The first Copilot+ laptops cost from $999 and ship on June 18. Microsoft opened pre-orders on May 20, 2024, at an event ahead of its Build conference.
CEO Satya Nadella described Copilot+ PCs as a “new class of Windows PCs.” They are built to run more generative AI work locally rather than in the cloud, which takes a chip with a neural processing unit. To carry the label, a machine needs an NPU delivering at least 40 TOPS, along with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Other AI PCs on the market manage about 10, Engadget reported. Qualcomm says its Snapdragon X Elite reaches up to 75 TOPS overall.
Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are on board, as are chipmakers AMD, Intel and Qualcomm. The first machines run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite.
Claims and caveats
Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi said the company had completely reimagined what a Windows PC is, and that Copilot+ machines are the most powerful ever. Engadget noted that real-world tests will have to show whether that holds. Microsoft also said the laptops would run up to 22 hours of local video playback and offer 23% faster peak performance than an Apple MacBook Air with an M3 chip, or 58% faster sustained performance. Liliputing pointed out that Microsoft did not say which Snapdragon chip or benchmarks produced those figures.
The software side runs on the Windows Copilot Runtime, with more than 40 AI models built into Windows 11. Recall lets users search their own activity in plain language and scroll an explorable timeline. Microsoft says its data stays on the PC and is not used to train its AI models. Live Captions translates from more than 40 languages into English. Photos can upscale old pictures, and a new Copilot app opens in a window, a sidebar or full screen from a dedicated keyboard key.
Windows 11 has been rebuilt for Arm chips, with an emulator called Prism to run older x86 and x64 apps. Zoom, Chrome, Spotify and Photoshop are set to run natively.
Liliputing added that some tasks will still use Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and the company has been vague about which features run fully offline. Apple is expected to move into generative AI at its developer conference the following month.
Sources
- Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs with generative AI capabilities baked in – Engadget
- Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PC platform for AI-enhanced Windows PCs, starting with models powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips – Liliputing
