GoKawiilMicrosoft 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.
The 13-inch Surface Pro we reviewed still starts at 16GB of RAM, but the smaller 12-inch model can be configured with only 8GB. Lori Grunin/CNET
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.
... continue reading