During the May 20, 2024 event at Microsoft Campus, the tech giant announced the existence of a new type of Computer / PC – Copilot+ PC.
What is a Copilot+ PC?
A Copilot+ PC is a new type of Windows PC / Computer designed with AI in mind. Until now, most Windows 11 Home laptops / PCs launched were by either an Intel processor or an AMD processor, while these new CoPilot+ PCs are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM64 processors, which run on Windows 11 Home made for ARM. It comes with a powerful new emulator called Prism, which should allow you to run non-native apps without a fuss.
So what are the benefits?
Apple showed the world what an ARM chip can do with other Apple Silicon M1 powered Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs. They offered better performance and better battery life. The same can be said about the new CoPilot+ PC. They boast better performance and all-day battery life. In addition, you also get access to the most advanced AI models.
3 Major AI features Microsoft is introducing with the new CoPilot+ PCs are Recall ( records everything via secure, device-only screenshots and can retrieve info when needed ), Cocreator ( lets you generate AI images in near real-time ), and Live Captions ( can translate audio from 40+ languages to English ). Of course, you will have access to Copilot in Windows which will be your AI assistant.
Which Processor do CoPilot+ PCs run on?
At launch, Qualcomm is introducing two Snapdragon ARM64 processors to run on these new bread of PCs. They are:
- Qualcomm Snapdragon™ X Elite X1E-78–100 processor (12 cores up to 3.4 GHz, integrating Qualcomm Hexagon™ NPU AI Engine up to 45 TOPs )
- Qualcomm Snapdragon™ X Plus X1P-64–100 processor (10 cores up to 3.4 GHz, integrating Qualcomm Hexagon™ NPU AI Engine up to 45 TOPs)
For graphics, it uses Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU ( supports up to 3.8 TFLOPS ).
Who are all making CoPilot+ PCs at Launch?
Microsoft has announced that Acer ( Swift 14 AI 2024 ), ASUS ( Vivobook S 15 2024 ), Dell ( XPS 13, Inspiron 14 Plus, Inspiron 14, Latitude 7455, and Latitude 5455 ), HP ( OmniBook X AI PC, EliteBook Ultra G1q AI PC ), Lenovo ( Yoga Slim 7x, ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 ), and Samsung ( Galaxy Book4 Edge ) are already on board and will launch their laptops with CoPilot+ PC specs and features in the coming weeks and months.
Microsoft has also launched its own Surface Pro Laptops with CoPilot+ PC experience and they are already available to pre-order online in the US, UK, Canada etc. In India, it is not available to purchase at the time of writing.
Can CiPilot+ PCs outperform a Macbook Air 15 with Apple Silicon?
In the official blog published, Microsoft claims “They outperform Apple’s MacBook Air 15-inch by up to 58% in sustained multithreaded performance” and can offer “up to 20% more battery in local video playback than the MacBook Air 15”. The performance was tested against MacBook Air 15” with M3 8 core CPU / 10 Core GPU and Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core benchmark was used to compare.
What’s the starting Price of a CoPilot+ PC?
At launch, Microsoft announced that the CoPilot+ PC US price starts at $999, and will be available from June 18, 2024.
