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Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs lead the AI revolution at CES 2025

As most everyone expected, you couldn’t walk past a single booth or have a conversation with anyone at this year’s CES show without the topic of artificial intelligence being addressed. It was truly AI everywhere.

The AI focus was particularly noticeable at companies that create PCs and the chips and software that power them. AI PCs and Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs were a big part of this year’s show news and for good reason. After their introduction in 2024, the category has quickly matured into the mainstream, with a huge range of new consumer and business-focused laptops unveiled at the show. Many of these new PCs were based on an impressive array of new processors from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Nvidia that promise to bring a new set of capabilities to our workhorse devices.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card as he gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. January 6, 2025.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds a new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card as he gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. January 6, 2025.

HP, for example, unveiled a new high-end, gaming laptop called the Omen Max 16, which offers the choice of either a new Intel Core Ultra 9 or AMD Ryzen AI 9 processor, as well as Nvidia’s latest GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs. The combination delivers the fastest gaming performance the company has ever offered while enabling AI acceleration for creative apps as well.

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In a sign of how CES has evolved into as much of a technology showcase for business as it is for consumer devices, some of HP’s most interesting new notebooks were focused on commercial users. The most impressive is the company’s new ZBook Ultra G1a portable workstation, which is based on AMD’s new Ryzen AI Max Pro chip. While it’s clearly not for everyone, the Zbook Ultra G1a is a powerhouse that’s expected to outperform even the newest Apple M4 chip-equipped Macbook Pros on advanced graphics applications like 3D rendering. It also offers an extremely nice, OLED display with built-in blue light reduction and the fastest Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for accelerating AI workloads currently available. HP also took advantage of Intel’s introduction of its Core Ultra Series 2 processors to launch its HP EliteBook X G1i lineup.

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Lenovo’s splashiest new PC is their new ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 laptop with an impressive rollable screen that extends the normal 14” display into a 16.7” one that offers 50% more screen real estate (see our review of the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 at CES 2025 for more). Lenovo also debuted their Yoga Slim 9i, also powered by Intel’s latest Core Ultra Series 2 processors, which Lenovo claims is the first to feature a camera under the display (as some smartphones now offer). This allows the laptop screen to extend to the edge of the top panel, creating a borderless effect and an industry-first 98% screen-to-body ratio.

On the portable gaming front, Lenovo leveraged AMD’s next-generation Z2 chip in their new Legion Go S handheld gaming device. Interestingly, it’s available both in a version that runs Windows as well as one that runs SteamOS ‒ the first to be licensed to do so.

In the case of Dell, the company generated nearly as much news on its new Apple-like product naming architecture that was unveiled at the show as it did its new products. To simplify its product naming ‒ an exercise that HP also recently went through ‒ Dell is moving away from sub-brands like XPS, Inspiron and others to a simple Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max lineup with two additional performance tiers (Plus and Premium) within each category. While it will take a bit to get used to for long-time Dell fans, there is logic behind the move that should pay off in the long run.

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One of the first products with the new naming is the Dell Pro 13 Premium, which incorporates Intel’s latest AI-capable processors and weighs just 2.3 pounds. One other interesting note from Dell is that the company announced that they were going to offer a full range of AMD Ryzen AI Pro-powered notebooks for business buyers in addition to Intel options. As a long-time Intel-only company when it came to business laptops, the move generated an impressive amount of buzz. Realistically, though, it simply reflects the growing impact of AMD chips in the business world.

Speaking of business ‒ or at least small business buyers ‒ Samsung also announced their new Galaxy Book 5 clamshell notebook and Galaxy Book 5 360 convertible notebook PCs, the company’s first to offer dedicated AI acceleration. Both of the new Samsung notebooks feature the company’s impressive OLED screen technology and are powered by the brand-new commercial version of Intel’s Core Ultra chips.

Though it’s targeted at software developers and AI model designers and not regular consumers, one of the most surprising PC launches at CES was the Nvidia Project Digits mini desktop PC. Featuring a powerful GPU based on the company’s Blackwell architecture as well as a Mediatek-designed Arm CPU, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called Project Digits (the official name is still TBD) a personal supercomputer. Before you get too excited, though, the Project Digits system only runs a special version of the Linux operating system (and can’t run Windows), doesn’t run games, and starts at $3,000. Still, it offers an intriguing look into where the PC market (and Nvidia) could be headed.

On a much more reasonable front, Qualcomm also introduced a new version of their Snapdragon X series of Arm-powered processors that found its way into PCs from Dell, HP and Lenovo among others. The new chip is bringing down the cost of Copilot+ PCs to the mainstream $799 and below price range by reducing the number of CPU cores down to 8 (from 10), but it still retains the same powerful Neural Processing Unit as previous chips. This means it will still offer the same level of AI performance in the new set of PC applications that are starting to use the NPU.

To be clear, while there are a few good examples of applications that use the NPU to run AI applications directly on the PC ‒ Microsoft’s Copilot features, Adobe’s suite of creative apps, videoconferencing tools like Zoom and Teams ‒ we’re still waiting on a full range of AI PC applications. But what’s great about all the latest capabilities in these AI PCs is that they are first and foremost much better computers than previous generations. They all offer significantly faster performance and much battery life, regardless of whether you want or need the AI capabilities right now.

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Given that most people hold onto their PCs for about 4-to-5 years, it just makes sense to get something that offers those capabilities integrated into your next PC so that you’re prepared for the future. Plus, based on some of the amazing behind-closed-door previews I saw at CES for AI applications coming later this year, you won’t have long to wait.

USA TODAY columnist Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst ofTECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm. You can follow him on Twitter@bobodtech.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CES 2025 unveils AI-powered laptops: The next generation of computing