Copilot Plus PCs vs AI PCs: What's The Difference?

 

Microsoft has announced the next iteration of AI-enabled Windows laptops will be called Copilot Plus (or Copilot+) PCs, and the first wave will be powered by new Snapdragon X ARM chips from Qualcomm that are worth a serious look.

Over the past few years, ARM-powered PCs have evolved into real powerhouses of computing, with added benefits of better power efficiency and battery life. And while there are times an Intel or AMD-powered AI PC will be the better choice, particularly for video games, Copilot Plus PCs are about to become serious workhorses. Here's why. 

Battery life

One of the best features of ARM chips from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm is their battery life. 

When Apple switched its MacBook line of laptops to ARM-powered M-series chips from Intel in 2020, their already-excellent battery life got even better. Apple now says its laptops can last about 20 hours, depending on the activity. At the time, Micro Center News Editor-in-Chief Dan Ackerman called the improvements "a big win."

One reason for the improved battery life. ARM chips have separate neural processing units (NPUs) that can perform chores that typically challenge CPUs and GPUs. That's part of the secret to Apple's winning battery life with its Mac laptops, and likely will help this new batch of Snapdragon Windows PCs as well.

"These NPUs barely sip a few watts of power," Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri, Corporate Vice President, Windows + Devices, said during a Microsoft event Monday. "The result is unprecedented battery life." 

With its new $999 Surface Pro tablet, Microsoft said that means 14 hours of video playback while the $999 Surface Laptop will sport 20 hours of video playback.

Microsoft's energy improvements don't just help with battery life, they also reduce the amount of heat laptops generate, and thus the number of fans these devices need. At least some of the new Copilot Plus PCs will be completely fanless designs, which means one less moving part to power, further improving battery life. 

Advanced AI features

It's in the name, so of course you knew Copilot Plus PCs will market themselves as having special AI features, including more efficient photo and video editing and language translation for more than 40 languages across all apps through Microsoft's Live Captions feature. 

Though Microsoft has said it'll introduce many of these features for Intel and AMD-powered PCs too, for now they'll only be available for these Snapdragon X ARM-powered devices. That's why it's important to differentiate between Copilot Plus systems and more general AI-enabled PCs. 

The former is built around Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, plus specific Windows features like Recall and Cocreator. In contrast, an AI PC generally refers to any computer designed to handle AI workloads. While an AI PC may include powerful GPUs or TPUs for intensive AI computations and machine learning tasks, it doesn't necessarily integrate AI into the core user experience as thoroughly as a Windows 11 Copilot Plus PC. 

When announcing its new Surface devices Monday, Microsoft said that Copilot Plus devices will deliver at least 40 tera operations per second (TOPS), a popular performance metric in the industry. Qualcomm, whose chip powers many of the first generation Copilot Plus PCs, has said its Snapdragon X Elite chip can deliver up to 75 TOPS. Other AI PCs, by comparison, offer fewer TOPS, at least for now, but that number will certainly go up over the next few refresh cycles. The first Windows Copilot Plus laptops are available to preorder now, and will be in stores on June 18.