1 Week with Windows on ARM, Lenovo T14s Snapdragon X Plus

[DalekSec]

Thought i'd write up my experience with Windows 11 on ARM the passed week.

 

Background; I was using a MBP M4 and loved it, no issues etc but Marketing needed a Mac so i thought i'd swap it and go over to the Lenovo T14s Snapdragon X Plus laptop we recently brought for WiFi 7 testing. 

 

To start the laptop was fine, enrolled into Intune as per normal, only issue was where we pushed out a few x86 apps i had to manually install the Arm versions such as Slack. 

 

1st Problem: We use dongles which passthrough the 65w charger, the laptop kept saying the charger is not powerful enough, had to be plugged directly in (we have a suite of Lenovo laptops this is the only one that came up with the issue). Fix online says to take it off high power to balance, thus losing power. If i leave it on high the USB-C ports get VERY hot. Ok when on balanced. 

 

2nd Problem: Noticed if i lock the laptop and it sleeps, my screens do not come back on have to replug, fixed by using HDMi instead of the USB-C. The 1 monitor on USB-C i still have to replug

 

3rd Problem: Sometimes it just randomly completely freezes, having to force turn off

 

4th Problem: Various apps i use are running like a dog, such as Bambu Labs

 

The monitors freezing and completely freezing has taken a toll over the last week, i have just gone back to my Mac....

 

The main issue is the USB-C ports just not playing ball, all the drivers etc are up to date and the laptop is fast and snappy when working and very light but its not worth the stress of the USB-C ports being dog poo. 

[3s-gtech]

That sounds like the hallmarks of beta hardware needing a ton of firmware updates. Problem of cutting-edge (or at least the sharper bit) stuff!

 

Can you feed this back to the OEM? You’re an unpaid tester now, after all!

[chazzy2501]

I have a Lenovo snapdragon x plus (feebler version) the USB input wants to have PD3.0 protocols even if a PD2.0 output has 65watts, it'll complain, my intel 8thgen dells do this all the time and randomly shutdown without warning using PD2.0 usbc..

 

My Lenovo E14 Gen6 Ryzen laptops also sometimes fail to come out of standby, you have to hold the power button powercycle to get it going again..

 

copilot gobbles up all the ram, and this is a copilot plus laptop  excessive ram consumption is plaguing my laptop. it'll use 12gb ram to a clean desktop! is guess I get the scraps of RAM.

 

Also there is an ARM compatibility option and you can try to enable the advanced CPU features for programs. (disabled by default) 

 

on a personal note..

 

live caption translate is a mixed bag but often worse than the not NPU accelerated captioning.  The 45tops NPU is a swizz, don't waste your money.. I was using it on a LLM made for NPUs and it performs the same as the CPU?! 

 

I will says the 4 day battery is nice, still no ipad... but to have a windows laptop, pick it up 2 days later, insta boot and still hours of battery is sweet.

 

EDIT: Gaming:  I was able to get tombraider 2013 to run at native 1200p at 60fps normal, amazing!  I also got Dispatch to load just fine with the odd hitch. Wisper from the stars is a mess though.

 

 

Edited November 14, 2025 by chazzy2501

[DalekSec]

I tried various power settings and the issues still stayed, just going to wait for better drivers/firmware

 

Agreed on RAM, i thought ARM would solve this, but 0 things open and RAM is on 12/16gb....

 

Tried compatibility bits but Bambu still had none of it, is something i use a lot so need it to work.

 

Battery and lightness is nice, but coming from the mac i was already used to it.

 

Going to give it a month or so and look at drivers to see if its fixed, will report to lenovo also

[chazzy2501]

oh the Wi-Fi, I can get it to connect to my 6e Wi-Fi 6Ghz at home but only at 1200mbps I have the full 160Mhz bandwidth and the card says it supports 160Mhz but seems to only use 80Mhz.. My Quest3 and Pro have no issues at 2400Mbps. 

[DalekSec]

Same, had to manually select 7/be to actually get it to connect at those speed. Gets around 5Gbs which is nuts

[chazzy2501]

I'll be keeping mine as it was an ebay purchase for £300 so is pretty great for the price. The 100% sRGB is making me hate my other screens though  (I bet the oled is even betterer)

 

[DalekSec]

Well this is a work one anyway, probably go back into the speed testing pool (we are an ISP) 

 

WiFi only though, the 10GbE adapter doesn't work over USB-C.... does on x86 and the Mac!

[jmak]

I've been running a Dell latitude 5445 with a Snapdragon X plus X1P4200 for six months now and I'm really happy with it. I'm really just a standard admin user - anything else, I log onto a server. 

 

The only thing that doesn't work that I used to use day to day is RSAT server tools. I fixed that by announcing to the team that add a security improvement we were going to stop using RSAT on laptops 😁

 

Battery is a game changer. Price is in the same ballpark as a MacBook Air, so if you're happy with Mac OS and not having windows software that's another great option.

[Patrick]

I'm quietly interested in these. I'm currently running around with an M1 MacBook Air. I love the build quality, battery life etc but MacOS is holding be back in places. Such as when I'm working in InTune and want to create a package I'll need to find a windows laptop, which is a bit annoying. I spend most of my time either emailing, 365 admin centre or logging into servers so one of these might be a better fit for me. How well does Windows ARM handle EXE's? 

[DalekSec]

32 minutes ago, Patrick said:

I'm quietly interested in these. I'm currently running around with an M1 MacBook Air. I love the build quality, battery life etc but MacOS is holding be back in places. Such as when I'm working in InTune and want to create a package I'll need to find a windows laptop, which is a bit annoying. I spend most of my time either emailing, 365 admin centre or logging into servers so one of these might be a better fit for me. How well does Windows ARM handle EXE's? 

 

Exe depends on the provider not so much the OS, if it's a well known brand such as Adobe be fine, some more bespoke edu software goodluck!

 

For the intune work you could create a jump box to remote onto? I've been running Mac at work for over a year and dont really have any issues now, if i need windows i just use one of our testing ones.

[Patrick]

Yeah I could do, I roam around different schools and I'm starting to think switching back to Windows might help me slightly, but not sure if there's any point if I'll still hit the same issues with Windows ARM. Certainly interesting though. 

[chazzy2501]

Almost everything I try has just works, a few games don't but they can have video driver and security checks. (also no directx12 ultimate support)

 

remote desktop and web stuff is all fine, office has arm native versions (not used myself) I used the new Affinity 3 on ARM and it works well enough. (the AI stuff is not so great) 

 

 

 

 

 

[DalekSec]

33 minutes ago, chazzy2501 said:

Almost everything I try has just works, a few games don't but they can have video driver and security checks. (also no directx12 ultimate support)

 

remote desktop and web stuff is all fine, office has arm native versions (not used myself) I used the new Affinity 3 on ARM and it works well enough. (the AI stuff is not so great) 

 

 

 

 

 

Office works fine, VLC kept getting blocked due to our AV rules (non-arm installer works fine on normal laptops), Bambu Labs is no, Fusion 360 also pants, QGIS runs like a dog

[chazzy2501]

fyi I freed up ram by uninstalling the windows recall feature (even though it was not in use) now 8 instead of 12

[DalekSec]

Revisiting this, as my Mac has been repurposed again...

 

All the points i raised last year seem to have been fixed, charging fine, no randomly freezing etc..

 

Day 2, happy so far will write if i get any more issues!