The Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 made its debut last week, and during the announcement, it was clear just how similar the processor is to last year's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1- a chip that is still going strong. However, at that time, we were not sure about the performance and how it would fare against some more expensive offerings. Well, today is the day we finally look at what this chip is capable of, and honestly, I am surprised.

Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 is the new king of mid-range mobile CPUs to look out for this year

Folks over at Android Authority received a reference device running the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2. Just like anyone would, they decided to put the device through its paces and compared it with a handful of smartphones that have been released in recent years. I was expecting this chipset to be bested, but I was wrong, and honestly, being wrong never felt this good.

The prototype device was put against the likes of Galaxy S22 Ultra (both Snapdragon and Exynos variants), Galaxy S23 Ultra, OnePlus 11, Pixel 7 Pro, Asus ROG Phone 6, and Nothing Phone 1. You can have a look at the GeekBench 5 tests below:

Honestly, looking at the score, I am surprised at just how the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 managed to perform. It easily outperformed the Tensor G2 in both single and multi-core tests, it managed to beat the Exynos 2200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in multi-core tests and managed to come really close to Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 after losing to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Moving onto the GPU benchmarks, the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 does suffer a bit in performance but still manages to beat the Exynos 2200, Tensor G2, and Snapdragon 778G Plus. It does lose against the bigger players, but considering how you are looking at a mid-range chipset made for phones ranging from $400 to $600, the scores are not bad at all.

Perhaps the most interesting finding came in the form of stress testing using the 3DMark Wild Life stress test, and while other phones failed to sustain performance, the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 -sporting prototype showed something really interesting.

You can see that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 found in the Galaxy S23 Ultra starts declining from 14,000 and drops all the way down to 9,000, and then sustains its performance. The ROG Phone 6 drops from 10,000, goes down to 5,000, climbs back up, but keeps going down. The Galaxy S22 Ultra also sees a decline from 10,000, with a sustained performance at 5,000. However, the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 stays slightly above 7,000 at the start and the end of the test.

While I was going to ignore the chip altogether, these benchmarks have clearly reminded me why I should not. Phones powered by this chipset should start hitting the market later this month, and I am looking forward to seeing how they perform. But based on these benchmarks, this is the new mid-range champion, and if Qualcomm keeps delivering such an impressive performance across the board, flagship phones will slowly start to lose their shine.