Microsoft couldn’t wait until its Build conference today. It just revealed a bunch of new hardware and plans for Windows. Copilot+ PCs were the big announcement, designed to run generative AI processes locally instead of in the cloud. Of course, Microsoft had new Surface devices to showcase these features, but the usual PC suspects also have new laptops that meet the spec requirements — and include Copilot+ in their name for added chaos. The company also claims Copilot+ PCs are 58 percent faster than the M3-powered MacBook Air.
The new Surface Laptop is a redesigned PC with thinner bezels in 13.8- and 15-inch sizes and Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip. Microsoft says this is the brightest display it has ever shipped, at 600 nits, and the new Studio Camera is now in the bezel, so no visible notch.
Will the Snapdragon X Elite give better performance? Expect potent battery life. Microsoft claims the 15-inch model will run for up to 22 hours on a single charge while playing videos locally and up to 15 hours while actively browsing the web. We’ve got some hands-on impressions right here, but we’ve got reservations. Devices like the Surface Pro 9, which ran Windows on Arm, still didn’t feel as fast or responsive compared to their more traditional x86-based counterparts.
There’s also a new emulator for running older Windows apps.
Microsoft says it has rebuilt core components of Windows 11 to better support Arm-based hardware and AI. That includes a new kernel, compiler and, most importantly, an emulator named Prism, for running older x86 and x64 apps. Thanks to a powerful new Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in the Snapdragon X Elite chips, Copilot+ PCs can run more than 40 trillion operations per second, a measure of a chip’s AI performance, more than four times the performance of today’s AI PCs.
The new AI-powered feature is like a photographic memory of everything you’ve done.
This sounds very good. Microsoft also announced Recall, a new feature to make local Windows PC searches as quick and effective as web searches, tapping into AI to add more contextual search parameters. Microsoft product manager Caroline Hernandez gave the example of searching for a blue dress on Pinterest using a Windows PC with Recall. She can search the Recall timeline for ‘blue dress’ (using her voice), which pulls all of her recent searches, saving her from having to sift through browser history. She further refined the query with more specific details like ‘blue pantsuit with sequined lace for Abuelita,’ and Rewind delivered relevant results. Microsoft says it can start with exact information or vague contextual clues to find what you want — and it’s apparently all done locally. It is, however, a Copilot+ exclusive.
An AI company using something without permission? Whaa?!
AI companies love to tap Scarlett Johansson’s star power, but this time it’s a bigger player in AI. Johansson accused OpenAI of copying her voice for one of the ChatGPT voice assistants, despite her denying the company permission to do so. Johansson’s statement on Monday came hours after OpenAI said it would no longer use the voice. “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement sent to Engadget. The Her actor said OpenAI only stopped using the voice after she hired legal counsel.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-microsoft-introduces-its-ai-centric-copilot-pcs-111916490.html?src=rss
The Surface Laptop has always been a bit of an anti-revolutionary device. After Microsoft struggled to make a splash with its original Surface tablets, it was created as a more mainstream option for less courageous consumers. It simply a Windows laptop, albeit a well-designed one.
The same is true for the new Copilot+ Surface Laptop: It doesn't look very unique at first, but spend a bit of time with it and you'll notice the attention to detail around its case and keyboard, or the way its thin new bezels highlight its brighter screen. And together with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips, it's also far more powerful than before.
Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Aside from those slim screen bezels, though, it's easy to mistake the Surface Laptop for any Microsoft's previous models. The only tell is the Copilot buton on its keyboard, which opens up Microsoft's AI assistant to do your bidding. Just like the new Surface Pro, there's plenty of potential for the Surface Laptop to be an AI powerhouse, especially with features like Recall, which aims to remember everything you've ever done on your PC. But it's just hard to tell how successful it'll be in a brief hands-on.
In one demo at Microsoft's campus, I watched as a representative used CapCut to remove the background from a video featuring several dancers. Within a few seconds, the app was able to insert a more dynamic alternative. It's the sort of thing you can do manually, but it would take a long time to separate every dancer and map them onto a new background. Thanks to the Surface Laptop's neural processing unit (NPU), it can intelligently carve out the dancers and place them on a new stage.
Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
The new Surface Laptop Copilot+ AI PC starts at $999 for the 13.8-inch model with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and a Snapdragon X Plus processor. You can upgrade to the more powerful X Elite chip for an extra $300, and you can also add a 1TB SSD for an extra $200 on top of that. The 15-inch Surface Laptop starts at $1,300 with the X Elite chip.
Intel says more than 80 new laptops from over 20 hardware partners will begin shipping in time for the holidays. The PCs will add the new Copilot+ features, like Recall and Cocreator via a software update. (The company didn’t provide a specific window for those.) Intel expects to ship more than 40 million AI PC chips this year, which include an onboard neural processing unit (NPU) for generative AI features.
The chipmaker says Lunar Lake will have more than triple the AI performance of the current Meteor Lake models, supporting over 40 trillion NPU operations per second (TOPS).
“The launch of Lunar Lake will bring meaningful fundamental improvements across security, battery life, and more thanks to our deep co-engineering partnership with Intel,” Microsoft Windows and Devices VP Pavan Davuluri wrote in a press release. “We are excited to see Lunar Lake come to market with a 40+ TOPS NPU which will deliver Microsoft’s Copilot+ experiences at scale when available.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/intel-powered-copilot-pcs-will-be-available-this-fall-204049150.html?src=rss
ASUS isn’t sitting out the rush of AI-enhanced Copilot+ PCs, which also includes new models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and, of course, Microsoft. The “ultra-thin” ASUS Vivobook S 15 has Windows AI features like memory assistant Recall, the image generator Cocreator, and several ASUS-exclusive AI apps.
One of the more intriguing AI-powered features of the ASUS Vivobook S 15 is its use of the AiSense IR camera. ASUS says it can detect your presence and adjust the display accordingly. If you look away, the display will dim, and it will brighten up again when you look back. And if you step away from the computer, it will lock — and unlock when you return. While we can't vouch for its effectiveness before trying it, the feature sounds super handy for security and privacy if it delivers consistently.
Another baked-in AI feature is StoryCube, an app that ASUS says can automatically organize RAW photos and videos. In addition to the standard Copilot+ features announced on Monday, the laptop also includes Windows Studio Effects, which can automate lighting adjustments and noise removal in video calls. It also supports Microsoft’s Live Captions (real-time, AI-powered subtitles).
ASUS
On the hardware side, the Vivobook S 15 runs on the Snapdragon X Elite chip with a built-in Qualcomm Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU), which ASUS claims can process 45 TOPS (that’s 45 trillion operations per second). The PC ships with a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and up to 32GB of 8448 MHz LPDDR5X RAM.
The laptop has a 15.6-inch OLED screen with a 2,880 x 1,620 resolution and an 89 percent screen-to-body ratio. It also includes a Harmon Kardon-certified audio system with Dolby Atmos sound. ASUS claims its 70 Wh battery can last up to 18 hours.
One of the Vivobook S 15’s selling points is its thin aluminum body: Its tapered design has a thickness ranging from only 0.58 to 0.63 inches (14.7 mm to 16 mm). The PC weighs a mere 3.13 lbs (1.4 kg), slightly lighter than Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air.
The laptop has a healthy port selection, including two USB4, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, HDMI, an audio combo jack and a microSD slot. Its keyboard has customizable single-zone RGB lighting and a Copilot key for quick access to the ChatGPT-powered assistant.
The ASUS Vivobook S 15 is available for pre-order now through the company’s retail partners, starting at $1,300. The company says additional configurations will launch later this year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/asus-first-copilot-pc-locks-when-you-walk-away-and-unlocks-when-you-return-195952186.html?src=rss
Microsoft Paint is getting new image generation powers with a new tool called Cocreator. Powered by "diffusion-based algorithms," Cocreator can generate images based on text prompts as well as your own doodles in the Paint app.
The company has been experimenting with AI image generation in Paint for a while, and early versions of Cocreator have been available to developers and Windows Insiders since the fall. But with the introduction of CoPilot+ PCs, the feature is now official.
During a demo at its Surface event, the company showed off how Cocreator combines your own drawings with text prompts to create an image. There’s also a “creativity slider” that allows you to control how much you want AI to take over compared with your original art. As Microsoft pointed out, the combination of text prompts and your own brush strokes enables faster edits. It could also help provide a more precise rendering than what you’d be able to achieve with DALL-E or another text-to-image generator alone.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-paint-is-getting-an-ai-powered-image-generator-that-responds-to-your-text-prompts-and-doodles-190653716.html?src=rss
What if you could run an entire Windows PC on a mobile Arm-based chip, bringing the power efficiency and thinner designs from smartphones and tablets to laptops? If you've been paying attention to Microsoft's PC strategy over the past two decades, this song probably sounds familiar. From the original Surface in 2012 (running Windows RT for Arm devices) to the recent Surface Pro 9 5G, Microsoft has chipped away at this dream, only to fail miserably every time. Now with its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which includes major upgrades in Windows for Arm systems and AI, Microsoft may finally have the answer to its mobile computing dreams.
Microsoft's portable PC ambitions didn't start with the Surface line: You can trace it back to Windows CE and Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs. Then there was the short-lived era of netbooks: tiny, cheap and under-powered laptops meant mainly for browsing the web. I'll admit, I loved many a netbook, but they couldn't compete with the rise of the iPhone, Android and tablets.
Timing has never been Microsoft's strongest point. While Apple can just re-orient its platforms around its own homegrown hardware and software to pull off a monumental feat, like the move towards its Arm-based M-series chips, Microsoft has to wait on its many partners. In the case of Copilot+, the program wouldn't have been possible before Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chips, or before developers were ready to build apps to take advantage of neural processing units (NPUs) for AI work.
"We engineered this update of Windows with the focus on AI and specifically AI inference on those devices, and [with] making sure we were taking full advantage of the Arm 64 instruction set," according to Microsoft’s head of Windows and Surface Pavan Davuluri in a briefing with media earlier this month. "[In] this updated Windows, we built a new compiler in Windows for this exercise. We have a new kernel in the operating system that is built on top of this compiler. We have new schedulers in Windows that are built for taking advantage of these workloads."
Davuluri also noted that there's a new driver compute model that better integrates neural engines into Windows, just like CPUs and GPUs. Those core Windows updates will be a major boon for AI hardware, undoubtedly, but they will also make the OS function far better on Arm chips than we've seen before. Microsoft says that more native Arm apps will be coming to Windows, including Spotify and over 400 apps from other developers. But the key upgrade, a new emulator that's 20 percent faster than its previous solution, and is said to be faster than Apple's Rosetta 2 emulator for M-series Macs.
"We made gains on the breadth and the reach of the emulator," Davuluri said, referring to the amount of apps that Prism works on. "When you combine the new prism emulator with simply the raw performance and improvement in [the Snapdragon X Elite] CPUs themselves, we're in a place where we have great native apps and we're also in a place where the breadth of the app catalog also has tremendous performance, comparable to the rest of the Windows estate today."
While I haven't been able to benchmark Copilot+ PCs yet, I've seen a few compelling demos that point to raw performance and battery life that’s similar to Apple's M3 chip. I'm just hoping the company can finally deliver a Windows on Arm experience that doesn't stink. After reviewing the Surface Pro 9 5G, which was slow and incompatible with many apps, I had given up on the idea of a decent Arm-based Windows PC entirely. But with revamped Surface devices, as well as partners like Dell, ASUS and HP jumping on the Copilot+ bandwagon, maybe Microsoft has finally crafted a decent mobile PC platform.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai-isnt-the-star-of-microsofts-copilot-pc-push--improved-arm-support-is-190039699.html?src=rss
Microsoft's new Surface Pro, its first hybrid Copilot+ PC tablet, doesn't look much different than its predecessors. It's still a sleek and sturdy tablet with a kickstand. But the screen looks a bit more impressive, thanks to slimmer bezels, and it's potentially more useful on the go when paired with the $350 Surface Pro Flex keyboard, which lets you type wirelessly. As a Copilot+ AI PC though, its true value lies under the hood, thanks to a 45TOPS neural processing unit in Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips.
Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
Without fully testing its AI capabilities, it's hard to make any final judgements on the Surface Pro just yet. Perhaps Microsoft's Recall feature, which can instantly retrieve anything you've done on your computer, could actually be useful. In a short demo, I was able to scrub through several days worth of PC usage, including doodles from people attending the launch event. Perhaps you'll find some value from the NPU-enabled features in Photoshop and other apps. But during my short hands-on session, there wasn't really much to see.
That's honestly a bit disappointing. This Surface Pro, which Microsoft is calling the 11th edition, was also an opportunity to rework the tablet's aging kickstand and overall design. Thinner screen bezels just aren't enough. The new Surface Pro Flex Keyboard is also surprisingly expensive at $350 ($450 when bundled with the Slim Pen). It's upgrades are useful: You can detach it from the Surface Pro and still keep typing away, and it also has a more modern haptic touchpad. But it's merely an optional upgrade, not a standard feature for the Surface Pro. The wireless typing experience was responsive, from my testing, but the Flex Pro Flex Keyboard also feels a bit flimsy on its own, without the weight of the tablet holding it down.
Microsoft's existing typing covers, the $140 Surface Pro Keyboard and the $180 Surface Pro Signature Keyboard, are still around and far more compelling for the price. This recent batch of computers was a perfect opportunity for the company to bundle a keyboard cover with the Surface Pro, but alas, that's still not happening. (I've been asking Microsoft about bundling a keyboard with its Surface tablets every year since they debuted — I guess I'll just have to keep asking.)
Photo by Devindra Hardawar/Engadget
The Surface Pro starts at $999 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. You can also bump up to an OLED model which includes the Snapdragon X Elite chip for $1,500. That model can also be configured with up to 1TB of storage and 32GB of RAM.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-surface-pro-copilot-hands-on-slimmer-bezels-and-ai-smarts-185349396.html?src=rss
At its event today, Microsoft gave the redesigned Surface Pro's keyboard a makeover, adding improved stability, better haptics and even a bold font option for added readability. However, starting at $350, it won't come cheap.
Available for pre-order today alongside Microsoft's revamped convertible tablet, the Surface Pro Flex keyboard features a familiar design but with a number of tweaks to make it more adaptable and accessible than before. Inside, carbon fiber supports deliver increased stability, which is an important change as the Flex can now be used when it's completely detached from a Surface. This means you can position it in all sorts of ways such as typing on your lap while the tablet sits on a nearby desk or table. There's also a new retractable riser on the bottom, so you can adjust the keyboard's angle when using it by itself.
Microsoft
The Flex's touchpad is also 14 percent larger than before and features Microsoft's Precision Haptics to provide more detailed feedback and assist people with limited hand movement. Meanwhile, to support people with low vision, the keyboard will also be available with an optional bold key font. Finally, as we've seen on Microsoft's previous convertible keyboards, the Flex has a built-in magnetic charging slot for the Surface Slim Pen.
That said, it's important to point out that the Surface Pro Flex keyboard's $350 base price doesn't include the pen, so if you want one, that'll bring your total up to $450. Thankfully, the Flex is backward compatible with the Surface Pro 8 and Pro 9, so you don't necessarily need to buy a whole new tablet if all you want is a fancy new keyboard.
The Surface Pro Flex keyboard is available for pre-order today in two colors (black and bright sapphire), with official sales starting on June 18.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-surface-pro-flex-is-microsofts-revamped-keyboard-for-2-in-1s-185156350.html?src=rss
It's the dawn of a new era in Microsoft's eyes as the first wave of Copilot+ PCs are now available as of June 18. This "new class of Windows PCs," as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes them, contains hardware designed to run as many generative AI processes locally as possible, rather than having to rely on data centers.
These laptops all have an Arm-basedSnapdragon chipset from Qualcomm that includes a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle such tasks. Microsoft has stipulated that Copilot+ PCs need to have at least 40 TOPs (tera operations per second) of NPU performance, and 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage at minimum. The systems each have a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard and they're all slated to have strong battery life.
These Copilot+ PCs could really change how we interact with computers, bringing natural language nuance to a bevy of everyday tasks. A new Windows 11 layer includes dozens of deeply integrated AI models. These can handle all manner of processes including automated photo restoration, real-time captioning and translations for live and pre-recorded video, graphics upscaling for games, image generation, text summaries and much, much more.
One highly touted feature will be missing from most Copilot+ PCs at the outset, however. Microsoft has decided to postpone the broad rollout of Recall. The idea behind this feature is to help you find anything you've ever accessed on your computer, such as a web page, document, email, chat or image. To make this work, Windows needs to take snapshots of your activity every few seconds and add these to a Recall timeline.
It didn't take long for privacy advocates to criticize the feature. Microsoft backtracked to a certain degree by making Recall opt-in and adding extra layers of encryption. Just a few days before the public debut of Copilot+ PCs though, Microsoft took a further step back by announcing that recall would only be available in the Windows Insider Program at first. The company hopes to receive feedback from more testers before rolling out Recall to all eligible Copilot+ PCs.
That said, many Copilot+ PCs are now available and Microsoft plans to roll out the announced features gradually in the coming months. Dell, Acer and HP are among the first third-party manufacturers to build Copilot+ PCs, though Microsoft has some of its own. Let's take a look at the first laptops to carry the new label.
Surface Laptop
Engadget
The new Surface Laptop was the first Copilot+ PC detailed at a Microsoft event held in May. The updated PC has all of the AI bells and whistles you would expect, as it’s a first-party device. The Surface Laptop’s touch display can hit 600 nits of brightness, with availability in 13.8- and 15-inch options, and there's a full HD camera integrated into the bezel. Microsoft says the laptop is 80 percent faster than the previous generation, with a battery that can get up to 22 hours per charge. There’s the Copilot key, of course, as well as a haptic touchpad. The Surface Laptop starts at just $1,000.
Surface Pro
Engadget
Microsoft has dropped its old numerical naming convention for Surface hybrid devices. Based on previous models, the latest version should be called the Surface Pro 10, but it’s called just the Surface Pro. Microsoft says the new Surface Pro is a whopping 90 percent faster than the Surface 9, which was already fairly quick. There’s also an OLED version that boasts a “near-infinite” contrast ratio between deep blacks and brighter colors.
The company also brags that the front-facing camera is the best it has ever created, with fantastic low-light performance. The rear-facing camera can capture 4K video. The new Flex keyboard design works whether or not it's physically attached to the 2-in-1, so you can position things however you want. Other features include a customizable haptic touchpad, Wi-Fi 7 and increased multi-monitor support. The new Surface Pro starts at $1,000.
Acer Swift 14 AI
Acer
This is Acer's Copilot+ PC spin on its line of Swift-branded laptops. This laptop features a 14.5-inch, 2.5K touch display, Wi-Fi 7, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of solid-state storage. All of this is stuffed into a quite fetching metal chassis that weighs 1.36 kg (3 lbs). Acer is also promising a battery life of up to 26 hours. The Acer Swift 14 AI will be available in July, with a starting price of $1,100.
HP Omnibook X
HP
HP has revived its once-iconic Omnibook line of laptops and updated it for the age of AI. The Omnibook X ships with the Snapdragon X Elite CPU, with up to 12 cores and a top speed of 3.4 GHz. The Qualcomm Hexagon NPU powers all of those AI bells and whistles and the Adreno GPU handles the visual side of things. You can spec out this laptop with up to 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of solid-stage storage.
The Omnibook X has a multitouch-enabled 14-inch, 2.2K display, dual speakers with HP Audio Boost technology and up to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. The system is available now for a starting price of $1,150. You can easily spot HP AI PCs thanks to a new helix-shaped logo.
HP EliteBook Ultra G1q
HP
The Omnibook X isn't the only Copilot+ PC that HP has announced. The company also unveiled the business-focused EliteBook Ultra G1q. This laptop also uses the Snapdragon X Elite CPU, along with an NPU capable of more than 40 TOPs. That means it should whiz through AI tasks at a rapid clip. The new EliteBook Ultra can do all of the typical chatbot/digital assistant stuff, but the Poly Camera Pro software now runs on the NPU, so you won’t draw power from the CPU when using tools like background blur and virtual backgrounds during video calls.
This PC also includes premium endpoint security to defend against phishing attempts and malware attacks at the firmware level. There’s a 14-inch, 2.2K touch display and a battery that charges to 50 percent in just 30 minutes. You’ll be stuck with 16GB of soldered-on RAM, however, and the storage maxes out at 1TB. The EliteBook Ultra G1q is available now and it starts at $1,700.
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x
Engadget/Sam Rutherford
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x features the Snapdragon X Elite chip, and a 14-inch screen that covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut and delivers up to 500 nits of brightness. The bezels are thin, there’s a quad-mic setup and it has a starting weight of 2.82 lbs. Lenovo even managed to fit in cooling fans. There’s also a 70Wh battery that should easily last a full work day (unless you're playing games or editing a lot of video). The Yoga Slim 7x starts at $1,300.
The company has another AI PC coming, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. This also features a beefy NPU processor for AI tasks.
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge Series
Samsung
The Galaxy Book series is getting an AI-centric refresh. The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge series comes in a few varieties, with screen sizes ranging from 14 inches to 16 inches. They all feature AMOLED display panels with 3K resolution, with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. The systems run on Snapdragon X Elite processors. Each version also includes a HDMI 2.1 output, two USB-C ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. In addition, the 16-inch model boasts a USB-A port, a microSD card reader and a number pad.
There’s a pro version available with the most powerful, 3.8GHz Snapdragon X Elite variant and 1TB of storage (rather than 512GB), though only if you opt for the 16-inch format. These laptops start at $1,350.
ASUS Vivobook S 15
ASUS
This ultrathin 15.6-inch laptop is powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor and includes a collection of AI-centric apps developed by ASUS. The AiSense camera feature detects when someone is in front of the display and dims the screen when they look away to preserve juice. This is also used to automatically lock and unlock the computer. This Vivobook is also the first ASUS laptop to feature StoryCube, which is a proprietary AI assistant that helps to “manage all digital assets.”
As for standard specs, it has a 15.6-inch OLED display, with a 3K resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. There's a Harman Kardon-certified audio system with multi-dimensional Dolby Atmos sound, a solid array of ports and a 70Wh battery with the promise of over 18 hours of use on a single charge. You can outfit these laptops with up to 1TB of internal storage and up to 32GB of RAM. It’s surprising the company didn’t have a Zenbook ready to go here, given last year’s model went pretty hard for AI.
A Whole Bunch of Dell PCs
Dell
Dell is diving in head-first here, as it has already lined up at least five Copilot+ PCs. First of all, there’s an AI-centric refresh of the XPS 13 with a Snapdragon X Elite chip. This laptop includes a sleek, minimalist design with a machined aluminum exterior. There’s a touch function row that toggles between media controls and function keys, and an option for a 3K touch display. You can stuff up to 2TB of SSD storage and 64GB of memory into this model. The latest XPS 13 starts at $1,300 and it's available now.
The company has also refreshed its Inspiron line of laptops. The Inspiron 14 and Inspiron 14 Plus both feature Snapdragon X Plus processors. The Inspiron 14 Plus looks to be a bit more powerful on the CPU side of things, with 10 cores and speeds up to 3.4GHz. The latest Inspiron 14 Plus starts at $1,100. Dell will release pricing and availability information for the standard Inspiron 14 Copilot+ PC in the coming months.
For enterprise customers, Dell will have the Latitude 5455 and the Latitude 7455, which are offshoots of the current Latitude 5450 and 7450 notebooks. The big change here is that both new models will be powered by Snapdragon X Plus chips, with the 7455 offering an option for the flagship Snapdragon X Elite. The 7450 features a 360-degree 2-in-1 design and is being touted as the “thinnest Latitude laptop ever." We'll get pricing and availability informaton on these later this year.
What about other PC companies?
These are all of the big hardware announcements from May's Microsoft Surface and Copilot event, but they're only the first batch of Copilot+ PCs. More are certain to be on the way. This is, after all, the decade of AI… so they say.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/here-are-all-of-the-copilot-pcs-with-snapdragon-x-chips-that-were-released-today-104404765.html?src=rss
Microsoft's Surface Pro strategy has been, shall we say, a little odd lately. The 2022 Surface Pro 9 came in both Intel and Arm configurations, but the Arm-powered device was both slower and significantly more expensive. Then, earlier this year, Microsoft announced an Intel-powered Surface Pro 10, a fine but boring device focused on IT professionals.
Finally, Microsoft has a new Surface Pro that may get the average laptop user to sit up and pay attention. to sit up and pay attention. The new Surface Pro Copilot+ PC (no more model numbers!) is another Arm-powered device, but Microsoft says that performance will not be compromised this time. In fact, thanks to a re-architected version of Windows 11, Microsoft claims these machines are 58 percent faster than “the fastest MacBook Air” with an M3 processor.
Specifically, Copilot+ PCs must hit at 40 trillion operations per second, compared to the 18-ish trillion Apple claims with the M3. The Surface Pro itself hits 45 TOPS. The company further clarified that peak performance is 23 percent faster, while “sustained” performance is 58 percent faster. Notably, Microsoft made no mention of the M3 Pro or M3 Max chips here.
It's also a whopping 90 percent faster than the Surface Pro 9, and Microsoft is promising 14 hours of local video playback time as far as battery life goes. Physically, it's similar to what you'd expect — a tablet with a kickstand and keyboard attachment. But it does look like it has thinner bezels, and a 13-inch OLED screen for the first time. As for ports, two USB-C are all you get here. Finally, there's a "quad-HD" front-facing camera which seems the same as the one we saw on the Surface Pro 10 for Business.
There's also a new keyboard called the Flex Keyboard that is meant to be used both attached to the device or removed and set somewhere more comfortable for you. The trackpad is 14 percent larger than before, as well. You're going to pay dearly for the new keyboard, though — it costs $350, or $450 with a Surface Pen included.
Of course, there are a host of AI-powered features on board here, thanks to the NPU in all the new Copilot+ PC devices announced today. And much of it is happening on device, so you won't have to wait for data to hit the cloud or pay for various pro AI subscriptions. One of the more interesting ones is Recall, which uses natural language prompts to pull data from your PC to resurface it based on whatever you remember about it. Other features include live translations on video chats in more than 40 languages as well as a Windows Photos tool called Super Resolution to improve old images.
Pre-orders start today, and they'll be available on June 18. The Surface Pro starts at $1,000 and comes in four colors; that includes a Snapdragon X Plus chip with a standard LCD screen, 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM. Stepping up to the OLED model with the Snapdragon X Elite chip jacks the price up to $1,500. (That model also has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.) Microsoft also said you could get a Surface Pro with 5G built-in, but the company's site says those models aren't coming until "later this year."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-new-copilot-surface-pro-has-an-oled-screen-and-a-redesigned-keyboard-175611698.html?src=rss