Microsoft and Qualcomm have officially ushered in the new era of Windows on Arm with the release of Copilot+ laptops. For now, they use Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Plus or Snapdragon X Elite platforms, which are Arm-based processors. Due to the early performance, battery life, and efficiency improvements, it's easy to get excited about this "Apple silicon moment" for Windows. However, the Windows on Arm movement will be much different from how the Apple silicon transition played out.

Apple ditched Intel for Apple silicon unilaterally on all the best Macs, and that decision made it easy for consumers. There are only a few different variants of M-series chips, and they all generally run the same across various computers and form factors. To the consumer, the only thing that really needs to be considered is whether your Apple silicon Mac has an active cooling system. Otherwise, it doesn't matter whether you're getting the M2 chip in the $600 Mac Mini or the $1,000 MacBook Air — it'll run basically the same.

It's not as easy to navigate the Copilot+ brand and Snapdragon X platform on the best Windows laptops. There are things to think about before buying a Snapdragon X laptop that you don't have to consider when you pick out an Apple silicon Mac — like performance disparities across laptop models, competing chips from Intel and AMD, and overall app optimization.

3 Performance varies by device

Manufacturers can tune the Snapdragon X to their preferences

Part of the reason Apple found success with in-house silicon is that the company controls nearly everything about Mac computers. Qualcomm replicated a lot about Apple silicon with Snapdragon X, but it can't emulate Apple's level of integration. What does that mean for buyers? In essence, it means that the particular model of Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite laptop you choose matters. There are four types of Snapdragon X Elite chips (X1E-00-1DE, X1E-84-100, X1E-80-100, X1E-78-100) and one Snapdragon X Plus chip (X1P-64-100). These variations can have differences in clock speed and/or TDP that could affect performance.

TDP stands for thermal design power, and the thermal design part is important to remember. While Qualcomm is the one designing the Snapdragon X chips, it's the PC manufacturers who are designing the thermal cooling solutions and batteries for these laptops. Performance can vary between laptop models with the same exact Snapdragon X chip, and that's something you don't usually have to worry about on Apple silicon Macs. Things like battery capacity, thermal thresholds, and overall system efficiency can make one Snapdragon X laptop perform better than another.

For what it's worth, people buying Windows laptops are used to this — x86 processors have similar performance variations across laptop models due to these same configurations. However, it may matter more for Windows on Arm laptops. There is already a performance hit when running emulated x86 apps, so you'll want the absolute most performance you can pull out of the Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite chips. Before choosing your Snapdragon X laptop, check how performance varies across brands.

It's also worth mentioning that there have been a few hiccups with Snapdragon X laptops so far, and the problems have been due to the way the chips are tuned by OEMs. The first users to receive Galaxy Book 4 Edge laptops, as documented by a Reddit thread, noticed strange clock speeds and low performance. By the time the laptop's official release date came around, Samsung shipped a firmware update that solved the problems. HP experienced similar performance issues with its EliteBook Ultra, but seems to have fixed the problems with a new BIOS update. It all goes to show that the laptop model you pick matters, and that choice could dictate how your Snapdragon X experience goes.

2 More Copilot+ laptops are coming

Intel and AMD have competing chipsets that may beat Qualcomm — at least on paper

Again, while Apple decisively left the x86 architecture behind in favor of Arm, the former is still very much in the mix for Windows laptops. Depending on what you want to do with your laptop, it might be worth waiting to see what Intel and AMD have up their sleeves to compete with Snapdragon X. Both companies are very confident in their upcoming chipsets, with Intel going as far as to say that Lunar Lake will "bust the myth that x86 can't be as efficient as Arm."

The main benefits of Snapdragon X laptops are their efficiency gains and long battery life. If Intel can really make an efficient x86 processor, Lunar Lake would absolutely rival the Snapdragon X platform. Of course, choosing Lunar Lake over Snapdragon X would ensure full compatibility with x86 apps and equipment like discrete GPUs. The ball is in Intel's court to prove that its claims are correct, as we've yet to see Lunar Lake chips independently benchmarked in reference devices — let alone consumer products. Still, just the possibility that Lunar Lake could be a better option is worth considering before you buy Snapdragon X today.

AMD is here too, and its next-generation chips will support up to 50 TOPS. Intel's Lunar Lake platform will support up to 48 TOPS, making both eligible for Copilot+ features eventually. In other words, the things we love about Snapdragon X may not be exclusive to Snapdragon X for long.

1 App optimization

Even if they run, apps might not be optimized for Windows on Arm

The biggest thing to consider before buying a Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite laptop is app optimization for Windows on Arm. I'm not talking about whether apps will run — that's a whole different conversation, and frankly, it looks like a lot of apps either run natively or support x86 emulation already. Rather, I'm talking about whether apps will be truly optimized for Windows on Arm. Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite chips perform well in benchmarks, but that doesn't matter if apps aren't optimized to make the most of the processors' capabilities.

Some apps will run natively on Windows on Arm, and this is where performance will be best. For example, the Cinebench 2024 benchmark runs natively on Arm chips, so the Snapdragon X chips will perform great in those tests. However, there aren't a lot of apps that offer hardware graphics acceleration for Windows on Arms chips yet. If you run a basic Blender Classroom GPU test on a Snapdragon X laptop, it'll get absolutely trounced by an Apple silicon Mac. That's because Blender supports Metal acceleration, but it doesn't support any kind of acceleration for Snapdragon X chips.

Apps that don't run natively may work as emulated x86 apps, but it should be noted that this is not the same as Apple's Rosetta 2 translation layer. Rosetta 2 takes apps compiled for the x86 architecture and re-compiles them for Arm-based Apple silicon processors. Translation typically preserves more performance than emulation, and this is a big benefit to using Rosetta 2. An April 2024 report from The Verge revealed that Microsoft thinks its x86 emulation can beat Rosetta 2, according to internal documents. From a technical standpoint, translation is a more performant way to run x86 apps on Arm than emulation.

This is definitely something to consider before buying a Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite laptop. Many apps will run natively, and more will support x86 emulation. But very few will support specific optimization for these brand-new Windows on Arm chips, which may limit performance.

Is a Snapdragon X laptop right for you?

These are three things to think about before investing in a Snapdragon X laptop, but they are still great options for a lot of people. Workflows that are web-based, require efficiency, or necessitate long battery life will benefit from the switch to Windows on Arm. Some of the newest Snapdragon X devices, like the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11, are well-rounded devices that fix many of the problems I've had with past Surface devices. They're just not for everyone, and it's worth considering these points before you upgrade.