NEXT GEN LAPTOPS

Need an AI wingman? CoPilot Plus laptops have hardware and software made to make your life a bit easier, with artificial intelligence

- Andrew Williams

Microsoft calls CoPilot Plus a new category of laptop. These are PCs made for AI. Yes, that term gets dragged out at every possible opportunity these days, but there is a specific claim involved here.

First-wave CoPilot Plus laptops use either the Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus CPUs. These have an unusually powerful NPU, a neutral processing unit. Forty-five tera-operations per second is the headline figure. Big numbers.

Eyes glazing over? We get you. But Microsoft says this is the power level at which a laptop can perform minor AI miracles locally, without relying on the cloud - or an internet connection.

Headline AI features include the ability to conjure live translated captions for any audio, in more than 40 languages, offline. Or you can let AI not-so-subtly augment and improve your own artworks, meddling stroke-by-stroke in a feature called Cocreator.

Recall is the real eyebrow-raiser. This looks back over everything 'you have seen or done on your PC', to let it act like a true digital PA who can nudge your memory about that document you had open the Tuesday before last.

Privacy and security alarm bells going off? Your head is screwed on right, but Microsoft says all this info is stored locally on your laptop, eradicating most risk.

Serious acceleration of the AI features recently bunged into apps like Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve is coming too.

But you know what? We're just as stoked about some of the basics. CoPilot Plus laptops are rated for up to 26 hours of use.

And while these claims are usually as reliable as your average train timetable, that's a hefty number.

We expect big gaming potential too, with reports you'll be able to play titles like Baldur's Gate 3 and Control thanks to a major jump in GPU power over the Intel Ultra laptop rivals.

Enough with the chat, let's have a look at the contenders.

ACER SWIFT 14 AI