I’ve spent 48 hours with a Copilot Plus computer and I’m already worried

I was very excited when my Surface Laptop pre-order arrived two days ago, as I’ve been wanting to try out these arm-based, Snapdragon X-powered Copilot Plus computers (or whatever you want to call them ) since the chip. first announced in late 2023. Taking the battery-friendly, AI-ready, and ultra-connected benefits of the best smartphones and pairing it with performance that rivals best-in-class laptops sounds pretty good to be true. Unfortunately, after only 48 hours with the new Surface Laptop, I’m starting to think that might be correct.

I should preface this by stating that the office use element of the Copilot Plus PC experience is perfectly fine, even great. It’s powering up perfectly with me writing this article, and the battery stats say I’ve enjoyed two hours and 36 minutes of screen time since the last charge, and still have 76% to go. Battery life on this thing seems pretty solid, so at least that’s one promise ticked off the list.

That said, a few hiccups in the last 48 hours are definitely steering my eventual review in a more negative direction. Namely, app emulation is hit and miss and I don’t really understand what all the AI ​​fuss is about considering Recall is on hiatus until later in the year.

But before we get to that, let’s wrestle with all this Windows running on the Malarky Arm. Yes, the battery life benefits seem to be there (though more testing will tell), and the performance of the Arm’s native apps is sublime if you can find them. And here’s the problem: I’m relying heavily on Microsoft’s Prism emulator layer to run x64 applications that aren’t built natively for Arm processors yet. Honestly, I’m surprised by how few of the apps I use on a daily basis don’t have original versions. Libre Office, Lightroom Classic, Discord, Asana, and every Steam game (of course) all support emulation. I knew that my more niche apps from smaller developers, including Feish and Jellyfin for media, would rely on emulation, but it’s surprising that so few big projects haven’t entered this phase. It’s not like Windows on Arm is new.

As for native support, I’ve used Photoshop, Slack, Spotify, Zoom, and the big three web browsers. The latter is where Microsoft gets “90% of user minutes are running on native Arm”, but they all work great. However, I’ve been suffering a series of black screen crashes when running GPU-heavy sites in Edge with an external monitor that doesn’t show up with Firefox. Even native apps aren’t immune to problems, it seems.

Let’s be generous and say I installed a 50/50 split of Arm and x64 apps. The problem remains that emulation performance feels so hit and miss. For example, Lightroom Classic (just update it already, Adobe!) works flawlessly when editing photos, but exporting JPEGs can bring it and other apps to their knees. On the other hand, Asana and Discord run like an egg and spoon race – stopping, starting, stopping and charging. Here the Prism’s performance is a disappointment; UI elements can freeze temporarily, sometimes system-wide, and I’ve even had music playback stop for a split second. These issues don’t come up very often, but when they do, you’re immediately reminded that you’re not getting the best Windows experience out there.

But this is not the main sin. No, the fact that most VPN apps don’t work because they don’t yet have genuine versions of Armi can be an absolute deal breaker for some. I often need a VPN to check regional versions of the website, and thankfully, I can still do that in my browser. However, many others have steeper requirements, including those in the enterprise space. Thankfully, VPNs are the only apps I’ve come across that flat out refuse to work.

Now, I’d cut Microsoft and the developers some slack if Windows on Arm was a brand new initiative, but Windows on Arm and Microsoft’s emulator have been around for seven-odd years, and we’ve had commercial products for six of them. How are we still discussing app development and emulation problems that Apple has eliminated in half that time? It’s borderline ridiculous.

OK, enough of the emulator bashing – the Snapdragon X Elite is powerful enough to (brutally) power through (most) minor issues. Let’s talk about AI – after all it is the main marketing material with these Copilot Plus computers. So what’s the Plus fuss about? It’s a little hard to say. Windows Recall felt like the flagship feature, but that’s been put on ice while Microsoft irons out some very warranted privacy concerns.

Without memory, Copilot takes center stage as the most visible user-facing AI feature, but the experience feels pretty much the same as on regular PCs. Yes, the dedicated Copilot button to bring up a web app window is a nice touch (if you use AI a lot), but I still don’t trust Copilot (or any other text generator) for anything above common queries or reformatting of chance paragraph. With Copilot icons plastered across the toolbar and Edge browser, I must have hit the physical key three or four times in two days. Hardly worth sacrificing good old right ctrl.

Other AI features are on board, but they are more special. I haven’t found a use for the awesome Live Captions feature (yet), and asking Cocreator to draw something with people in it is often terrible. Still, I found Studio Effects most useful for some Discord calls. Eye contact looks a little creepy, but the auto framing and portrait bokeh feature work very well. That said, almost all conferencing apps have baked-in background options without the need for an NPU, so it hardly feels new and exciting.

The other AI feature I came across was purely by accident. While benchmarking some AAA games, I noticed a pop-up in some titles informing me that Super Resolution AI was enabled. If you can live with a low 1,152 x 768 resolution, the AI ​​upgrade pushes some games from sub-30fps to a much more comfortable 50-60fps. The Snapdragon X’s ability to play PC AAA games, surprisingly, isn’t terrible, and it’s probably the best display of the integrated NPU that meaningfully elevates the user experience. Again, though, the list of supported titles is far from comprehensive, and the settings menu to manually configure the .exe is pretty much out of reach.

And I think that sums up my whole experience with this Copilit Plus PC so far – it doesn’t feel finished. Are incomplete AI features and incomplete emulation acceptable trade-offs for better-than-average battery life? Not so sure about prices over $1000. I have a feeling that’s my ultimate summary right there.

Still, we’re probably at the tipping point in this chicken-and-egg scenario: more powerful and interesting laptops mean developers pay attention, launch more native builds of Weapons, and the entire ecosystem improves quickly. Here’s hoping, but that’s no consolation for the bitter taste of disappointment I’m currently experiencing. The last two days are no different than the last seven years of trying to justify compromises.