If you dropped $1,200 on a shiny new laptop this year because the box said "Copilot Plus PC," congratulations—you bought a sticker with a keyboard attached.
Microsoft's big pitch was that these machines have a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) cranking out 40+ TOPS, which sounds like a lot until you realize most of the "AI magic" still happens in the cloud, on someone else's server, for free.
The NPU was supposed to unlock a wave of on-device features: instant translation, image generation in Paint, live captions, and the crown jewel—Recall, which screenshots everything you do so you can search your own digital life later.
Sounds great, right up until security researchers pointed out that a feature literally recording your passwords and bank statements might be a tiny bit of a privacy nightmare.
Microsoft delayed it, shipped it behind a bunch of safeguards, and the vibe has never fully recovered.
Meanwhile, the average buyer is left staring at a Copilot key they accidentally press instead of the right-hand Ctrl.
That key, by the way, is the single most tangible "AI feature" most people interact with daily, and it just opens a chatbot you could already access in a browser.
Here's where it gets funnier: you don't actually need an NPU for most of this stuff.
Regular laptops from three years ago run Copilot just fine, because the heavy lifting happens online.
The NPU sits there like an expensive decorative houseplant, occasionally powering a webcam effect that your phone has been doing since 2019.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips did deliver genuinely great battery life, so the hardware isn't useless—it's just that the "AI" part is doing a lot of marketing and not much else.
Retailers are now quietly slashing prices on first-gen Copilot Plus machines as newer chips roll in, which tells you everything about how well the first wave landed.
If you already own one, you're fine—it's a normal laptop that runs normal apps.
If you're shopping, don't pay a premium for the badge.
Buy based on the screen, the keyboard, and the battery, the stuff that actually affects your life.
The real takeaway is that "AI PC" is currently a category in search of a problem.
The features exist, sort of, but they're either underwhelming, delayed, or already available on the machine you own.
Give it a couple of years and the NPU might genuinely matter.
Right now, it's a spec sheet flex that mostly benefits the people selling you the spec sheet.
Our take: skip the hype tax and buy the laptop you'd have bought anyway.
Future-you will thank present-you for not paying extra for a button that opens a chatbot.
Final Thoughts
The sticker peels off; the buyer's remorse sticks around a little longer.