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ZDNET Highlights
- PCs built with Arm processors work well with common productivity apps.
- Backup software may be unable to restore from the external drive.
- Gamers and hobbyists who want to dual-boot Linux will face problems.
Last year, when Microsoft released its first Snapdragon-powered CoPilot+ PC, I bought the cheapest PC I could find. I was surprised that the Surface Pro 11 proved to be a capable addition to my collection of computing devices and I used it as my everyday work machine for about six months.
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Since then, I’ve purchased two more PCs that have Arm-based processors instead of traditional Intel CPUs — a Surface Laptop and a Dell XPS 13, both equipped with Snapdragon X Elite chips. With over a year of experience, I have a solid understanding of what these machines can do and, more importantly, where they fall short.
Microsoft and its OEM partners have been successful in bringing these new devices to consumers, but businesses have been more sluggish. My experience suggests that some caution is warranted.
Windows on Arm has matured quite a bit over the years, and if your everyday work involves creating and editing Office documents and working with Web-based services, you won’t encounter any productivity issues. As a bonus, you’ll get a machine that rarely (if ever) gets more than mildly warm, and the battery life will be a pleasant surprise.
Many of the shortcomings I identified last year have been addressed thanks to the work of third-party software developers. These days, you should have no trouble finding a VPN that will run on an Arm-based Windows PC – I chose ProtonVPN, but there are many other options available.
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Third-party developers are also getting in on the action. Adobe’s most important creative apps, like Photoshop and Lightroom, are available in Arm-native versions. There are beta x86 versions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Audition, and Acrobat that run just fine, especially after recent improvements to the emulation subsystem.
But not everything is sunshine and rainbows in Arm-land. I encountered three significant compatibility issues that could cause trouble for you, depending on what you expect from your PC. What to keep in mind here?
Your backup software may not work
If you have a PC and you use it for any important work, you need a backup plan. Windows has an assortment of basic backup tools, but if you’re serious about preventing data disasters, you’ll have to turn to third-party software.
Those apps can back up files and folders to a local drive or to the cloud, but the key feature for any backup app is its ability to create a system image that you can use to recreate the entire contents of your PC – Windows, apps, and settings – after an event. If your disk fails or your laptop is stolen, you get a replacement PC, restore the latest backup image, and resume where you left off.
Also: How a system snapshot can save you when your OS crashes – create one today
I usually save those backup images to a fast external SSD connected via USB Type-C. If something goes wrong, or I just want to start fresh, I boot from the recovery drive created by the backup software, then restore the image from the external drive.
But when I tried that routine on my Arm-powered PC, a strange thing happened: After I started using the recovery media, the external drive containing my system image was inaccessible. This was true with normal Windows recovery drives and the same was true with the recovery drives created by Macrium Reflect X Home And msp360 backup,Acronis TrueImageAnother reliable third-party backup utility, not yet available in the Arm version.)
I tried everything I could think of to make that external drive accessible, but nothing worked. It took several days of working with backup software developers and PC manufacturers technical support to figure out that this was a known shortcoming of the Windows Recovery Environment on Arm platforms.
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There are alternative solutions, including saving the backup image to a network location or cloud service and then using backup media that can connect to that network location for the restore step. But this adds complexity to a process that should be as simple as possible.
For Arm-based PCs, the standard recovery procedure is to reinstall Windows, restore all apps and settings, and then restore the data files (usually by connecting to the cloud service where they are stored). Recovering from a system image on a local USB drive is not an option.
You can’t possibly install Linux
As Linux proponents will happily remind you, any Intel-based PC that can run Windows can potentially run your favorite open-source operating system. If you get tired of Windows, or if Microsoft drops support for your Windows version, you can replace it with Linux. You can also set up a dual-boot PC to easily switch between those two environments.
But don’t expect to do this on a Windows PC with a Snapdragon processor. As I tried to install Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13 9345 I discovered that there is no readily available installation image of the latest LTS version for Arm. Ubuntu 25.10 was just released in mid-October Includes an arm versionBut according to comments on Ubuntu, it is a great option community discourse server Please clarify for this distro.
Also: Best Linux Laptops: Expert-Tested for Students, Hobbyists, and Professionals
(If it’s any consolation, the challenges of installing Linux on Apple silicon are apparently even more difficult.)
If you are a hobbyist and looking for a science project, this will keep you busy for months. But if you just want to get some work done, stick to an Intel-based PC.
Don’t expect to do any serious gaming
Full disclosure up front: I’m not a gamer, and my only contemporary experience with PC gaming is an occasional session with Microsoft Solitaire. But even in that wretched world, I can tell that Arm-based PCs struggle with the graphical challenges of gameplay.
Problem? Those Snapdragon PCs have a built-in graphics processing unit (GPU) that can’t compete with the dedicated GPUs from Nvidia and AMD that are available on x64 devices.
The good folks at PC Gamer surveyed the landscape for early 2025, asking questions “Are Snapdragon Chips Good for Gaming?”. His reply was a disappointing “Well, maybe one day.” They warn, “Don’t expect 4K or higher frame rates from complex 3D games. … (T)he new generation of Arm-based processors is fully capable of running games the same way your smartphone or tablet is.”
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PCMag.com’s Matthew Buzzi studied a more detailed set of tests and concluded Gaming performance is “acceptable” If you’re willing to lower your expectations and your settings. “If you’re an avid gamer on your general-purpose laptop and are eyeing a Snapdragon CoPilot+ PC, low-end and mid-level gaming is possible on these chips,” he concluded. However, if you expect to play difficult games at 60 frames per second, be prepared to be disappointed.
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