Windows ARM laptops are amazing, actually
Thoughts from 16 months with a Surface Laptop
Last summer, I bought a Surface Laptop 7 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus CPU. I’m writing this newsletter on it now. It’s been awesome when I’m away from my desk. At this point, I barely even think about it. It “just works” — it’s the PC I use when I’m not at my desk.
Qualcomm just released a Snapdragon Control Panel for updating graphics drivers on machines like mine. It’s another sign of the Windows on ARM platform growing up. And it got me thinking about how much I’d recommend these machines to other people.
I switched to an ARM laptop 16 months ago
Microsoft botched the unveiling of the first really good ARM PC laptops by branding them “Copilot+ PCs” and focusing on AI features like the controversial Windows Recall. But the real story in these Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite-powered PCs isn’t about the disappointing Copilot+ PC AI experience.
These machines offer long battery life without the whirring fans and the heat. They suspend properly when you close them and wake instantly, too. And they do it with snappy desktop performance. ARM laptops use CPUs that are more like the ones you’ll find in smartphones and tablets, and they just feel more modern.
Am I gaming or running demanding tasks on my ARM laptop? Absolutely not — that’s what my desktop PC with its powerful AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU are for.
My laptop is for portability and Windows desktop tasks: writing, browsing the web, chatting, and using productivity apps. Nearly everything you’d want to run on a modern Windows desktop now likely runs fine on an ARM machine — unless you have old line-of-business apps. But even lots of old apps run. I’ve run some surprisingly ancient applications without any problems!
Paul Thurrott has talked a lot about how impressed he is with these machines, too. ARM PCs seem ready to take over mass-market laptops. Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware impressed me with its battery life, but it’s expensive, hard to find, and has serious performance drawbacks.
The next few years will see a renaissance of ARM chips from different manufacturers — not just Qualcomm. There are lots of rumors. We may get a gaming laptop from NVIDIA with an NVIDIA CPU and NVIDIA graphics!
The joy of the PC is choice. If you want a powerful desktop PC or beefy laptop for demanding tasks and gaming, you can get one. But if you just want a Windows laptop to use Windows desktop software on the go, I would recommend an ARM laptop.
It doesn’t have to be a Surface Laptop — but that’s the one I’ve spent the most time with and can endorse. It also doesn’t have to be now — maybe you’ll wait for the next wave of hardware. But I think you should seriously consider it when it’s time to buy your next machine.
Anyway, Microsoft made an absolute mess of the announcement, but ARM laptops are awesome. Even I am happy with them after more than a year of using one as my main laptop — but I do demanding tasks on my desktop PC.
If you’re wondering whether your applications run on an ARM machine, check out the Windows on ARM Ready Software page. That’s the big thing to consider before diving in.
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If you’re in the market for a laptop, you can check out the Surface Laptop on Amazon — at $749, it’s $450 off right now. The Snapdragon X Plus chip is the one I have. It actually seems to have longer battery life than the more expensive Snapdragon X Elite hardware, from the reviews I saw!
Full disclosure: This is an affiliate link. If you click the link and buy something, I may earn a small commission to help pay my bills.
But this isn’t a piece written to sell a product. I just want to share that ARM laptops really are as good as people like Paul Thurrott say they are. Unless you’re gaming, running applications that need serious computing horsepower, or using old hardware devices that require drivers not found on ARM — like old printers — the experience just feels so much nicer.
I’m not switching my desktop PC to ARM hardware any time soon, but I’m happy I made the leap to ARM on my laptop.
You should consider it, too — even if you’re not ready to buy a laptop yet. Keep it in mind. Also, if you’re on the fence, you can often try a laptop and return it if it doesn’t work for you. I wrote about using laptop return periods for PCWorld once!
Hey, what’s with the shorter-than-normal newsletter?
I’m glad you asked! If you haven’t noticed, The Windows ReadMe isn’t a big professional operation. At this point, The Windows ReadMe is basically my personal blog. I’m glad you’re here reading it, and I hope you find something useful. But not every week needs to have a newsletter designed to go viral.
I plan to keep providing an unfiltered window into my thoughts. Some weeks, those will be grand thoughts about what happened at How-To Geek or historical deep-dives on Windows. Other weeks, they may be shorter newsletters like this one, where I share how cool I find something and my experience using it. Both are things I want to share.
The Thurrott section!
But speaking of Paul Thurrott, it’s time for this week’s Thurrott.com links. Just a reminder: This isn’t sponsored — no one is paying me to write this. I’m writing this because I respect Paul Thurrott’s work and we link to each other.
The two big stories of the week I feel like sharing are gaming and AI. Everyone’s talking about Microsoft putting AI agents on the taskbar. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s new full-screen Xbox experience is coming to more handheld PCs. You can see more about it in Paul Thurrott’s Legion Go 2 review.
Anyway, as I used to sign off when I had a job running Windows Intelligence: Have a great weekend! See you next week.