Forty TOPS, or not

What makes a PC Copilot+

Microsoft sets three requirements: an NPU rated at 40 TOPS or more, 16 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage. TOPS means trillions of operations per second, and it measures the NPU alone, not the processor or the graphics card.

Three chip families clear the bar today. Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus are rated 45 TOPS. AMD Ryzen AI 300 series is rated 50 TOPS. Intel Core Ultra 200V is rated 48 TOPS. Intel's earlier Core Ultra 100 series, including the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12, is rated around 11 TOPS and does not qualify.

What you get that a standard laptop does not

Copilot+ unlocks features that run on the laptop rather than on a server: Recall timeline search, Cocreator in Paint, Image Creator and Restyle in Photos, the full Windows Studio Effects camera set, Live Captions with real-time translation, and Auto Super Resolution for games.

The common thread is that each one processes your own data locally. That is the honest case for the hardware: the work happens on your machine, so it keeps working offline and nothing is uploaded. Whether that is worth changing laptop for depends entirely on whether you would use those specific features.

What works on any Windows 11 laptop

Microsoft Copilot is a cloud service. It answers from Microsoft's servers, works in a browser, and runs on any Windows 11 laptop regardless of NPU. The Copilot key on a keyboard does not make a machine a Copilot+ PC either.

This is where most of the confusion sits. If your use of AI is asking Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude questions, a Copilot+ PC gives you nothing your current laptop does not already do. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 runs Copilot perfectly well at £1,407without qualifying for the badge.

Price does not predict eligibility

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13" costs £951 and qualifies. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 costs £1,407 and does not, a £456 premium for a machine without the NPU. The ThinkPad is the better laptop on most other measures: it carries 32 GB of RAM, 1000 GB of storage, a 2880x1800 OLED screen at 120 Hz and Thunderbolt 4.

So do not shop by price band or by brand tier. Check the processor name against the three qualifying families, because a dearer laptop from a previous chip generation will lose to a cheaper current one on this one specification and win on everything else.

The ARM trade-off

Both Surface Laptops here use Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, which are ARM rather than x86. Windows runs x86 applications on ARM through the Prism emulation layer. Mainstream software works. Some professional plug-ins, niche utilities, VPN and driver-level tools, and games with kernel anti-cheat still do not.

That matters for the shortlist. The two cheapest Copilot+ options here are ARM. The x86 Copilot+ option is the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403UP with a AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 at £2,000. If you need guaranteed x86 compatibility and Copilot+ together, that is the price of entry in this comparison.

Live price

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13" costs £951. Microsoft Surface Laptop costs £1,170. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 costs £1,407. ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403UP costs £2,000. Prices are the cheapest live retailer figure Compare Electronic tracks.

Spec table

NPU ratings are the chip vendors' published TOPS figures. Compare Electronic does not track NPU throughput as a product field, so every machine here was selected because its processor name resolves to a single known NPU.

Which one to buy

• Buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13" if you want Copilot+ for the least money. £951 for a 45 TOPS NPU, 16 GB of RAM and 47 Wh.
• Buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop if you want the larger 13.8 inch screen and the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite.
• Buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 if you want the better laptop and do not care about Copilot+. 32 GB of RAM, a OLED screen and full x86 compatibility.
• Buy the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 GA403UP if you need Copilot+ and x86 together, or a discrete RTX 5070 alongside the 50 TOPS NPU.
• Buy none of them if your AI use is Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude in a browser. Those run on remote servers and work on the laptop you already own.

Verdict

Copilot+ is one specification, not a tier of laptop. The £951Microsoft Surface Laptop 13" qualifies and the £1,407 Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 does not, while the ThinkPad beats it on memory, storage, screen and ports. Buy a Copilot+ PC if you specifically want Recall, Cocreator, Live Captions translation or Studio Effects running on-device. If you want a good laptop, judge it as a laptop and treat the badge as a tiebreaker.