Source: Linus Tech Tips
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THE TL;DW
- Linus Tech Tips walks through helping his son shop for a new non-ChromeOS laptop ahead of the school year.
- The top Linus Tech Tips laptop pick is the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge — a 16″ AMOLED touchscreen with a Snapdragon X1 Elite chip, 16GB RAM, and 1TB storage.
- Runner-up is the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5X on Snapdragon X2 Plus, with ASUS Vivobook and TUF Gaming models thrown in as extra options.
The Jupiter Take
This is a practical, real-world buying guide rather than a lab benchmark deep-dive — Linus is shopping like an actual parent, not just a reviewer. It’s a useful snapshot of where Windows-on-Arm laptops now stand as legitimate ChromeOS alternatives for students.
Context
Snapdragon-powered Windows laptops have spent the last couple years trying to shake off their early reputation for app compatibility issues and mediocre performance, and this video effectively serves as a real-world verdict from a tech-savvy household. The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge’s Snapdragon X1 Elite chip represents the more mature second wave of Arm-based Windows machines, built to compete on battery life and thermals against traditional Intel and AMD ultrabooks and gaming-lite laptops like the ASUS TUF Gaming A16 that also got a mention.
The pick lands right as back-to-school laptop shopping peaks, a category where ChromeOS devices have long dominated on price but lost ground on flexibility for students who need full desktop software. For more on how this new generation of Snapdragon chips holds up under real use, JupiterFeed previously covered Unbox Therapy’s test of a Snapdragon multi-day battery laptop, which explored similar battery and performance claims now showing up across the category.
