.

The system specifications of the Qualcomm

Snapdragon 7c reference unit.

while the 8c contained a paltry 4GB of RAM,

the 7c boosted that to 6GB—not an

enormous amount, but sufficient to get the

job done.

That may have offset any performance

issues that arose with the use of the

Sanpdragon 7c. Web browsing remained

relatively smooth—but again, we were using

the optimized browsers. 4K-60 video mostly

played back smoothly. I didn’t have a chance

to play any games, though that’s really not the

point of low-end machines.

With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon-powered

machines, we’ve always been of the mind that

you’re best off remaining within the safety of

apps written strictly for the ARM architecture.

Go beyond that, and problems may arise.

That advice will probably hold even truer as

Qualcomm moves down the food chain into

value PCs.