NET Development on a Surface Laptop 15" Snapdragon Elite X: Amazing Performance and Battery Life

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The original was posted on /r/surface by /u/iceclow on 2024-09-28 13:25:34+00:00.

Recently, I switched from my Intel-based XPS 13 to a 15” Surface Laptop with Snapdragon Elite X, 1 TB SSD, and 32 GB RAM. I mainly use it for .NET development with Visual Studio, and the experience is incredible.

The battery life is on par with a Mac, absolutely nothing like the 3-4 hours at most you get with an Intel like the XPS. More than 8 hours using Teams, VS, multiple PowerShell instances, Azure Data Studio, and several Docker containers, like SQL Server.

And the performance is amazing; applications run smoothly, even compiling a solution of around 120 projects while streaming Twitch. The difference in the processor is evident, there’s no throttling, and it maintains 3 GHz sustained when needed, something impossible to see in an Intel laptop and far from what the XPS achieves with its overheating issues.

Most applications are available on ARM. Drivers that don’t have an alternative in X64, like printers (I use an HP Photosmart that’s at least 10 years old), are mostly ported, and I haven’t had any issues. And those few apps that install on X64, you don’t notice any performance issues with the new emulation layer.

I couldn’t be happier with the purchase. Without a doubt, ARM on Windows is the future and probably the present.