Snapdragon X2 Elite Beats Apple M5 in Key Benchmarks: Multi-Core, Blender, Handbrake — Full Analysis with India Pricing

Snapdragon X2 Elite Beats Apple M5 in Key Benchmarks: A Watershed Moment for Windows on ARM

On February 9, 2026, Hardware Canucks published benchmark results that sent shockwaves through the tech industry. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite — specifically the mid-tier X2E-88-100 variant with 18 cores — was tested head-to-head against the Apple M5 chip inside a 14-inch MacBook Pro. The result: the Snapdragon X2 Elite won 3 out of 5 benchmarks, including dominant victories in multi-core CPU performance, Blender rendering, and Handbrake video encoding.

This is a landmark result. For years, Apple's M-series chips have been the undisputed kings of ARM-based computing, delivering class-leading performance per watt that no Windows-compatible chip could match. The original Snapdragon X Elite in 2024 made progress but ultimately fell short of Apple's M3 and M4 chips in most workloads. Now, with the X2 Elite, Qualcomm has not just closed the gap — in several critical productivity benchmarks, it has pulled ahead.

But context matters enormously here, and responsible tech journalism demands we examine both the victories and the caveats. This article provides a complete, balanced analysis of every benchmark result, the technical specifications of both chips, the laptop options coming to India, pricing expectations, and the important limitations of these early test results.

The Benchmark Results: What Was Tested

Hardware Canucks tested the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100 inside an unnamed Windows laptop against the Apple M5 in a 14-inch MacBook Pro. The X2E-88-100 is the mid-tier variant of the X2 Elite lineup — not the top-end Extreme SKU. This is important because it means the best Snapdragon X2 chip (the X2E-96-100 Extreme) was not even used in this comparison.

Head-to-Head Results

Final score: Snapdragon X2 Elite wins 3/5, Apple M5 wins 2/5.