In June 2024 at Dell Tech World, Microsoft announced with Qualcomm their first Copilot+ PCs, which were based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor.
Apart from being the first Copilot+ PCs on the market, these were notable because they were the first attempt to run Windows on Arm processors since the — let’s say learning experience — that was Windows RT.
At that event, I lobbied Dell for access to one of the devices, and they obliged a few months later. I challenged myself to run this device exclusively for two months — not a trivial test as I’ve been a Mac user for 15+ years — because I wanted to take this more seriously than a simple unboxing.
What follows is part one of my experience with that device, my experience with Windows on ARM, and my thoughts on the future of Windows and PC hardware. I’ll follow that up with Part 2, which specifically deals with what it’s like to switch from Mac to Windows, where Microsoft can do better and how I worked around some of the gotchas.
I finally got a Dell
For my first new, non-Mac device in over a decade, Dell sent me a loaded XPS 13 9345 with a spec list that looks like a winner:
Snapdragon X Elite processor –CPU 12 cores, 3400 MHz.
Integrated neural processing unit (NPU) that delivers up to 45 TOPS.
Integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU.
32 GB LPDDR5X RAM.
2880×1800 OLED touchscreen display.
Windows 11 Pro — 10.0.26100 (Build 26100 if you’re into that sort of thing).
While the focus of this will be on the Windows and ARM experience, I wanted to point out that the display on this laptop is the most beautiful display I’ve ever seen– seriously. It’s an absolute joy to look at, and the touchscreen is awesome. It’s a sin that Apple hasn’t added touchscreen capabilities to MacBooks yet.
The device itself looks high end with minimal decorations apart from a Snapdragon sticker on the palm rest. The trackpad is invisibly integrated into the palm rest. The keyboard is backlit nicely, and though it’s a bit of a departure from the chiclet keyboard on the Mac, you get used to the soft rubberized feel pretty quickly. It also has the Copilot key, which replaces the right CTRL key. Personally, I was hoping it would replace caps lock.
All in, the device is cool, and my two main issues are relatively minor. The top row of the keyboard where the function keys are is actually a capacitive touch row with no physical buttons. This means it occasionally gets an errant tap, especially when using the touchscreen. It’s not exactly the same as Apple’s Touch Bar misadventure, but if accidental taps on that bothered you, you might have the same problem here.
The other thing to note about the device is that there are only two ports, and they are both USB-C. Since one is consumed by power, the heavy lifting is done by the other. You’ll probably need some sort of dock or hub.
Windows on ARM once again
Those of you that have been around for a while probably remember Microsoft’s last attempt at Windows on ARM. If not, good for you. It was an attempt to smash Windows 8.1, Intune, ARM and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps into a new platform that went nowhere. All apps had to be delivered through the Windows Store as a UWP app, and it didn’t support x86/64 apps at all, meaning developers had to rewrite their apps. This was at a time when Apple had already demonstrated cross-architecture app functionality with Rosetta, so it wasn’t new. It was just heavy-handed.
While Microsoft never really had any success with it, it was a learning experience and learn they did! Today, it’s safe to say that you can forget about the past. This Windows on ARM is different, and it’s pretty remarkable due in large part to Microsoft Prism.
Microsoft Prism
When moving OSes and apps across architectures, Apple has had the most successful. They’ve done it twice — once with Rosetta when they moved from a PowerPC architecture to an Intel one, and then again with Rosetta 2 when they moved from Intel to their own ARM hardware. In both scenarios, users and developers experienced a more or less seamless migration that eased the transition over time rather than forcing a single all-in or all-out moment.
This element was missing with Microsoft’s first attempt at Windows on ARM, but for this latest round, Microsoft built an emulation layer called Prism. It dynamically translates x86 and x64 instructions to ARM64 instructions on the fly, enabling seamless usage of each type of application side by side. In my case, the only way I could tell was by looking in Task Manager and noting the different CPU architecture next to each process (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The details of various executables and their CPU status in the Task Manager.
The result is, generally speaking, an awesome experience, though there were a few quirks that I think are less about Microsoft and more about the apps themselves checking CPU architecture when the installer runs. For example:
In an effort to do things in the most “Windows-y” way, I attempted to get most of the apps I need from the Windows Store. This worked well for things such as Evernote, but when I tried to get Dropbox, the only option I had was for “Dropbox Lite.” As best I can tell, this is because I’m on an ARM machine, and that was the only version of Dropbox that said it would run on ARM. Installing Dropbox by downloading the installer directly worked just fine. Note that in Figure 1 Dropbox.exe is a native Arm64 executable, while DropboxUpdate.exe and DropboxCrashHandler.exe are both x86 (32-bit) executables.
Box also offered up an error when I tried to install it. The funny thing is that the installer runs just fine, it’s just that when I run Box Drive after installation, I get an error that says it’s not supported by ARM devices and that I should use the web version.
Apart from these relatively minor issues — at least in my opinion — my experience over the two solid months of use was perfectly seamless. I’m a data point of one, and I’m glossing over all of the Mac to Windows craziness that I’ll detail in Part 2, but still. I think I gave this a full, proper test of day-to-day use, and I can say that Windows on ARM is legit.
It’s too early to get super excited about the NPU
As excited as I was to get a machine with a built-in NPU as an end user, I really didn’t get to leverage it much. I often had Task Manager running — which shows NPU usage — and found that much of the time it remained unused. In fact, based on my Microsoft Office-heavy workload, the only things that made the NPU wake up were Zoom and Teams calls. In Figure 2, you can see when I had the camera and Windows Studio Effects on and when I turned them off.
Figure 2. The lack of NPU usage on the PC shown by the Task Manager’s resource usage data.
Obviously, we’re extremely early in the AI PC era, and the apps and features supported by my employer aren’t leveraging local AI capabilities yet. And though I’m familiar with all the “gee whiz” features that were demonstrated with the launch of the Copilot+ PC brand, the reality is that, in my day-to-day life, none of them are particularly useful. At least not yet.
To be clear, I’m not saying that AI PCs or NPUs aren’t worth it. You have to start somewhere, and as more endpoints with AI capabilities enter the ecosystem, there will be more apps that take advantage of them. It’s just that this early on, there wasn’t much to work with.
A quick note about the battery life
I’ve seen many reviews and marketing around the battery life of this specific device. Even Dell lists “multi-day battery life” for the XPS 13 on its Snapdragon laptops page. I don’t have a Windows and Intel machine to compare to, but the battery seems fine to me. If I’m at a conference I don’t need to take charging breaks — that’s my measuring stick. I think it’s important to point out, though, that there’s no chance that the battery lasts for over 24 hours in a normal work scenario despite Dell’s claims.
In fact, based on my Microsoft Office-heavy workload, the only things that made the NPU wake up were Zoom and Teams calls.
Typical battery measurements, especially ones with extreme times like this, are commonly made using unrealistic parameters such as 50% brightness, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled, and so on. I’m not saying Dell is misleading us. I’m just pointing out that your mileage might vary, especially when you’re emulating non-native applications.
Three major takeaways from my experience with my AI PC
It’s safe to say that we’re just getting started in the era of AI capabilities at the endpoint. While Microsoft has done a great job of setting the trend — 45 TOPS, Copilot+ PC, special keys on the keyboard — they’re one of several companies involved that will contribute to what the future looks like.
Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, Apple and Nvidia on the CPU side, along with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Google, Apple and others on the device side will all make their imprint on the market. And of course, a host of other software providers will emerge as major innovators as well.
For now, I have a few key perspectives:
Windows on ARM is real, and the major problems from 2012 have been dealt with. While there might still be bumps in the road, generally speaking, deployment and management are largely in line with the way we’ve deployed and managed x86/x64 devices. Intune works. System Center Configuration Manager works. While there are a few odds and ends that need to be addressed, I can see a future where there are many successful Windows on ARM deployments in organizations.
Amidst their own organizational problems, Intel has bona fide threats in the forms of AMD and Qualcomm. We’ve talked at length here about Qualcomm, but AMD is in a position that represents continuity and a safety net for organizations that are devoted to Intel in the data center and at the endpoint. Even if these same organizations are concerned about the state of Intel’s business. AMD is also focused on AI in the data center and at the endpoint and could be in a position to claim some market share.
Qualcomm has something Intel once exclusively had: public, high-profile support from Microsoft. It’s hard not to see Snapdragon everywhere you look, and while Microsoft doesn’t include them in all of their Copilot PC marketing, it was quite clear that Qualcomm and Microsoft made the Copilot+ PC announcement together this past June. Just look at the work they did together to optimize Prism and how effective it has been at driving real value out of Windows on ARM.
The once stagnant endpoint device market has been injected with a new feeling of energy and anticipation, and it will be fascinating to see how things evolve in 2025 and 2026.
You might wonder — am I going back to Mac? For that, you’ll have to tune in to Part 2.
Gabe Knuth is the senior end-user computing analyst for Informa TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group. He writes publicly for Informa TechTarget in addition to his analyst work. If you’d like to reach out, see his profile on LinkedIn or send an email to [email protected].
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of Informa TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.
