Windows on Arm finally has legs (2024)

When I first used the Arm-powered Surface Pro X in 2019, I liked the hardware but didn’t like the software experience. Everything seems to be late. Microsoft doesn’t have native versions of Edge or its Office apps, and it’s clear that the Surface Pro X was released too soon. With little support from developers, Windows on Arm is unlikely to succeed.

Nearly five years later, the Windows on Arm experience has improved dramatically. Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors deliver a Windows 11 experience just like any regular laptop. Microsoft and Qualcomm have also pushed software developers to create more native ARM64 apps, and this has made a big difference.

Apps like Photoshop, Dropbox, and Zoom are all native, as are entertainment apps like Spotify, Prime, and Hulu. Even Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Vivaldi, Edge, and Brave are now on Arm. That’s a good start, but there are still plenty of apps that need to be emulated on these latest Copilot Plus PCs, which is where Microsoft’s Prism emulator comes in.

Microsoft says Prism is as good as Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer and can emulate apps twice as fast as the previous generation of Windows on Arm devices. I’ve been testing the Surface Laptop for the past week and haven’t experienced the erratic behavior I’ve seen in Microsoft’s previous emulator, which also affected battery life on the Surface Pro X. But I haven’t seen noticeable issues either. improvement in emulated app performance promised by Microsoft.

It’s hard to test Microsoft’s claims without comparing previous Arm-based devices. YouTuber Gary Explains did exactly that, comparing x86 or x64 versions of Firefox, Cinebench R23, and HandBrake on a Surface Pro X without Prism and then with the latest Windows 11 24H2 update that includes Prism.

Gary Explains found that Prism provided a 10 percent performance improvement in Speedometer 3 running Firefox, an 8 percent jump in Cinebench R23 single core, and a 4.5 percent improvement in Cinebench R23 multicore compared to the previous emulator. HandBrake performance is also improved by 8 percent thanks to Prism.

In my own testing, I found that Prism handles compatibility well for non-native apps, but performance varies depending on the complexity of the app. ShareX, a screenshot tool, works well with the Prism emulator, but it’s a lightweight app. iA Writer and Notion are not native, but they also work on these latest Snapdragon chips. Discord also performs better than I’ve seen on Arm in the past, but there’s still some occasional stuttering and slight lag when navigating between servers.

For heavier apps, Prism doesn’t bring the experience up to what you’d find on an Intel- or AMD-powered laptop. Running Adobe’s Premiere Pro is almost unusable for editing a 4K video on the Surface Laptop, which is probably why Adobe is now blocking the installation of the x64 version on Snapdragon X Elite processors and Plus. An ARM64 version of Premiere Pro is planned for later this year.

Blender is another example of an emulated app with poor performance. Blender doesn’t detect Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU, so everything hits the CPU instead. Performance for rendering projects is terrible as a result, with one test I did taking more than 15 minutes to complete, compared to just over two minutes on a 13-inch MacBook Air M3 . Blender will soon have a native ARM64 version, but I tried the early alpha copy, and it slightly improved the results because it still doesn’t get the GPU right.

Intel has dominated the laptop GPU market with its integrated solutions for decades, so I suspect that Qualcomm still needs to reach out to software developers like Blender to ensure that the app is optimized for its GPU. Blender illustrates that Microsoft’s Prism emulator can’t solve everything.

Speaking of GPUs, games also don’t “just work” on the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus, despite Qualcomm’s assurances. I didn’t make a big deal out of it for the Surface Laptop review because it’s not a gaming laptop, but Windows gaming on the Arm has been disappointing so far. Shadow of the Tomb Raider kept crashing for me when I tried to play, and most other games I tried refused to launch. Fall Guys throws an unsupported error, as it does Hello Infinite. Fate 2 didn’t even launch — no error, just a lot of nothing. Starfield did the same.

There aren’t many native Windows on Arm games, so Prism has its work cut out for it. I got Grand Theft Auto V works but has a lot of stuttering frames. Cyberpunk 2077 also ran on Surface Laptop 7th Edition but averaged 26fps on low settings at 1080p resolution. The Witch 3, Baldur’s Gate 3, Take control, Rocket Leagueand Minecraft everything worked out of the box, too.

The biggest issue here is that most anticheat services use kernel drivers that don’t support emulation. BattlEye, a widely used anticheat service, is one of the rare exceptions that supports Windows on Arm, but apparently games like Fate 2 that use this anticheat software needs to be updated to work properly with it. Fortunately, there is a dedicated website that keeps track of which games are supported and running smoothly. I’m not holding out much hope for an Arm-powered gaming laptop anytime soon, though.

Another thing I ran into was apps refusing to install. Google Drive is the big one here, as it throws up an error about the Windows architecture of Copilot Plus PCs not being supported. Google’s Drive app on Windows integrates with the shell like Dropbox, which is something Microsoft didn’t originally support on Windows on Arm. However, there is a native version of Dropbox that integrates with File Explorer, so hopefully Google can deliver a similar experience soon.

There are also compatibility issues with external devices. I’ve seen reports of Brother printers and scanners not working properly with Arm or the generic printer drivers simply not supporting all the features you expect. There’s no easy quick fix for accessories that need driver support, and that’s likely to come based on the amount of people using these new Copilot Plus PCs. I’m not too concerned about driver issues here because I think most people will be able to plug in the kind of accessories (webcams, printers, storage drives) you use in a laptop and have them work with the built in -in driver in Windows 11.

VPN apps are still an issue on Windows Arm. Bitdefender, NordVPN, and Private Internet Access don’t work. VPN developers use TAP and TUN virtual adapters and devices and require a signed driver from Microsoft to work correctly. Fortunately, Android Authority has reported that VPN developers are working on ARM64 versions.

That’s encouraging because the last time I used Windows on Arm regularly in 2019, I said, “Most of the apps I use every day haven’t been recompiled for ARM and probably never will.” Today, app compatibility with Windows on Arm seems to change every day, which is a scenario I would not have expected to see five years ago.

While we’re at this transition point, you may need to use beta versions or download special builds of Windows apps that are ARM64 native — similar to the macOS transition. This means that the Windows Store versions of apps are not always ARM64, and you may find the enhanced version on the web before the app store version is updated. That was initially the case with Slack earlier this month before the store version was updated.

For everyone else, Microsoft has some tools for power users that can improve Arm app compatibility with existing unmodified x86 or x64 apps. There’s a program compatibility troubleshooter that can help enable or disable emulation settings, and you can also toggle them in an executable’s properties. You can control things like hybrid execution mode to force the use of x86-only binaries, disable floating point optimization that can affect performance, and much more. You can also change how an emulated app uses multiple CPU cores, which can improve performance or compatibility with certain apps.

Ultimately, it’s up to app developers to focus on native ARM64 support for their apps. The plethora of native apps available now shows that things are heading in the right direction. These new Qualcomm chips also provide the brute-force power to emulate apps more efficiently, along with Microsoft’s Prism improvements. Day to day, I think most people won’t run into app issues here because many of the major apps are native or work well in emulation.

I’m confident that many more ARM64 apps are still coming. During my testing, benchmark tools and apps were updated to support ARM64, which surprised me. I’m willing to bet that we won’t be discussing Prism or emulated app performance for a year or two because native ARM64 apps will be as common as x64 apps today after the transition from x86 started in the early 2000s. After 12 years of attempts to move to Windows on Arm, it looks like Microsoft is about to succeed.