Performance outside of Cubase is great. It’s definitely faster and snappier compared to my previous Surface Book 3 with an i7 and 16GB of RAM when running standard software like O365 and MS Edge. Fans never come on when browsing the internet or watching YouTube, so it’s silent. It doesn’t get warm or hot either.
This of course changed when running Cubase 13 Pro with one of the provided demo projects. I opened “Demo Project by Austin Hull (C13)”, which is included in Cubase, and played it with Windows 11 Power Mode set to 1) Energy Saver, 2) Recommended and 3) Best Performance. The Steinberg built-in ASIO driver was selected as the output Audio Device playing through the laptop’s speakers. The project plays without stuttering in all 3 Power Modes, but the laptop does get warm (not hot!) and the fans come on, although they are still fairly quiet. The only way to tell a difference in performance is by looking at the graph for ASIO-Guard. As expected, it’s the highest when the Energy Saver is ON and peaks around 75-85%. At Best Performance ASIO-Guard peaks around 40-50%.
Here are screenshots of the Audio Performance window for each Power Mode:
Power Mode = Energy Saver ON
Power Mode = Recommended
Power Mode = Best Performance
Again, this is far from a scientific benchmark test, but hopefully gives you a rough idea. Without any Audio Interface drivers, you’re limited to the laptop’s built-in speakers and Steinberg’s built-in ASIO driver for now. For sketching out ideas with a limited track count and a handful of VSTs, Cubase works fine. But if your goal is to regularly create music with it, a Snapdragon X laptop is no replacement for an Intel-based one just yet.
However, I’m hopeful vendors will make their software and drivers available for Windows on ARM over time and then we’re talking again. The raw performance is there for sure and just waiting to get utilized.
PS: Laptop used → Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition, Snapdragon X Elite (X1E80100), 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD