Microsoft has dreamed of competing with Chromebooks for many years, having previously pushed products like Windows 10 S (a limited version of Windows that powered the first Surface Laptop) and Windows 10X (some interesting ideas but was canceled and never released).
Today, Snapdragon X Elite PCs run a “full version of Windows” in many ways—but in using one myself, I’m noticing all kinds of similarities between them and Chromebooks.
While Microsoft wants to talk up its AI-focused Copilot+ PC branding, these PCs powered by Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips run Windows on Arm—and they bring serious improvements that feel a lot like Chromebooks in various ways.
Thanks to Prism, Windows 11 on Arm can run most—but not all—traditional Windows applications that are coded for x86 processors. In other words, most applications will install and “just work.”
Prism’s emulation offers impressive performance—especially for more lightweight applications—and Snapdragon X processors offer snappy performance for day-to-day desktop use.
But there’s no denying one important thing: native Arm apps perform much better and use less power, and the big web browsers (including Edge, Chrome, and Firefox) all run natively on Windows 11 on Arm.
That means I’ve found myself turning to web apps quite often. I use applications like Notion and Trello for running my Windows Intelligence newsletter, and their desktop apps feel a bit slow on these PCs… so I access them in my browser instead.
That means better performance and longer battery life for me. Plus, I can even turn each web app into its own dedicated window and treat it like a desktop app, just like I might on a Chromebook.
Some people have been disappointed by the battery life on Copilot+ PCs. To be fair, battery life can be surprisingly low on the first day when you’re setting up a Snapdragon X PC for the first time because you have to run a lot of updates, install a lot of apps, etc.
The good news is that battery life does improve. After you’re done setting up the laptop, you immediately start getting longer battery life.
The bad news is that long battery life only comes if you use these PCs for light workloads, like web browsing, email, Microsoft Office, workplace chat apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams, video meetings, and so on.
For truly getting the long battery life these machines promise, that’s the kind of workload you want—and fortunately for many, that’s the extent of what we do day-to-day. But if you tax your CPU with heavy apps, your battery life will be much lower than expected.
And that feels a lot like a Chromebook, which works best when it’s used for lightweight tasks. (Of course, I’m just talking about battery life here. You can always plug it in whenever you need to perform heavy tasks without battery life being a concern.)
Willis Lai / IDG
When you switch from Windows to Chromebook, you can’t trust that your Windows applications will all work on your new laptop. The same is true when you switch to Windows on Arm.
Yes, most applications do work… but not all of them.
For example, do you use Google Drive? The Google Drive sync client doesn’t support Windows on Arm, so you can’t use it. Many VPNs and other security applications don’t work, either. If you have to use an in-house business app, it may not run.
And even if an application does work on Windows on Arm, it may not work well—and that can be just as frustrating.
For the first few days after the release of Copilot+ PCs, users installed the x86 version of Adobe Premiere Pro and found it extremely slow. So, while it could run, it wasn’t very usable. (Adobe has since blocked it from running on these PCs and signaled that their apps may be ported to run natively on Windows on Arm.)
But that’s the point: this isn’t like buying a typical new Windows PC. You need to do some research to determine whether your critical applications will run on it—just as if you were switching to a Chromebook, a Linux PC, or some other computing platform.
Hardware compatibility isn’t perfect on Copilot+ PCs. That’s because many older devices have drivers that were specifically written for x86 versions of Windows with no intention to run on Arm.
So, your old printer or scanner might not work properly. Other peripherals you plug into your PC might not work, either. Microsoft has been moving towards universal print drivers to improve this situation, but it’s a real problem right now.
And it’s just like a Chromebook: modern devices designed to work universally across many different platforms may work, but older ones that need hardware drivers to work on Windows probably won’t work.
Thanks to a combination of Snapdragon X’s hardware performance, Microsoft’s improved Prism translation layer, and the Automatic Super Resolution feature that uses the neural processing unit (NPU) to upscale games, many PC games are somewhat playable on Copilot+ laptops.
But games don’t “just work” in the same way they would on a traditional x86 PC. Many games don’t run at all. Fortnite is one of the most popular games in the world, yet it doesn’t run on Copilot+ PCs thanks to its anti-cheat not supporting Windows on Arm.
Digital storefronts like Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store offer no way for developers to distribute native Windows on Arm games, so we’re mostly stuck with traditional x86 games run through Prism—and that doesn’t work perfectly. Far from it.
In a way, it’s similar to running Steam on a Chromebook. Chromebooks can run the Linux version of Steam, which plays Window games via Valve’s Proton. (Proton works surprisingly well these days thanks to the success of the Linux-based Steam Deck.)
Whether you’re running Steam on a Windows on Arm PC, a Chromebook, or a Steam Deck, you aren’t getting the complete native experience that you’d get on a traditional Windows PC with an Intel or AMD CPU. There’s a compatibility layer that may cause compatibility problems.
So, even if you can play some games in a pinch, we recommend against buying a Snapdragon X Elite PC for gaming.
Chris Hoffman / IDG
Microsoft doesn’t seem completely confident in native gaming for Windows on Arm, either. If you have Xbox Game Pass, you’ll be surprised when you launch the Xbox app on a Snapdragon X Elite-powered PC and see absolutely no way to install games on your PC.
Yes, that’s right: on a Windows on Arm PC, the Xbox app actually pushes Xbox Cloud Gaming… and that’s it. Perhaps this is something that will change in the future, but for now it’s surprising.
But it’s also just like a Chromebook, since you can’t play native games on a Chromebook yet you can access Xbox Cloud Gaming.
If you go by the marketing, Microsoft wants everyone to believe that the future is all about AI PCs with powerful neural processing units (NPUs) that can run all kinds of AI features right on the machine—but first-generation Copilot+ PCs don’t deliver on that promise.
Truth is, Windows doesn’t include many AI features that work offline yet. Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot still requires an internet connection—it’s just a web app in a window pinned to the taskbar, and PC integration features (like “Turn on dark mode”) have been removed.
Not only that, but all the AI image editing features powered by the NPU also need a connection to Microsoft’s online services to check your generated images for “AI safety.”
In the end, the out-of-the-box experience isn’t much different from using a bunch of AI features in a web browser on a Chromebook.
Matthew Smith / IDG
As usual, Microsoft is trying hard to ensure backwards compatibility with Copilot+ PCs. Many traditional Windows applications do just work—and that’s why it’s surprising and notable when one doesn’t.
Not only will you have to do some research to ensure your needed software and hardware will run on these PCs, but application developers should ideally also do the legwork to ensure their applications run as well as possible on these PCs.
This is a big philosophical shift for the Windows experience—and it’s one of the biggest ways in which Windows on a Snapdragon PC feels like using a Chromebook, Linux PC, or Android tablet.
This isn’t just a tweaked Windows PC—it’s a different computing platform altogether. It might look like Windows and it might have good-but-not-full compatibility with Windows software, but Windows on Arm is a big step away from conventional x86 Windows. It’s something else.
And that’s fine. I’m impressed. Even if you don’t use these Copilot+ PCs yourself, the competition has at least lit a fire under Intel to push x86 to new limits. Just look at the big strides Intel is making with its Lunar Lake hardware, which will arrive later this year. That’s a win for everyone, whether you want an Arm-powered Windows PC or not.
As ChromeOS expanded and became mainstream, PC makers were faced with an alternative to Windows that actually mattered. Microsoft was forced to compete, and that competition benefited everyone.
Similarly, with these modern Arm chips, Microsoft and PC makers have a credible alternative to traditional Intel and AMD CPUs. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips are just the first ones—in the future, we’re going to see more Arm hardware from other companies.
So, Intel and AMD CPUs will have to compete. We’re already seeing the results of that with Intel’s upcoming Lunar Lake hardware and AMD’s almost-here Strix Point hardware.
The future of PC hardware looks bright and Windows on Arm will only get better (probably). We’re still in the early stages and no one can fully predict where all of this is going to lead in five, ten, twenty years.
For now, though, a Snapdragon X Elite-powered Windows PC simply isn’t the right choice for everyone. It might be perfect for certain use cases, but wrong for others—and in that way, they’re very much like Chromebooks, which serve well for very specific needs.
