Microsoft has been pitching its new line of Copilot+ PCs as the future of Windows laptops, and for the most part, we agree. But it’s tough to make a computer a mass-market seller when it costs upwards of $1,000 (sometimes considerably more). Fortunately, that could soon be addressed with a new line of much more affordable Copilot+ PCs that are reportedly on the verge of launch.
That’s because well-known tech tipster Evan Blass just a slide shared from Qualcomm, detailing what we can expect from the next-generation Snapdragon X chips that will power the upcoming Copilot+ PC models.
According to the slide, we could see octa-core chips with 1.7 TFLOPS of output, support for three 4K displays running at 60Hz, Wi-Fi 7, and 45 TOPS of artificial intelligence (AI) performance. The slide also notes that the chips will be made using a 4nm process and will come with 30MB of total cache.
What was missing from the slide was any hint at pricing, but Blass filled that gap by saying that notebooks with Snapdragon X Plus chips will start at $800. That’s a significant savings over the current lineup, like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, and could help make Copilot+ PCs much more accessible to a wider group of users.
What will they miss?
That lower price will apparently come from a few features that have been left out. The 1.7 TFLOPS output is noticeably lower than existing Copilot+ PCs, and that alone will probably explain a large part of the lower price. But if you’d rather have a more affordable machine, that might not be a problem.
The slide is said to be from a presentation by Qualcomm, the company that makes the Snapdragon X chips found in the Copilot+ PC line. While we can’t independently verify its accuracy, Blass has a pretty strong track record of accurate leaks.
Blass suggests we’ll learn more about these chips at next month’s IFA 2024 event in Berlin, where Copilot+ PCs are said to make an appearance. IFA runs from September 6 to 10, and it would be an ideal opportunity for Snapdragon to reveal its new octa-core chips to the world.
