We’ve already reviewed the Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini X with Snapdragon and discussed Windows on ARM more generally in our article about the Dell Inspiron 14 with Snapdragon. So, feel free to check those out. But in this article we’re going to skip the specifics of those two machines and the background and history of Windows on ARM and keep it really simple by comparing two computers at about the same price point to get a sense of whether the hassles of Windows on ARM are really worth the benefits it brings.

Introducing our Contenders

Now, before you tell me we’re comparing apples to oranges, I know these systems don’t have the same exact specs. But given the comparable price point of these two computers, our results will still be helpful for people cross-shopping a traditional computer powered by x86 (AMD/Intel) and ARM (Snapdragon X) without the length and back story of my prior articles on this topic. If you’d like the full series of articles about Snapdragon and Windows on ARM, check them out.

Lenovo IdeaCentre Mini X

Typical for Lenovo, depending on the current promotions, coupons, and moon phase, the pricing changes. But, while this exact computer is currently going for $699 on their website, you can pay less when you consider coupons and rewards, so I’m considering it a “$600” system. The IdeaCentre Mini X is currently available in only one variant, with the X1P-64-100 chip, 32GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. A similar system is available as the ThinkCentre Neo 50q Tiny (Snapdragon) in various configurations, but they all have the weaker X1-26-100 chip.

• CPU: Snapdragon X Plus X1P-64-100 (10 Cores @ up to 3.4GHz)
• RAM: 32GB LPDDR5X @ 8448MHz
• GPU: Qualcomm Adreno X1-85
• NPU: Qualcomm Hexagon NPU
• SSD: 512GB Samsung OEM NVMe
• WiFi: WiFi 7 (Qualcomm FastConnect 7800)
• Ethernet: 1Gb (Realtek)
• OS: Windows 11 Home

Minisforum X1 Lite-255

Minisforum is a popular option for mini PCs on Amazon and other web stores. They offer oodles of different configurations, and prices fluctuate as well, but they currently want $639 for the Minisforum X1 Lite-255 with 32GB of RAM. Check that out here. That’s how I’m considering this a “$600” computer, although I purchased the barebones variant for $312 to use components I already had, which you can see here.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 255 (8 Cores @ up to 5.1GHz)
• RAM: 16GB DDR5 @ 5600MHz (user installed)
• GPU: AMD Radeon 780M
• NPU: N/A
• SSD: 250GB SanDisk SSD Plus NVMe (user installed)
• WiFi: WiFi 6E (MediaTek)
• Ethernet: 2.5Gb (Realtek)
• OS: Windows 11 Pro (user installed)

As you can see, they aren’t identical hardware specifications – the Lenovo system has faster RAM, more RAM, a bigger SSD, and better connectivity. But, by the price point, they’re similar, and for most people real world performance matters more than some numbers on a spec sheet.

Tests and Results

General – Geekbench

Geekbench 6 is a popular benchmarking utility that has a free version and is cross-platform. It tests GPU performance as well as single-core and multi-core CPU performance, so it’s an easy way to compare two systems. Results were rounded to the nearest hundred.

	CPU Score (Single Core)	CPU Score (Multi Core)	GPU Score (OpenCL)
Lenovo (Snapdragon)	2,300	12,600	20,200
Minisforum (AMD)	2,400	11,600	31,700

Geekbench results summary: While both systems are fairly similar in CPU performance, which makes sense given that they both have an approximately 35W TDP, the GPU performance of the AMD Radeon GPU is vastly better than the Qualcomm Adreno GPU. Whether that’s a matter of hardware specifications or driver optimization is a more complex discussion for another day.

Gaming – 3DMark

3DMark is a popular paid benchmark utility that focuses on benchmarks relevant to gaming. It has a variety of benchmarks – today, we’ll run Solar Bay, which is primarily GPU focused. Scores were rounded to the nearest hundred and FPS to the nearest whole number.

	Solar Bay Score
Lenovo (Snapdragon)	10,700 (40FPS)
Minisforum (AMD)	11,000 (42FPS)

3DMark results summary: Surprisingly, unlike in the previous test, where the Radeon GPU did much better than the Adreno GPU, in this benchmark, these systems were a much closer match. Qualcomm has limited experience with Windows graphics drivers while AMD has decades. Perhaps 3DMark, a far more popular application than Geekbench, got a bit of attention from Qualcomm in terms of driver optimization?

AI – LM Studio

To test AI performance, we’re going to use LM Studio and test a smaller AI model that will fit within the constraints of the 16GB of RAM on the Minisforum PC, Qwen3 4B 2507 (Q4_K_M). I ran the same random prompt on each one, asking it “Explain in detail why dogs have four paws, not three.”

Note: As of this time, the NPU on the Snapdragon chip is basically a waste of sand. Neither LM Studio or even Microsoft Copilot in Excel leverages it. But, according to Task Manager, I did see some NPU utilization when running Windows Update? lol.

	Qwen3 4B – Tokens/sec
Lenovo (Snapdragon)	26.72
Minisforum (AMD)	24.43

LM Studio results summary: Despite the fact that on the AMD system we could use the GPU, the Snapdragon system achieved more tokens/second in our particular test. I am not entirely sure why, although I’m wondering if the faster memory speeds on the Snapdragon system made a difference. Regardless, given that we are using the fastest supported RAM on the Minisforum Mini PC (dual channel, 5600MHz), it’s still a fair comparison.

Browsing – BrowserBench Speedometer 3.1

This benchmark compares performance of common web application tasks, so you can get an idea of performance for activities like online shopping, social media, or web-based productivity applications. Browser used was the latest version of Microsoft Edge at the time of testing which was December 31st, 2025.

	Speedometer 3.1 Score
Lenovo (Snapdragon)	31.9
Minisforum (AMD)	26.2

BrowserBench results summary: Like many of the results we’ve seen so far, these two platforms are very similar. But again, the Snapdragon system pulls ahead, if only slightly, most likely to the two additional CPU cores.

3D Creation – Blender Benchmark

Blender is a popular open source 3D creation software. Realistically, if you’re using Blender in any serious manner, you’d want a much more powerful computer, but perhaps you’re on a budget or only do it casually for smaller projects, so this comparison could be meaningful.

Also keep in mind that Blender supports GPU acceleration on Nvidia, AMD, and Intel GPUs – but not Qualcomm Adrenos. Given that Blender Benchmark uses an older version (4.5.0), I also installed the latest version of Blender (5.0) and checked its settings menu – nope, still no Qualcomm GPU support. So, on both systems, I ran the benchmark on the CPU, and not the GPU.

Blender Benchmark produces three separate scores across three different benchmarks, “monster,” “junkshop,” and “classroom.” To keep the following table simple, I’ve combined these results into a single score that consists of each individual benchmark result rounded the nearest whole number, and then added them all together.

	CPU Score
Lenovo (Snapdragon)	246
Minisforum (AMD)	229

Blender results summary: I don’t want to repeat myself, but the Snapdragon system is again slightly better than the AMD system in terms of multi-threaded CPU performance. Again, while the Ryzen 7 255 has SMT (AMD’s technology comparable to Intel HyperThreading), two more physical cores seems to matter more in the real world.

In Conclusion

I’m not even going to discuss stuff like ports, build quality, noise (although the Lenovo PC is MUCH quieter than the Minisforum PC when under load), and other minor features of the particular computers used in this article because we’re trying to determine which platform is better, not which specific computer is better.

In that respect, while our benchmarks show that a 35W Snapdragon X CPU is technically more powerful than an AMD Ryzen CPU of the same TDP, I have come to the same conclusion as I did in my more in-depth review of the Lenovo IdeaCentre X – you’re probably still better off with a traditional x86 system.

There’s no doubt in my mind that ARM systems are probably the future of computing, and not just in smartphones. But at this point in time (December 31st, 2025), a typical consumer using their PC for everyday workloads that needs broad software compatibility should avoid a Windows on ARM computer.

Oh, and given that I’m publishing this at the very end of 2025, you’ll probably be reading this next year – so, happy new year!