Pre-orders opened May 20 for a new line of Windows laptops, and the first ones ship June 18. Microsoft calls them Copilot+ PCs. Prices start at $999.
CEO Satya Nadella described the machines as a “new class of Windows PCs.” Their selling point is a neural processing unit, or NPU, a chip that lets the laptop run more of Copilot’s generative AI work on the device instead of sending it to the cloud. Microsoft set a floor for the label: at least 40 trillion operations per second from the NPU, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Engadget noted that other AI PCs on the market deliver 10 TOPS.
Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung are building Copilot+ models, alongside Microsoft’s own Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. AMD, Intel and Qualcomm supply the chips. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite, an Arm processor, is where the line starts, and Microsoft rebuilt Windows 11 for Arm chips to match. An emulator called Prism is meant to let older x86 and x64 apps run on them. Microsoft says Chrome, Spotify, Zoom, WhatsApp and Adobe Photoshop already run natively on Arm.
What the machines do
The headline feature is Recall, which keeps a searchable timeline of what a user has seen on the PC. Type a description of something you half remember, and it surfaces the email, page or document. Microsoft says the index is built and stored on the device, that users can delete snapshots or pause the feature, and that apps and websites can be filtered out. Recall goes into preview on June 18.
Other features lean on the NPU too. Cocreator combines ink strokes with text prompts to generate images in near real time. Live Captions translates audio from more than 40 languages into English, offline included. Windows Photos gets a Super Resolution tool and a Restyle Image option. A redesigned Copilot app can run in its own window, a sidebar or full screen, and a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard opens it.
The performance claims
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer, said the company had “completely reimagined” what a Windows PC is. Microsoft says Copilot+ PCs beat Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air by up to 58 percent in sustained multithreaded performance, and quotes up to 22 hours of local video playback or 15 hours of web browsing per charge. Engadget flagged that Apple already sells stronger M3 chips and has M4 chips on the way, and said the claims would need real-world testing.
Microsoft also says the devices cost up to $200 less than similarly specified machines. Apple is expected to make its own generative AI push at its developer conference the following month.
Sources
- Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs with generative AI capabilities baked in – Engadget
- Introducing Copilot+ PCs – The Official Microsoft Blog
