Microsoft launched its Copilot Plus PC AI laptop platform nearly two years ago and gave starring roles to its own Surface Pro and Surface Laptop machines. On Tuesday, Microsoft added new models to each line, neither of which meets its own definition of what constitutes a Copilot Plus PC. In order to return the starting price to points below $1,000 for the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, Microsoft seems willing to muddy the waters about its AI laptop platform.
In the two years since the debut of Copilot Plus PC, prices have risen for [gestures wildly at everything]. Thanks to the global RAM shortage known as RAMageddon, laptop prices have spiked this year. The entry point for the Surface Pro rose to $1,049, and the cheapest Surface Laptop costs $1,149. These models supply 16GB of RAM, which adds to the bill now more than ever. In response to skyrocketing memory prices (and the presence of Apple’s budget MacBook Neo), Microsoft has released new Surface models with only 8GB of RAM, dropping the starting price of each line by $200.
The new Surface Pro 12-inch with Snapdragon X Plus CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD costs $849 at Microsoft. The new Surface Laptop 13-inch with those same specs costs $949 at Microsoft. The larger models in each line — the 13-inch Surface Pro and 13.8- and 15-inch Surface Laptop — remain unchanged and start with 16GB of RAM.
8GB does not a Copilot Plus PC make
These 8GB additions to each line are not replacements for the models with 16GB of RAM but “give customers another entry point for everyday productivity, browsing, communication and entertainment,” according to a Microsoft spokesperson.
Notably, these 8GB configurations fall short of Microsoft’s requirements for its Copilot Plus PC program. The Snapdragon X Plus processor with its NPU capable of 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS) would qualify it as a Copilot Plus PC, as would the undersized 256GB of storage that hits the minimum requirement. What keeps these new, lower-cost models from joining the Copilot Plus PC club is their 8GB of memory. Microsoft set 16GB of RAM as the minimum for a Copilot Plus PC because on-device AI tasks are memory intensive.
Microsoft trying to make 8GB work
Microsoft is also undertaking efforts to make Windows more memory efficient. If it’s selling these premium machines with only 8GB of RAM, it would certainly like to avoid customers complaining about sluggish performance.
These efforts include optimizing memory based on user behaviors and “putting the user in more control of pre-launch, and limiting pre-launch on devices with lower memory capacity,” according to Microsoft. This means that the apps you use regularly are pre-loaded into memory so they launch quickly, while any apps that you have minimized are isolated so that Windows can give back memory resources they might be using.
I’m not sure why it took a supply shortage of biblical proportions to spur Microsoft into action to make its Windows operating system less of a resource hog, but perhaps we’ll look back at this period and find that’s one of the few positive outcomes of RAMageddon.
Despite Microsoft’s attempts to make Windows more responsive, I would be wary of buying either machine with only 8GB of RAM. Even if you aren’t running local AI workloads regularly, you are likely to hit points each day where you are maxing out the memory and waiting for the system to catch up. With one too many applications running or a dozen too many browser tabs open, the computer is likely to sputter and slow down because Windows must access data from system storage when the memory is full, and that’s a much slower process.
As much as I like the design of the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, I don’t like the idea of pairing premium looks with budget performance. I’d rather give a little on the design for more memory and go with something like the Acer Aspire 14 AI, which supplies 16GB of RAM and costs $700 or less. And for around $1,000, the HP OmniBook 5 14 serves up 32GB of RAM and exceptional battery life inside a stylish, compact design. For tablet heads, I would recommend the HP OmniBook X Flip, which can usually be found for less than $1,000 with 32GB of RAM along with a high-resolution OLED display.
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