“I still can’t quite believe that I’m using an Arm-powered Windows laptop every day,” writes a senior editor at the Verge:
After more than a decade of trying to make Windows on Arm a reality, Microsoft and Qualcomm finally nailed it this year with Copilot Plus PCs. These new laptops have excellent battery life and great performance — and the app compatibility issues that have plagued Windows on Arm are mostly a thing of the past (as long as you’re not a gamer). Microsoft wanted 2024 to be “the year of the AI PC,” but I think it was very much the year of Windows on Arm…
The key to Windows on Arm’s revival this year was Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors, which were announced in April. They’ve provided the type of performance and power efficiency only previously available with Apple’s MacBooks and challenged Intel and AMD to do better in the x86 space. After much debate over Microsoft’s MacBook Air-beating benchmarks, the reviews rolled in and showed that Windows on Arm was indeed capable of matching and beating Apple’s MacBook Air. Qualcomm even hired the “I’m a Mac” guy to promote Windows on Arm PCs, showing how confident it was in challenging Apple’s laptop dominance.
Microsoft and Qualcomm also worked closely with developers to make key apps compatible, and it’s now very rare to run into an app compatibility issue that can’t be solved by a native Arm64 version or Microsoft’s improved emulator. Even Google, which previously shunned Windows Phone, has created Arm64 versions of Chrome and Google Drive to support Microsoft’s efforts. With developers continually providing native versions of their apps, it makes it a lot easier to switch to a Windows on Arm laptop. The only big exception is gaming, where x86 still reigns supreme for compatibility and performance…
It’s hard not to see 2025 as the year that Windows on Arm continues to eat into the laptop space. A Dell leak revealed Qualcomm is preparing new chips for 2025, and the chip maker has also been rolling out cheaper Arm-based chips to bring laptop prices down.
The article acknowledges that both AMD and Intel “have the key advantage of game compatibility that Windows on Arm is definitely not ready for…” But “Given the Windows on Arm gaming situation, a new generation of Nvidia’s GPUs could help generate fresh excitement around x86 laptops throughout 2025.” And “Nvidia might also be planning to help the Windows on Arm effort. The chip maker has long been rumored to be planning to launch Arm PC chips as soon as 2025… Whatever happens to laptops in 2025, you can guarantee that there’s going to be fierce competition between Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.”
But the author still complains about the dedicated Copilot key on his new WIndows-on-Arm laptop. “While the Copilot experience on Windows has gone through several confusing revisions, it’s still a key I accidentally press and then get frustrated when a Copilot window appears.”