Our Test Results from the New Copilot+ Qualcomm Snapdragon Laptops

Early Stage Thoughts

These are a very compelling offering for light users. Those people who use their laptop for web browsing, office applications, and conference calls. These tasks all worked well, and these Qualcomm processors are more powerful for the same power draw as their AMD and Intel equivalents. This means they have longer battery life, and less fan noise and heat. Compared to something like the MacBook Air, you are getting A LOT more value for your money. For example, these all come with more memory and most have better displays - fast refresh rate and OLED. The Air though wins on better graphics and no fan noise at all.

So far our favorite device is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7. It feels very premium, has a great keyboard and trackpad, and has a stunning display.

However, if you are a professional user, you may see hiccups in the install and usage of your applications. For example, for software developers, there is no official JDK for Windows on ARM. Linux doesn't work at all, and for DJs RekordBox didn't open at all. But then for some professionals their apps work like AutoCAD.

If this is you, our suggestion is to wait until you know the applications you use are compatible. Or you can buy now, so long as you are able to return the laptop hassle-free if there are issues.

Benchmarks

Comparing similar laptops together Samsung's Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 with Snapdragon vs Book4 16 with Intel we see around 20% performance for similar power draw. Same with Lenovo's Slim 7x with Snapdragon vs Slim 7 with AMD Zen 4.

That being said, there was still some fan noise, and the laptops did get a little warm.

Cinebench - Max Performance Modes

Cinebench testing results

Real World Application Tests

For another source on this, check out https://windowsonarm.org/. This is a GitHub Project attempting to track application compatibility like we are here.

Software Development Tools

• Visual Studio Code
  • Success: Downloaded and installed, was able to connect via Git and show code base
  • Extensions
  • Compiling
• NodeJS
  • Success
• IntelliJ
  • Failed: Installed successfully but no JDK available for ARM64
• MySQL
  • Success
• Git
  • Success: Installed and was able to make a local copy from a Github repository
• Docker
  • Success: Beta version
• Figma
  • Success
• Android Studio
  • Failed: Emulation is not compatible and code indexing takes unreasonably long

CS & Cyber Security Applications

• VirtualBox
  • Failed
• VMWare
  • Failed: "Unsupported CPU" Error

Data Science Applications

• MatLab
  • Success: Benchmark scores worse than expected
• R
  • Success: R installs, RStudio runs successfully
• PyTorch
  • Success
• PowerBI
  • Success

Creator Applications

• Adobe Suite
  • Partial Success, some applications aren't yet supported like Illustrator and Premiere.
  • Details here
• Davinci Resolve
  • Success: Beta version
• AutoCAD
  • Success: Worked well on Samsung Galaxy
• Blender
  • Success
• Cinebench
  • Success: Works well

Games

• League
  • Failed: Vanguard anti-cheat causes issues
• Timespy
  • Success
• Resource for Game Compatiblity on ARM
  • https://www.worksonwoa.com/

Musicians & Audio Engineers

• Rekordbox
  • Failed: Would not open
• Ableton
  • Failed
• Native Instruments IZotope
  • Does not work, won't install

General Use

• Discord
  • Success
• Slack
  • Success
• Geekbench
  • Success
• Microsoft Office
  • Success
• Chrome/Edge
  • Success
• Firefox
  • Success
• Webcam
  • Zoom
    • Success: Webcam call worked, and used NPU for AI effects. It did get a little warm and had some soft fan noise
  • Teams
• Printing
  • Success: Print worked on HP Printer 110
• Dropbox
  • Success
• Google Drive Desktop
  • Failed

Linux

• WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux)
  • Success
• Fedora, Ubuntu 2404 server, Ubuntu 2204 desktop - all ARM aarch64
  • Failed on all versions and all systems
  • Several laptops did not have an option to boot off USB drive or disable secure boot
  • The only laptop that allowed us to boot from a linux USB stick was the HP Omnibook

External Devices

• Mouse | Logitech G Series G900
  • Success
• Keyboard | Razer Huntsman TKL Keyboard
  • Success but Razer Synapse does not show the keyboard
• Webcam | Logitech Stream Cam
  • Success
• Printer | HP 110W
  • Success
• Headphones | AirPod Pros
  • Success
• OWC 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
  • Failed