Microsoft Says Its “Copilot+” Computers Are Faster Than Your MacBook
When you think of a powerful and efficient computer, you might first think of a MacBook. However, think of a computer built to run artificial intelligence tools, and Apple’s machine is likely to be at the bottom of the list. (Assuming you can even name a computer built for AI.)
So Apple’s competitors have the opportunity to not only make their laptops more powerful and efficient than MacBooks for most tasks, but also to differentiate themselves by having the technology needed to implement the latest AI features. That’s the goal Microsoft is trying to achieve with its just-announced Copilot+ line of computers.
Copilot+ PC powered by Qualcomm
“Copilot+ computers” is Microsoft’s name for the new wave of AI-powered computers from companies like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, not to mention Microsoft’s own Surface line. (More on that below.) Many of these machines, including the new Surfaces, are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors, Arm-based chips that Microsoft and other OEMs hope will convince users to move away from Apple. The Plus has a 10-core processor, while the Elite has a 12-core processor. Depending on the model, your Snapdragon X may have a 3.8 or 4.6 teraflops GPU.
The big benefit of adding the Snapdragon X, at least from Microsoft’s point of view, is the NPU (neural processing unit) of the chip, which is responsible for artificial intelligence computing processes. Whether you get the Plus or Elite, you’re getting a 45 TOPS (TOPS standard for trillions of operations per second) performance NPU that Qualcomm says can handle more than 13 billion parameters on the device.
We’re not just talking about the chipset here, but also about Windows 11 itself. Microsoft says it has rebuilt the OS architecture, maximizing the use of the CPU, GPU, and now NPU. Now that the chips are based on Arm, they can run a growing list of Arm64-based applications. Microsoft has naturally highlighted apps in its own Microsoft 365 offering, including Teams, PowerPoint, Word and Excel, as well as apps like Chrome, Spotify, Zoom and WhatsApp. Microsoft also partners with companies such as Adobe (Photoshop, Lightroom and Express), as well as applications such as DaVinci Resolve Studio and djay Pro.
They’re clearly going after Apple : Microsoft claims its Copilot+ computers outperform the 15-inch MacBook Air by nearly 58% in sustained multi-threaded performance. They also did a live demo showing how the new Surface Laptop can process a Photoshop project faster than the MacBook Air M3:
GPT-4o and co-pilot
Microsoft also announced that Copilot will soon have access to GPT-4o, the latest and greatest LLM program from OpenAI. Since Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI, this isn’t surprising: the company added GPT-4 Turbo to Copilot as a free feature before OpenAI thought it was cool to give away the latest models for free to users .
Microsoft demonstrated how this feature can be used. For example, using GPT-4o, you could conceivably enlist the help of an AI when navigating a video game. Here’s a demo from the event where Copilot (powered by GPT-4o) talks to a demonstrator about the game Minecraft :
Improved device search with Recall
As a reminder, this is a new feature in Windows 11 for Copilot+ PCs designed to improve the search experience on your PC. When you search for something using Recall, instead of seeing a list of files, folders, and apps, you see screenshots of related content in your timeline. It’s as if Microsoft was recording all your activity on your computer and using artificial intelligence to pull still images from apps that match the keywords in your search.
Recall lets you find emails, photos, websites, and anything else you might have done or created on your computer. Microsoft says all snapshots are stored locally on your computer, so nothing you do is ever transferred to the cloud or outside of your computer.
Oh, and Microsoft is selling new Surface laptops too.
While many OEMs have new Copilot+ laptops coming out in the near future, Microsoft has announced two new Surface laptops as part of its rollout of the technology: Surface Laptop and Surface Pro. Both machines are equipped with Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips and therefore have all the benefits of the Copilot+ PC, but they differ in the final design and execution.
Surface Laptop features a new design with thinner bezels and a haptic touchpad, and comes with a 13.8-inch or 15-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Microsoft says this machine offers up to 20 hours of local video playback (not streaming, mind you) on the 13.8-inch screen and 22 hours on the 15.8-inch screen, and supports Wi-Fi 7. As the name suggests, it laptop, so although it has a touchscreen, it is not removable. It’s available for pre-order now, starting at $999.99 (13.8″) and $1,299.99 (15″). If you want the Snapdragon X Elite on a 13.8-inch screen, that will increase the price to $1,399.99, making it $100 more than the 15-inch that the Elite already comes with.
If you’re looking for a machine with a detachable tablet, it’s the Surface Pro . The latest Surface 2-in-1 comes in an optional configuration with a 13-inch OLED display, an ultra-wide camera, two USB-4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, and support for up to three external 4K displays. Notably, you can actually replace many parts of the Surface Pro, including the motherboard, battery, and cameras. (What year is it?) Finally, the new Surface Flex Keyboard actually works offline, so you don’t have to physically connect it to your display to type.
Pre-order the new Surface devices here:
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Surface Laptop : Starts at $999.99.
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Surface Pro : Starts at $999.99.
Shots before WWDC
This is an exciting time for the personal computing market. While Microsoft has always brought different OEMs under the same PC roof, they now talk about these different machines as if they were all one family, just like Apple has always done. Microsoft didn’t say the new Surfaces beat the MacBooks; rather, they said that Copilot+ computers in general are like that. They are currently standardizing hardware and software to position their machines as the best on the market in terms of power, efficiency and artificial intelligence.
Of course, as with every new technology announcement, we won’t know how these machines will perform until reviewers start testing them under objective conditions. Plus, we should see a ton of new AI announcements from Apple at WWDC next month, so things will change quickly. Buckle up, people.