1.) It does everything you want it to…almost
Windows on Arm PCs are still like Chromebooks; they can reproduce about 95 percent of what a standard Windows PC can do, but it’s those last few bits which can be exceedingly frustrating.
Basically, if your idea of work and play is to browse the Web, work in Microsoft apps (Word, Excel, Outlook) and relax with apps like Netflix and Disney+, then a Copilot+ PC can work for you. Microsoft, Arm and Qualcomm have done a very nice job persuading many productivity application developers, such as Adobe, to release apps that run on Windows on Arm. The ecosystem continues to expand.
2.) On wall power, Copilot+ PCs are excellent…
Apps that do run, though, run great. From our testing, Copilot+ PCs powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor are at least competitive with Intel’s Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) laptops and can easily surpass them under certain scenarios when plugged in. The Snapdragon X Elite is powered by 12 Oryon performance cores (P-cores), compared to the 6 P-cores (and 8 efficiency or E-cores) used by the fastest Meteor Lake chips.
3.)…But Arm really shines on battery
For the past few years, Arm PCs have had a fairly straightforward reputation: they’ve provided middling performance, but the battery life has always excelled. Copilot+ PCs actually improve upon this.
4.) …But the harder you push it, the worse the battery life is
The problem is this: Yes, the performance of a Copilot+ PC is excellent on wall power and while running on battery. But it’s also true that the harder you push it, the shorter the battery life is.
5.) The real game is what games you can play
A Copilot+ PC is a productivity PC, period. Anything else is a bonus.
6.) So why do you need AI, exactly?
The whole point of these chips, however, is that they include “AI” functions inside the NPU — and that’s what has been really lacking so far. The NPU contributes heavily to Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR), which allows the laptop’s GPU to render at a lower resolution and then upscale it, using the NPU, to a higher one. This essentially improves the graphical performance while maintaining a high frame rate.
7.) Copilot+ PCs are more than just Qualcomm
At the launch of the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, Microsoft took pains to remind people that Qualcomm isn’t the only chipmaker involved in Copilot+ PCs. AMD should be next out of the gate with the Ryzen AI 300, and Intel will follow in the fall with Lunar Lake.
