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

I was pretty excited when the Surface Laptop pre-order arrived a couple of days ago, as I’ve been dying to try out the Arm-based PCs with Snapdragon Taking the battery-friendly, AI-ready, and highly connected features of the best smartphones and pairing them with performance that rivals the best laptops in its class sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, after only 48 hours of using my new Surface Laptop, I’m starting to feel like this might be accurate.

I should caveat this by pointing out that the office-use component of the Copilot Plus PC experience is perfectly fine, even great. It’s working flawlessly through the writing of this article with me, and the battery stats indicate that I’ve enjoyed 2 hours and 36 minutes of screen playback time since its last charge, with 76% still to go. The battery life on this thing seems pretty solid, so at least that’s one promise included in the list.

However, several missteps over the past 48 hours have undoubtedly shifted my final rating in a more negative direction. Specifically, the app emulation is a hit, and I don’t really see what all the fuss about AI is about, given that Recall is on hiatus until later in the year.

But before we get to that, let’s wrestle with the Windows running entirely on Arm malarkey. Yes, the battery life benefits seem to be there (although more testing will show that), and native Arm apps perform great if you can find them. And here’s the problem: I rely a lot on Microsoft’s Prism emulator layer to run x64 applications that aren’t yet designed for Arm processors. Honestly, I’m amazed at how few apps I use on a daily basis that don’t have native versions. Libre Office, Lightroom Classic, Discord, Asana, and (of course) any Steam game rely on emulation. I knew that my more specialized applications from smaller developers, including Feishin and Jellyfin for media, would rely on emulation, but surprisingly very few larger projects were not included at this point. 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 the “90% of user minutes run on Arm Native” bullshit, but they all work great. However, I’ve experienced a number of black screen glitches when running GPU-heavy pages in Edge using an external monitor that doesn’t show up with Firefox. It seems that even native apps are not immune to problems.

Let’s be generous and say I install Arm and x64 apps 50/50. The problem remains that the simulation performance seems very poor. For example, Lightroom Classic (just update it already, Adobe!) works flawlessly when editing photos, but exporting JPEG files can bring it and other applications to its knees. Asana and Discord, on the other hand, run like an egg and spoon race — stop, start, pause, and load. This is where the Prism’s performance is a disappointment. User interface elements can freeze temporarily, sometimes system-wide, and music playback may be interrupted for a split second. These issues don’t come up often, but when they do, you’re immediately reminded that you’re not getting the best Windows experience ever.

But this is not the cardinal sin. No, the fact that most VPN apps don’t work because they don’t yet have native Arm versions may be an absolute turn off for some. I often need a VPN to check regional versions of websites, and fortunately, I can still do that in my browser. However, many other companies have more stringent requirements, including those in the enterprise space. Fortunately, VPNs are the only apps I’ve encountered that refuse to work outright.

Now, I’d be a little lenient on Microsoft and developers if Windows on Arm were a completely 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 simulation problems that Apple eliminated in about half that time? It’s borderline ridiculous.

Okay, enough of the emulator bashing — the Snapdragon X Elite is powerful enough to power its way through (most) minor issues. Let’s talk about AI, the main marketing material for Copilot Plus-powered PCs. So what’s the buzz about Plus? It’s a bit difficult to know. Windows Recall appears to be the main feature, but it’s been put on hold while Microsoft irons out some very foolproof privacy concerns.

Without recall, Copilot takes center stage as the most obvious user-facing AI feature, but the experience is very similar to that of regular computers. Yes, Copilot’s dedicated button to bring up the web app window is a nice touch (if you use AI a lot), but I still wouldn’t trust Copilot (or any other text generator) for anything beyond mundane questions or the odd paragraph reformatting. With Copilot icons plastered across the toolbar and Edge browser, I probably pressed the physical key three or four times in the space of a couple of days. It doesn’t seem worth sacrificing the right old ctrl key for.

There are other features of AI, but they are more specialized. I’ve yet to find a use for the impressive Live Captions feature (yet), and asking Cocreator to draw anything with people in it can often be intimidating. However, I’ve found Studio Effects to be more useful for a few calls on Discord. The Eye Contact feature looks a little scary, but the auto framing and bokeh feature work very well. However, almost all conference apps have hidden background options without the need for an NPU, so they hardly feel new and exciting.

Another AI feature I encountered was purely by chance. While benchmarking some AAA games, I noticed a pop-up in some titles telling me to activate AI Supersolution. If you can live with 1,152 x 768 resolution, the AI ​​upscaling pushes many games from below 30fps to a more comfortable 50-60fps. Surprisingly, the Snapdragon Again, though, the list of supported titles is far from comprehensive, and the settings menu for manually configuring .exes is far from universal.

I think this sums up my entire experience with this Copilit Plus PC so far – it just doesn’t feel complete. Are patchy AI features and unpolished simulation acceptable trade-offs for better-than-average battery life? Not sure about prices over $1000. I have a feeling my final review is summed up there.

However, we may be at the tipping point in this chicken-and-egg scenario: more powerful and interesting laptops mean developers are taking notice, launching more original Arm designs, and the entire ecosystem is improving rapidly. That is hope, but that is no solace for the bitter taste of disappointment I currently feel. The last two days do not seem very different from the past seven years of trying to justify concessions.