It’s Copilot+ PC and Snapdragon X launch day: here’s what it looks like at Best Buy

It’s not every day that a new CPU drive enters the PC arena. It is Also It’s not every day that Microsoft releases a brand new PC platform. The two syncs happening today, June 18, brought us to Best Buy in Manhattan for a quick look at how these new PCs, dubbed Copilot+, powered by these new processors, the Snapdragon X Elite and X series More, will look outwards. world.

Technically, the manufacturer of these Snapdragon chips, Qualcomm, is not a completely new face in the PC processor space. But today’s launch of its Snapdragon X chips is by far its biggest foray into the laptop market. It has been accelerating since last fall with the announcement of the X Elite (see our first deep dive with X Elite) and the X Plus tease earlier this year. So far, we’ve only seen Qualcomm-ordered Snapdragon Now, the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus systems are available online and at retail. We took up Qualcomm’s offer to walk us through the displays at Best Buy’s large branch on 23rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan on launch day.

(Credit: John Burek)

A Copilot+ takeover in beige

The Copilot+ setup was freshly assembled this morning and showed significant recovery in the retail laptop section of the store. The brand was dominated by Microsoft’s Copilot+ AI PC initiative, as opposed to the new chips in these new PCs. With Copilot+, laptops equipped with a suitable NPU, or neural processing unit, are able to leverage certain AI-based features running locally on the device. In exposed systems, the two big Copilot+ features highlighted were Co-creator, presented as an easy-access option in the familiar Windows Paint tool, and Windows Studio Effects.

(Credit: John Burek)

The co-creator here allowed you to sketch concept art, enter a prompt, and ask the built-in AI to prepare a refined version of your vision. (We experimented with crudely drawn trees and rabbits to impressive effect.) Windows Studio Effects, demonstrated repeatedly in recent months as an illustration of NPU-optimized tasks, showed background blur, a face smoothing and other elements on the fly. effects applied to a live video-to-camera feed.

(Credit: John Burek)

The third big feature, which was clearly expected up to the last minute for exposure, was the much-touted (and subsequently controversial) Windows Reminder. Indeed, the banners were ready to use and displayed, and the marketing materials had been printed, with the reminder being presented as one of the main features of the Copilot+ PCs. But Recall itself was subject to a, uh, reminder on its own a few days ago, due to privacy concerns and likely public grumbling about the nature of its PC recording business. Recall will launch later via Windows Update with different default behaviors than initially expected.

(Credit: John Burek)

But enough about what was not supposed to happen. The Copilot+ branding, as we mentioned, was main, but Qualcomm was prominent in the on-screen videos promoted on the various OEM systems and on the keyboard stickers.

(Credit: John Burek)

Best Buy itself applies its own layer of Copilot+ PC product information and identification to in-store systems, with a truncated information bar at the top and an expandable screen that displays various Best Buy deals and basic specifications around systems. Depending on the OEM, from the in-store display you can get a more detailed specification walkthrough, sometimes detailing the machine’s very specific X Elite or X Plus processor (but sometimes not).

(Credit: John Burek)

This processor detail is a key element to know. At launch, the first wave of Snapdragon X PCs will use one of four Snapdragon X processors in a given model. But there are only two top-tier Qualcomm processor brands: the Snapdragon X Elite and the Snapdragon X Plus. There are three versions of the 12-core X Elite, varying based on CPU clock, and a single 10-core Snapdragon X Plus SKU, as we detail in our Snapdragon X explainer since a few months.

Qualcomm has 22 discrete models of the Snapdragon X system at initial launch, not including its own desktop development kit. Some of these references are commercial or commercial variations of the same system. But the equipment manufacturers launching Snapdragon Surface Pro and Surface LaptopsLenovo with a ThinkPad and a Yoga SlimAcer with a Swift 14 AI model, Samsung with a Galaxy Book4, Dell with an XPS 13 and an Inspiron, and Asus with a VivoBook S 15, as well as HP with a new Omnibookresurrecting a line of laptop brands familiar from years ago in another momentous move today.

Find the Rainbow Desktop

This particular branch of Best Buy featured and sold most of the major OEM models (except those from Acer and Asus), with an interesting visual twist: machines that use Snapdragon Copilot+ program were placed on top. of colorful placemats that reflect the new default Windows desktop used on Copilot+ PCs. The new desktop contrasts with the usual Windows 11 desktop, dominated by a blue swirl. This multi-colored visual indicator is intended to distinguish Copilot+ PCs from the crowd on store shelves.

(Credit: John Burek)

As previously reported, Qualcomm will likely have the Copilot+ PC space for a few months. AMD, with its Ryzen AI 300 processors arriving on systems this summer (July should see the first ones), says it will add Copilot+ as a Windows Update feature after the fact, meaning that even when these next laptops launch, they won’t technically be Copilot+ machines at all right now. Intel, meanwhile, detailed its next-generation “Lunar Lake” mobile processors at Calculex 2024. Check our report on these mobile chips, which is expected to hit the PC market in the third quarter and equipped with an improved NPU that will make them ready for Copilot+. (That probably means by the end of September, although we’re betting later this quarter, given the relative lack of Lunar Lake PCs shown off at Computex earlier this month.)

(Credit: John Burek)

For now, at retail, if you’re considering a Copilot+ PC, it will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon starting at $999. They are also just beginning to appear in the hands of tech media; We received our first Snapdragon X-powered machines today and will be putting them through their paces this week and next.

Stay tuned for performance numbers, as well as our first hands-on impressions of these first Windows 11 machines on Arm in the wild. They look great on paper and in controlled demos; let’s see how they behave under the microscope.