Copilot+ PCs are all the rage… somewhere. We don’t have any stats to back that up, but there has to be some logical reason companies are pumping these things out, right? Lenovo, whose Copilot+ PC ambitions stretch to just two laptops, is reportedly looking to grow its portfolio with cheaper AI tech than all the rest.
What a novel idea. But there’s no patting Lenovo on the back just yet. We said that Lenovo’s potential hardware may end up being cheaper than the rest – but not necessarily cheap. If the leaks (via The Verge) coming from the ever-useful Evan Blass are true, Lenovo’s efforts could prove somewhat affordable.
Lenovo, take the wheel
The Lenovo press release published by Blass details several new devices bearing the Copilot+ moniker, though two stand out as featuring the unannounced 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chipset inside—the IdeaPad 5x and the IdeaPad Slim 5x—which are likely to have fewer zeroes attached thanks to the chipset’s 8 cores.
Thanks to a slide shared by Blass from Qualcomm (above), we have an idea of how the processor should perform inside a PC. Qualcomm claims a performance of 45 TOPS (trillion operations per second), 1.7 TFLOPS (Teraflops), and support for 3 external displays at 60Hz—on top of the usual PC specs Lenovo’s willing to throw in.
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You’ll still pay a pretty penny to get hold of one of these new 8-core Copilot+ PCs. Lenovo lists the starting price of the 14in OLED-boasting IdeaPad 5x at €1,000 (roughly R19,800) and its Slim 5x partner at €900 (R17,800). We’d rather not imagine what these could cost once they cross South Africa’s border.
We’ll have to wait and see if Lenovo can deliver. Fortunately, we shouldn’t have to wait all that long to find out. Blass suspects Lenovo’s new hardware could appear at IFA 2024 in Berlin, which officially opens its doors this Friday, before bowing out on Tuesday, 10 September.