You are not alone in your confusion over this new laptop spec, which has been the biggest news to hit the PC space in a while. First, you might note that almost all new Windows laptops have a Copilot button to the right of the space bar, the tapping of which opens Microsoft’s “everyday AI companion,” Copilot. Surprise! This does not mean you’re using a Copilot+ PC.
Copilot+ PC is not a button but rather an AI-focused Microsoft specification that manufacturers can receive by packing their laptops with an AI processor capable of 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second) and coupling that with “all-day battery life.” Ironically, neither Intel nor AMD can claim either of these things, which has allowed Qualcomm’s brand-new Snapdragon CPU to emerge as the only chip available on any Copilot+ PC on the market today (which, of course, was the plan all along).
What can a Copilot+ PC do? Three things: It can run Cocreator inside Microsoft Paint, where you draw something and the AI finishes it for you (or tries to, anyway). Windows Studio Effects can clean up video calls and provide creative filters. And Live Captions can translate— in real-time—44 languages into English either from a streaming source or from the laptop’s microphone. Copilot+ PC’s most talked-about feature is Recall, which lets you find that one piece of information you know you saw three days ago but can’t remember where, but it’s been delayed due to (extremely valid) privacy concerns.
It all sounds great, right? Well, the problem is that the Snapdragon CPU can’t exactly run everything that the big boy CPUs can because the CPU architecture is ARM, not x86. Though it has an emulation system built in to translate apps from x86 to ARM, there are lots of apps that Copilot+ PCs choke on. The Snapdragon chip’s graphics performance is the worst of any major CPU too. The good news is that the promise of “all-day” battery life is no joke. It’s the one place where Copilot+ PCs do come through on their claims.
So, do you need a Copilot+ PC? Well, do you want to be able to sketch out a crude picture of a leprechaun that you dreamed about last night and have Windows fill in the details for you thanks to the power of AI? Maybe don’t answer that.