AI PCs have been trickling out since CES 2024, where Intel and AMD kind of unleashed AI-capable laptop processors onto the world. Since then, there's been this tacit understanding that a second generation would be hitting the market, that would integrate AI features directly into Windows 11, and, well, with Microsoft Copilot+. That time is now.
To be clear, Microsoft Copilot has been around for a while, driving Microsoft's nascent push into AI technology, but Copilot+ brings a lot of the computation that was being done in the cloud directly to your laptop. That requires special hardware to handle, of course, but luckily, this announcement was paired with new hardware from basically every company that makes laptops – hardware that is specially designed to tackle the heavy-duty computing of AI workloads without being housed in a massive chassis that will literally weigh you down.
The Tensor cores in Nvidia's graphics cards have made hardware-accelerated AI possible on a consumer PC for a while. But with the new Snapdragon X Elite platform and the just-announced Intel Lunar Lake processors, you can get powerful AI capabilities in a device as thin and light as the new Surface Laptop.
A Deluge of Laptops
Because Microsoft is trying to declare a whole new class of laptop with Copilot+, there's of course a ton of new laptops pouring out onto the market right now. And that's on top of the new Surface devices that'll get more of a spotlight at Microsoft Build on May 21.
Dell is putting all of its eggs in the AI basket, putting the Snapdragon X platform in its top-of-the-line XPS 13 Ultrabook. This is huge – the Dell XPS lineup has been powered by Intel since it first came out way back in 1993. Of course, this top-end laptop is being paired with a bunch of more budget-friendly laptops, too.
Even Samsung is jumping in on the action with the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which couples that Snapdragon X chip with an AMOLED display. That's going to be the Copilot+ laptop to go with if you primarily want to consume media, trust me.
If you're looking for something a bit more affordable, the Acer Swift 14, which has always been a value darling, is now sporting Copilot+ and the new Snapdragon X chip, starting at $1,099.
Anyone looking to get their hands on one of these AI PCs can look forward to all of these launching starting in July.
Under the Hood
This entire first wave of Copilot+ laptops is being powered by basically the same chipset, the Snapdragon X Elite. It's nothing to shake a stick at, but until Intel Lunar Lake processors start making their way into laptops in Q3 2024, you're going to need to stick with Qualcomm here.
There are three different processors here, each with 12 cores. The difference primarily lies in the turbo speed of the processors. At the high end, the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 is a 12-core processor with 42MB of cache, a multithread clock speed of 3.8GHz, and a max "Dual core boost" of 4.2 GHz. This latter clock speed will only happen when you put a lot of pressure on one or two threads. More heavily threaded applications like Adobe Premiere will cause all the cores to equalize at 3.8GHz instead.
But even at the low-end, the X1E-78-100 has a max multi-thread frequency of 3.4GHz, and doesn't even have a special dual-core boost. But you're still getting the same 12 cores and 42MB of cache, so you'll only feel a major difference in lightly threaded applications like PC games – which these laptops aren't really designed for anyways.
For most people, though, the middle-ground X1E-80-100 is probably going to be the sweet spot. You lose just 200Mhz in both multithreaded and dual-threaded boost speeds which is, essentially, nothing. It's definitely not worth spending hundreds more on, no matter what spiffy marketing tells you to do.
OK, But Who is This For?
While Microsoft wants everyone to think that anything that runs Xbox Cloud Streaming is a gaming laptop, these Copilot+ laptops definitely aren't. Instead, these are primarily aimed at creative professionals that can use the AI feature set to boost their productivity.
Features like Recall are leading the charge, which is essentially an AI-boosted Windows Explorer search, and will help you find something that's on your PC, even if you don't know which folder or even drive you saved it on. It can also help you find webpages that you looked at once and have since forgot where you found them, and does so through an AI model that watches what you do on your PC, which is how it helps you find things you've already looked at.
For anyone that thinks this is a little freaky, it is, but Microsoft assures us that the information is only stored locally on your PC, and will never touch the cloud.
Of course it wouldn't be generative AI in 2024 if it wasn't for image generation, and of course the image generator you can find on Bing has been ported to run locally on Copilot+ PCs. This is essentially the main goal of these devices, after all: take AI computation from relying entirely on cloud computing and let local hardware do more of the heavy lifting.
Microsoft isn't the only company working these features into its software. Adobe has been leaning heavily into AI features in Photoshop and Premiere, and these Copilot+ PCs are of course supporting the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite from day one. Other creative apps like DaVinci Resolve, and djay Pro are also using this AI horsepower.
As for gaming, though, we're going to have to keep waiting. Nvidia showed us a sneak peek at what AI-powered gaming would look like at CES 2024, but this isn't it. Sure, you'll be able to stream Xbox games on these new Copilot+ laptops, and maybe even run Minecraft. But this isn't going to change the gaming PC scene much at all, especially considering that generative AI has been running on desktop graphics cards since the beginning, with the RTX 2080. We'll have to keep waiting to see how this is going to impact video games, but for now if all you care about is gaming, Copilot+ shouldn't really be on your radar.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
