This week the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2021, Qualcomm’s big annual event in which the company presents its latest proposals for next year’s devices.
This year they have come very strong with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 that looks very, very good, especially in artificial intelligence and computational photography, but also a SoC for laptops with Windows 11, many novelties related to the metaverse and even a console.
This is the Snapdragon G3x, a console and platform that is a rather strange concept because is developed by Razer and QualcommIt looks spectacular, it looks like a final product and many of you have asked us about it.
However, it will not be possible to buy Because, as its name suggests, it is still a development kit for video game studios, although well, I’m not completely losing hope and I’ll tell you about it here.
With that said, let’s go with our first opinion of the Snapdragon G3x. I can tell you that I liked it more than I thought.
Sections of the impressions of the Snapdragon 3Gx:
Fusing the Switch and Steam Deck design with very, very satisfying ergonomics
We are going to start with the design because the console seems very simple, but many times in that ‘simplicity’ there is the magic of a hardware.
It does not have much mystery: the design is what we have seen in other laptops and in controls of those that are attached to the mobile, but the truth is that you can see the good work of Razer in this regard.
For starters, it weighs a lot less than it looks. It must be clear that this is not a mobile with two controls on the sides, so there are many elements that we save such as glass and aluminum parts, camera modules with the weight that this implies and other components that add grams in the end.
In the hand the grip is very comfortable as much for that low weight as for the two ‘horns’ and the arrangement of buttons. The truth is that it is a machine with which it seems that hours can pass and we would not even know about it.
The buttons have reminded me a lot of those of the Razer Kishi -analysis- and that’s normal, as this console is 80% Razer (all hardware) and 20% Qualcomm (the SoC).
They are somewhat rubbery and in some you have to tighten more than necessary, but I don’t even take this into account because, and this is important and must be taken into account at all times, it is not a final product.
But hey, beyond the sensations in the hand, which are good, at the top we have a 5 megapixel camera, a USB-C and a hot air vent.
At the back is the fresh air inlet for a small fan, which is important for something that we will tell you later and at the bottom we have the 3.5 mm jack and the volume up / down buttons, as well as the power button.
OLED panel performs well in bright light and is a visual spectacle
The screen is something fundamental in a console and it is something that has been seen in the Nintendo Switch OLED. Being the same hardware as that of 2017, with the addition of an OLED screen the game goes up a notch thanks to better brightness, more generous angles and, above all, much richer colors.
Here we have an OLED panel that has not seemed to me that of the highest-end mobiles on the market because it lacks some brightness, despite being seen correctly outdoors, but it more than meets what we would expect from a console like this.
The viewing angles are very good, it has support for HDR content and the refresh rate is 120 Hz.
You already know that this soft drink is not an absolute value because there are games that do not take advantage of that rate, but hey, that is precisely one of Qualcomm’s interests thanks to its set of tools, that developers can easily reach those frequencies.
The resolution is nothing crazy and stays at 1,080p. At this 6.65 “size the pixel density experience is just right and the lower the resolution, the better to be able to squeeze the SoC and create richer experiences on a visual level. Or to get to that Hz rate.
And on both sides of the screen we have the two speakers. They were not at the maximum, but to play the truth is that they comply. If you want better quality, you can always connect headphones thanks to Bluetooth 5.2 and the different audio technologies that the SoC incorporates.
We have not done it and I have only tried Asphalt 9, a Qualcomm and xCloud own game, and they are not the best when it comes to sound. It sounds good, but it is not something I can seriously value.
More important than the speakers, which will depend on each company, are the SoC low latency Bluetooth and HD sound capabilities.
Up to 4K at 144 Hz, 10-bit HDR, a connection to the TV and a GPU to last the maximum while the battery lasts
But hey, let’s get guts. Both in the Qualcomm presentation in which they announced the console and in the private demonstration, talking about numbers has been avoided.
We know we have multiple Kryo cores and an Adreno GPU, but that honestly tells us absolutely nothing.
There is talk of a new generation mobile platform (this is how they define the SoC) that is capable of running very heavy games with the GPU always working at maximum frequency.
We have not been able to verify this, but we have tested recent Qualcomm chips that, after a while playing, lower performance due to overheating.
To avoid this, and it is something that I was told three times in the half hour that I was with the console, we have the fan.
It is a dissipation system designed so that the frequency at which the GPU operates is always the maximum and, thus, be able to get the most out of the SoC without the gaming experience being weighed down.
This console does not have gyros and accelerometers, but I was confirmed that the SoC would support those technologies and, if a manufacturer decides to include them in their product, it could be perfectly played with motion controls in compatible titles.
In addition, it also has the recently introduced Snapdragon configuration suite and is compatible with some of the GPU features of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to display next-generation mobile graphics.
In fact, Qualcomm has developed an airplane game that is extremely simple, but visually impressive for a mobile.
Another interesting thing is that it aims squarely at Nintendo Switch and Xbox. We can connect the console to a monitor or TV thanks to USB-C, which also serves to connect XR accessories, and output 10 bit HDR signal at 144 Hz and with 4K resolution maximum.
That is, we are going to have a powerful Android console, but also a system that runs Xbox Game Pass games with very low latency via xCloud or our streaming Steam library.
I imagine that you can also do the same with other platforms and apps that allow streaming games, such as Stadia -analysis-, since we have the PlayStore with everything that means.
Ah! We have haptic vibration and although I couldn’t test it, you guys know it’s there.
5G, Wi-Fi 6 and ‘pulling’ xCloud with the very saturated Wi-Fi network of a vacation hotel
There are sections, such as the battery, that I cannot tell you about because, logically, I have not had the time or the conditions to minimally assess this.
I only spent half an hour with the machine, so I have no idea what its 6,000 mAh will hold, but curiously I can tell you how about the wireless section of the machine.
Beyond the physical connections, the laptop stands out for the 5G mmWave connectivity and for the Wi-Fi 6E.
They are last generation connections, but something that the team told me is that the modem is highly optimized and designed to take advantage of any type of connection, whether it is last generation or not.
The truth is, developers always say the same thing, but when he put me on xCloud -analysis- I was amazed at how well it was going Minecraft dungeons on the cloud.
At first it hit a few bumps, but soon the image became clear, high resolution and the response of the controls was precise and what it had to be.
I have not been able to play titles like Forza Horizon 5, for example, because the developer told me that they are not allowed to show non-optimized xCloud games for mobile phones, but he did confess that he has played Halo or Forza, among others, and that his experience was good.
But really the interesting thing about this is not that xCloud works well, because it does it in almost all genres, but do it in a courtyard of a vacation resort that is full of journalists sucking on Wi-Fi, and that’s not counting the other tenants of the hotel.
And no, he lowered the taskbar and was not connected to a private network set up for the occasion, but to that of the hotel (which is nothing to write home about). So … yes, I have faith, so to speak, in the wireless capabilities of this chip.
It looks like a final product and I am looking forward to a Xiaomi or a realme paying attention to the concept
In the end, the impressions of this Snapdragon G3x are very, very positive, but you still have that bitter aftertaste knowing that you cannot buy it and that, for now, this is only available to developers who request it.
It is a development platform that is much more attractive than these ‘gadgets’ usually are, and this is 100% merit of a Razer that always takes great care of this section and, therefore, although it seems like a final product … it is.
Obviously I asked the price that these Snapdragon G3x would have, but from Qualcomm they did not give me a figure, something logical considering that it is literally priceless, but the interesting thing is that it is the basis for what other companies want to launch.
A realme or a Xiaomi can arrive and take the concept, put the Snapdragon G3x chip, do not call Razer to make the chassis, put the modifications that they consider and launch it on the market.
And yes, others have tried it before, like Nvidia, but now it seems that Qualcomm, which is in a dominant position, has an interest in this and the cover letter of its development kit for companies could not be better.
I want to see the route of this device and, above all, to see who launches it first. And beware, it may be Razer itself that takes and puts a price on it, but there was no one from the company to ask.