[Update] Microsoft Copilot+ laptops with Snapdragon X Elite announced

The US manufacturer presented a new category of notebooks at the Microsoft Surface event. The Microsoft Copilot laptops rely on a particularly powerful NPU that enables AI calculations on the device, as well as long battery life and more.

Update 21.05.: Qualcomm presents line-up of Copilot+ PCs

A total of seven manufacturers will contribute 16 devices to the launch of the Copilot+ PC platform, Qualcomm has now announced in a press release. Most of these are classic notebooks that now rely on the new ARM chips with the Snapdragon X Plus or Snapdragon X Elite.

In addition to Microsoft, which is launching two notebooks itself, the other devices will initially come from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung. Other manufacturers and ARM laptops will follow in the course of time.

• The Swift 14 AI comes from Acer
• ASUS launches the VivoBook S15
• Dell launches with the XPS 13 9345, Insipiren 14, Inspiron 14 Plus, Latitude 7455 and Latitude 5455
• HP launches the OmniBook X first
• Lenovo comes with the Yoga Slim 7X and ThinkPad T14S
• Samsung contributes the Galaxy Book4 Edge in 14 and 16 inches
• Microsoft launches with the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7

Microsoft Copilot+ presented

Yesterday evening brought us a new category of notebooks that really packs a punch. At the Surface event, the Redmond-based company not only presented Microsoft Copilot, but also unveiled matching notebooks.

The new AI from Microsoft is based on ChatGPT 4o and has significantly improved performance. One of the most important new features is the “Recall” function, an AI that can search through all activities on the PC.

You can ask which photo you looked at when, when you had a certain conversation in apps like Discord or which article you read on a certain day and much more.

The AI assistant Copilot will also be further integrated into Windows 11 and can, for example, help you in the Settings menu, change files in File Explorer or write replies to notifications that you have received.

This all works locally on the PC or notebook thanks to OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT 4o model. However, the latest Microsoft Copilot laptops are required for the recall function, as these must be equipped with a powerful NPU to run this function locally.

Microsoft Copilot laptops: powerful NPU, long runtimes

The manufacturer has given the new notebook category the name Microsoft Copilot Laptops. This is intended to indicate at the time of purchase that the devices have certain features.

These include a sufficiently fast Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which must be capable of at least 40 TOPS – the only chip currently capable of this is the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with 45 TOPS.

The devices must also have at least 16 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. The battery life should be at least 20 hours when playing videos and 15 hours when surfing the web.

According to Microsoft, the first Copilot laptops should offer up to 58 percent higher AI performance than the MacBook Air based on Apple’s M3.

The first Microsoft devices on this basis are the Surface Pro and the Surface Laptop, but many other manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Samsung and Lenovo are also contributing suitable devices.

Microsoft is also working with various manufacturers such as Adobe to make optimized apps of the most popular programs such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Reader, but also programs such as DaVinci Resolve, CapCut, Cephable, LiquidText and Djay Pro available as native Arm64 versions on Microsoft Copilot PCs.