With much fanfare, Microsoft announced a new type of computer at the end of May: the Copilot + PC. It is equipped with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with a computing power of at least 40 watts, which opens up special functions in the operating system. AI functions, of course, because we are in 2024 and AI must be integrated into everything.

During the announcement, Microsoft showed off its Surface devices and there was something striking about them. It didn’t have an Intel or AMD processor as usual, but a Qualcomm SoC. This isn’t just a different manufacturer, it’s a completely different processor. Instead of the x86 architecture that AMD and Intel use, it’s based on Arm architecture.

This processor was already announced in October 2023, but the “Copilot + PC era”, as Microsoft likes to call it, was ushered in with Qualcomm Snapdragon as it was sometimes the case before. Microsoft previously equipped its Surface tablets with SQ1, SQ2 and SQ3 processors, which all eventually came from Qualcomm, but no other system builder wanted to integrate them. Windows devices with Arm hardware haven’t really been a hit yet, but that could change now. Almost every manufacturer has now announced a Copilot + PC with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor.

This review is a bit different from usual, because on the one hand we want to talk about the new Copilot+ function, but on the other hand we are also curious about the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite processor. We got two laptops with this processor: the ASUS Vivobook S with a 15.6-inch display and a price tag of 1,300 euros, and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x with a 14.5-inch display and Lenovo asks for 1,700 euros. Apart from the processor, they are not very comparable, so the goal is not to put them against each other, but to see what the new hardware and software have to offer. You can read all about this later in this article.