Intel and AMD have split the Windows laptop market for years, but the x86 players may be getting outnumbered. It’s not just Apple MacBooks and MediaTek-based Chromebooks using Arm chips anymore. There are finally competent Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops running Windows, and — as soon as this spring — Nvidia will finally power Windows consumer laptops with Arm chips all by itself.
They won’t have an Nvidia graphics chip next to an Intel CPU, but rather an Nvidia N1 system-on-chip at the helm — and overnight, a Lenovo leak revealed that the company has built six laptops on the upcoming N1 and N1X processors, including a 15-inch gaming machine. Dataminer Huang514613 posted those names to X, inc…
Intel and AMD have split the Windows laptop market for years, but the x86 players may be getting outnumbered. It’s not just Apple MacBooks and MediaTek-based Chromebooks using Arm chips anymore. There are finally competent Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops running Windows, and — as soon as this spring — Nvidia will finally power Windows consumer laptops with Arm chips all by itself.
They won’t have an Nvidia graphics chip next to an Intel CPU, but rather an Nvidia N1 system-on-chip at the helm — and overnight, a Lenovo leak revealed that the company has built six laptops on the upcoming N1 and N1X processors, including a 15-inch gaming machine. Dataminer Huang514613 posted those names to X, including 14 and 16-inch models of the Ideapad Slim 5, two variants of the 15-inch Yoga Pro 7, and a Yoga 9 transforming 2-in-1.
You don’t need to take Huang’s word for it alone: this update page for the company’s Legion Space control software still shows the existence of a “Legion 7 15N1X11” gaming laptop, where the “N1X” refers to Nvidia’s gaming SoC.
And just by using Google, I found a publicly indexed web portal where Lenovo has listings for password-protected “Nvidia N1x Portal Prod” and Nvidia N1x Portal Test” websites, too:
Image: Lenovo
Lenovo may be the world’s biggest laptop maker, but it isn’t the only one prepping such laptops. Dell was tipped to launch an Alienware gaming laptop by early 2026 as well, and it may have been prepping a Dell Premium laptop (now XPS) with Nvidia N1X as well. That’s already eight different Nvidia laptops that might be coming.
Three days ago, Digitimes reported that we should expect Nvidia to launch its N1 and N1X laptop platform this spring, with more devices available this summer, after a previous delay — and that the company already has N2 and N2X chips on the roadmap for late 2027.
While we don’t truly know how much power the N1 and N1X have, a Geekbench leak (which has to be taken with a grain of salt; fake specs have been planted there before) suggested the N1X variant may have as many CUDA cores as a desktop RTX 5070 graphics card and 20 CPU cores, like Nvidia’s GB10 “Superchip” in the DGX Spark mini-PC. I’m comfortable sharing that because Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has all but confirmed the N1 and GB10 are two halves of the same coin.
Nvidia’s Arm PC chips have been a long time coming, but the company has powered consumer devices with Arm before. Every Nintendo Switch carries an Nvidia Tegra chip, and that Tegra line previously powered tablets up to and including the original Microsoft Surface RT, as well as Nvidia’s one-off Shield handheld and Shield TV set-top-boxes. These ones are built in collaboration with MediaTek, though.
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- Sean Hollister