---
title: "Copilot+ PCs and the ARM Windows moment."
date: 2024-06-18
url: https://remiam.co.uk/notes/copilot-pcs-arm-windows-moment
tags: [Snapdragon, Windows, ARM, Microsoft]
read_time_minutes: 6
description: "Microsoft Copilot+ PCs launch with Snapdragon X chips in June 2024 — hands-on observations, what is competitive with Apple Silicon, and where Windows on ARM still struggles."
---

# Copilot+ PCs and the ARM Windows moment.

*Published 2024-06-18 · 6 min read · by Liam (Remiam)*

Microsoft just launched Copilot+ PCs running Snapdragon X chips. The hardware is genuinely competitive with Apple Silicon. The software still has work to do — but the platform is real this time.

Microsoft launched Copilot+ PCs this month — a new class of Windows laptops with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus chips, on-device AI, and a redesigned ARM-friendly Windows experience. We bought one for testing. It's the closest Windows has ever come to the Apple Silicon experience.

## What works well

- Battery life. Genuinely all-day on the Surface Laptop 7. The thermal behaviour is dramatically calmer than Intel Windows laptops.
- Wake-from-sleep and overall responsiveness — finally feels like a phone, not a laptop.
- Native ARM builds of Edge, Chrome, VS Code, and most of the modern web tooling are now in place.
- Prism (the x86 emulation layer) is real progress over Windows 11's previous attempt. Most apps run; many run fine.

## What still bites

- Anti-cheat in major games — kernel-level anti-cheat doesn't support ARM Windows yet. Casual gaming works; competitive gaming doesn't.
- Some printer drivers. Yes, in 2024.
- Bits of the developer toolchain — particularly Linux containers — are slower than on Apple Silicon.
- Plenty of legacy enterprise software still won't run, or runs slowly under emulation.

> The ARM-on-Windows category has been promising and failing for nearly a decade. Copilot+ PCs are the first generation where the platform is genuinely good and getting actively better.

## How we're using it

- Test target for any cross-platform web project. ARM Windows is now its own performance profile.
- Browser performance regression checks — Snapdragon X is a different microarchitecture and we've already found one Chrome-on-ARM bug.
- Reference machine for clients shipping enterprise products that need to run on Copilot+ generation hardware.

The ARM-on-Windows category has been promising and failing for nearly a decade. Copilot+ PCs are the first generation where the platform is genuinely good and getting actively better. We don't expect mass-migration off Apple Silicon — but for the first time, Windows has a real laptop platform of its own again.

## References

1. [Microsoft — Copilot+ PCs product page](https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/copilot-plus-pcs)
2. [Microsoft — Prism x86 emulation overview](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x86-emulation)