Microsoft smells blood in the water and it looks like it’s only after Apple’s latest release ultra-thin laptops AND iPads with devices equipped with all-day batteries and ARM-based processors with improved performance and energy efficiency.
The novel Surface Pro 2-in-1 promises to do everything your laptop and tablet can do, but better. Additionally, every major laptop manufacturer under the sun is releasing refreshed, ultra-slim laptops that deliver significant performance gains while also offering significant battery life savings.
Oh, and artificial intelligence. Lots and lots of AI. Practically an avalanche of AI calls.
The Microsoft Surface 2 in 1 they haven’t really stood out from the crowd in recent years, but that may change with the advent Surface Pro equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip. The smaller version weighs just under two pounds, and thinner bezels provide more screen real estate. Microsoft claims that the novel version is 80% faster than the previous generation, and will still have 14 hours of battery life while playing video. An OLED or LCD screen option is also available.
It’s also novel Surface Laptop Go which also houses the latest Qualcomm chips, but just as last year’s devices have become slightly more exorbitant, the latest Microsoft laptops are not becoming cheaper. The 13.8-inch Pro starts at $1,000 and the 15-inch Pro starts at $1,200 at its lowest price point. However, unlike Apple’s latest laptops, which only have 8GB of RAM, Surface Pros have 16GB.
There will be novel ARM64 implementations for Windows 365. However, there will still be some applications that do not support the ARM version. The company is releasing a novel emulator called Prism that should support older apps that don’t yet have an ARM version. Still, while you can easily run Chrome or Adobe products on your Copilot+, you may eventually come across an application that requires more effort than you’re used to on current x86-x64 plug-and-play Windows devices.
Copilot+ computers will support “little language models”
This would already seem like a forceful start, but Microsoft cannot, will not, stop talking about artificial intelligence. There’s plenty of AI-focused software coming to Copilot+, and Microsoft says the novel PCs should be able to run “diminutive language models” on Copilot+ devices. Microsoft claims the PCs are 20 times more capable at non-gaming tasks compared to previous 2-in-1s and are many times better at AI-centric tasks, in this case processing simplified AI workloads. Does this translate to running? GPT-4o voice capabilities On device? Not by half, but there will be AI capable of working on the device, not in the cloud. It is unclear whether Copilot itself is one of them.
Instead, these “diminutive language models” are intended to be persistent AI running in the background on these novel devices. Two of the biggest ones coming this year are Recall, a sort of always-visible timeline of things you’ve been doing on your computer, and on-device AI image generation in Cocreator. There’s also a live captioning feature that should be able to generate text from audio in over 40 languages.
So the “diminutive language model” is just a marketing excuse, meaning smaller AI programs that can run on a device, not a remote data center that requires a lot of GPUs, power, and water to run on a daily basis. However, it appears that the Copilot chatbot itself will remain a cloud-only operation.
What is the performance of artificial intelligence on Copilot+ computers and does it matter?
Asus, Acer, Dell, HP and other OEMs showed off their latest slim, portable laptops on Monday in preparation for tomorrow’s Microsoft Build developer conference. These laptops will support either Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus, two AI-focused chips that are expected to power a novel line of ARM-based Windows computers. The Elite comes standard with a 12-core processor clocked at up to 3.8 GHz, as well as a built-in Adreno GPU with up to 4.6 TFLOP performance at the top. Qualcomm said the chips beat Intel’s latest Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 processors in terms of performance while drawing less power.
The chipmaker even claimed it could beat the Apple M3 chip seen in its latest chip MacBook Airs and baseline MacBook Pros in multi-threaded processor performance tests. We’ll still have to dig into them to see if these claims come true. However, the company’s biggest claim to fame is the 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of neural processing performance on both Snapdragon X chips. This is compared to Intel’s latest AI-focused chipswhich could make a total of 34 peaks, 11 of which would come from the dedicated NPU.
How much AI capabilities matter depends on how well AI is supported on the device and which applications will leverage Copilot+ capabilities. As a reminder, the last time Microsoft tried the ARM-based Surface z Pass 3, didn’t go well, with performance that really couldn’t match competitors’ or even Intel’s chips. What’s more, even with the power and performance of the latest Qualcomm chips, these Copilot+ computers won’t be great for gaming, at least to start with. All because of the lack of support from game developers compared to Intel and AMD processors based on x86 architecture.
So, if these devices turn out to be as capable as the claims say, they will only really be useful for everyday productivity tasks. There’s nothing wrong with that, but Apple already has its own closed ecosystem under the M-series chips.
The novel Acer Swift 14 AI laptop literally glows with excitement about AI
Major computer manufacturers are actively supporting the development of AI hardware in Windows. Gizmodo has already gone in-depth with Lenovo’s offer, but there are also a few surprises on the way. The Asus Vivobook series enters the Copilot+ game with the $1,300 Vivobook S 15. It comes with a 3K OLED screen and a claimed 18 hours of battery life. It has some other self-proclaimed AI features, such as automatic face detection to dim the screen when you’re away, and an auto-lock feature.
Not to be outdone, Acer has a novel Swift 14 ultraportable laptop that’s configured for Windows AI so that its trackpad lights up when Windows Copilot AI is triggered.
The laptop itself is a refresh the company’s ultra-portable line laptops, but with a novel emphasis focused on artificial intelligence. Acer is going to mark its AI-equipped computers with a huge “AI icon” that can be found on the outer casing and on the trackpad.
What else you get is relatively standard for this type of computer. It is an IPS LCD display with a resolution of 2560×1600 and a refresh rate of 120 Hz. You can buy it with or without a touchscreen. It’s expected to be available from July, like many other AI-enabled PCs.
Dell isn’t shy either. The OEM has not one, but five novel laptop models, all powered by Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite processors. Once Dell XPS 13 named XPS 13 Plus, now features a novel ARM chip, just like the Inspiron 14 Plus, Inspiron 14, Latitude 7455, and Latitude 5455. The XPS particularly stands out thanks to its promised 27-hour battery life. So if you’re not really interested in artificial intelligence, the novel Copilot+ laptops should allow you to apply your laptop for longer.
