Is Microsoft's Copilot + Pc really ready to challenge Macbooks?

The risk is that of a big marketing announcement and little else. In reality, there is a lot of substance behind Microsoft's Copilot+ Pc, announced on 20 May. Starting with the platform. Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is the acronym that promises to revolutionise computing by bringing us all into the age of AI with two cornerstones: performance and autonomy. From last October's unveiling to Microsoft's most recent announcement, we have become familiar with the technological substrate of the X Elite: a 4-nanometre manufacturing node, coupled with a customised Oryon architecture, top-end graphics processing units (the GPU), and a Hexagon neural processing engine (so-called NPU) for AI acceleration. A combination that guarantees efficiency and heavy use of artificial intelligence, not only for creating images and email cues, but for exclusive features such as Recall. According to the first benchmarks, we are talking about 58 per cent more performance than the 15-inch MacBook Air and a 20 per cent increase in battery life.

In 2023, Qualcomm's market share in the global semiconductor market was 5.4 per cent. Analysts forecast double-digit growth, led by the Elite X. If Qualcomm wants to disrupt the market, the competition is not standing idly by. In the autumn it should be Intel's turn with Lunar Lake chips, ready to power more than 80 laptops from more than 20 partners. At that point, we will have two contenders on the market: Qualcomm and Intel. Is that all? No, because the game is four-sided. After the presentation of the iPhones in September, Apple will play the M4 card. At the moment, preliminary information has emerged on at least three variants of the chip: 'Donan', 'Brava' and 'Hidra', the basic, intermediate and top-of-the-range versions respectively - using the nomenclature we saw on the M3, we could say M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max. It's going to be fun. AND ARM? In April, the company unveiled the Ryzen Pro 8000, with a 16 TOPS NPU, capable of surpassing the performance of the similar unit housed in the Intel Meteor Lake, stuck at 11 TOPS. The problem is that AMD has compared its product with an 'outdated' technology. Just for the sake of argument, Qualcomm's Hexagon NPU is capable of 45 TOPS, or 'Trillion Operations per Second', while Intel's Lunar Lake NPU should handle at least 40 TOPS.

One cannot explain Microsoft's decision to opt for the Snapdragon Elite instead of an Intel to announce the Copilot+ Surface Laptop. Here will come Recall, the AI-enhanced function that is being talked about so much. It is a tool that keeps track of everything we do on the computer, in a kind of 'enriched' history. By means of a time bar, we can go back and check what we have done before and pick up the thread from a certain point if we need to. A bit like the punctual Windows restore but without the cumbersomeness of a real backtrack. Also because today, a restore has the consequence of returning all activities to the point selected in the past whereas Recall can act on the individual app.

Recall is not exclusive to Microsoft, but it is to the Copilot+ Pc. Samsung's Galaxy Book4 Edge, debuting on 18 June, is also part of the circle. Here again, the core is the Snapdragon X Elite, which is featured on the 14-inch and 16-inch Galaxy Book Edge models and the 16-inch Galaxy Book Edge Pro. In addition to Copilot, here we will also have Galaxy AI, the artificial intelligence already at work on the company's smartphones and tablets. It could overlap with Microsoft's already rich features, including those dedicated to fast photo editing on Paint and Photos, or be dedicated to Samsung's own apps, such as Notes.

Lenovo has prepared two novelties with Snapdragon X Elite: Yoga Slim 7x for the more consumer segment and ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 that instead winks at the professional audience. The former has a 14.5-inch touchscreen with Dolby Vision 3K support ready for 3D rendering and video-editing, while the T14s Gen 6 has more typical ThinkPad family features such as a privacy shutter on the webcam and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. The challenge for the future will be just that: to move the limits of innovation further forward, while creating protected and personal ecosystems.