New look of Laptops of 2024

 Major changes expected in the Laptops of 2024

As compare to quite 2023, next year is expected to be robust for laptops world. With the induction of AI chips to an embrace of ARM, people are about to see some things come to fruition which have been bubbling in the background for years. Even PC sales are expected to receive a boom as a result of it.

Enhanced Efficiency 

Apple’s MacBooks are the longest-lasting laptops you can buy anytime. Whether you are talking-and-a-half or more of real work. There is no Windows laptop made yet which can achieve the same while providing even near match performance. With tecnological advancements, the end result will be laptops which might look familiar on the outside — but will represent a major shift in how they are made and used, and even how they function. Apple Silicon uses ARM technology that’s intimately optimized via macOS to provide incredible efficiency and fast speeds. On the other side, Intel has relied on older technology and brute force to improve performance generation over generation, but efficiency has continued to suffer. It’s rare that we review an Intel-based laptop which offers even a meaningful fraction of Apple’s longevity.

This should change dramatically with Intel’s Meteor Lake, the company’s 14th-gen CPUs, which were just unveiled recently. There are numerous technical details involved with Meteor Lake which go beyond the scope of this story. But suffice it to say that if Intel’s promises hold true, Windows laptops will be faster and more efficient than ever. Whether they’ll compete with Apple’s latest remains to be seen, but at the very least, the gap would definitely decrease.

Meteor Lake represents the most significant change to Intel’s architecture in years, incorporating the first 7nm process and a four-tile architecture which integrates a Compute Tile with E-cores and P-cores, these are faster and more efficient, an SOC Tile which introduces a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for power-efficient AI, a GPU Tile with faster Intel Iris Xe LPG graphics, and an IO Tile which fuses Thunderbolt 4 and PCIe Gen 5.0 on the chip. But Intel’s not alone in pursuing faster speeds to go with improved battery life. 

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon X Elite which uses the company’s Oryon CPU and Adreno GPU along with a dedicated NPU. The chip has 12 high-performance cores running at up to 4.25GHz, two cores at a time, with a base speed of 3.8GHz. If these claims are true, than it would make the Elite X 50% faster in multicore tasks as compare to the Apple M2. Qualcomm claims that its 4nm process results in CPU performance which doubles up the Intel Core i7-1260P and consumes 68% less battery. Perhaps more impressive, the Snapdragon X Elite could be 60% faster than the Core i7-13800H while using 65% less power. That’s not so impressive considering that Apple just released the faster M3, but even so, the Snapdragon X Elite promises to dramatically improve Windows on ARM performance while maintaining the platform’s excellent efficiency.

Introduction of AI 

AI is an important technology now a days. This seems true when generative AI has become a dominant now a days, if not a dominant technology in practice. But setting aside all the hype, AI promises to make its way into mobile computing in a big way in the next year. The big question is, what will these AI technologies accomplish? Intel already talks about AI improving battery life by changing how CPUs transition power states and better matching those transitions to users. We also saw that Intel and AMD are building NPUs into their chipsets to better support a variety of AI implementations. AMD already did something similar with its Ryzen 7040 Series chips using the company’s XDNA technology. Other than some graphics applications, though, AI currently has limited usefulness. This should change, though, once AI hardware introduced on laptops.

 The industry as a whole has a lot to prove in terms of the usefulness of the NPU, especially considering how powerful GPUs are at AI workloads and how much of AI is processed in the cloud. Still, if Intel, AMD and Qualcomm can leverage relationships with developers to actually use the NPU to speed up a variety of tasks on a PC, this might be the most convincing and seamless use of AI we would see in coming days.

Entry of Windows 12

The reports have begun to indicate that Windows 12 will arrive sometime in 2024. Windows 12 might be modular, with editions tailored for specific laptop form factors and specifications. An example would be a version code-named “Next Valley” which would have specific support for Intel’s Meteor Lake CPUs. 

Another capability which Windows 12 might include is enhanced AI. It’s uncertain exactly what kind of AI will emerge, but possibilities include image recognition, AI-enhanced copy and paste, prompted projects and more like this. Perhaps Intel will introduce some of its own anticipated AI-assisted battery life improvements in Windows 12. We have already seen what Microsoft is willing to do with Copilot, as it integrated AI directly into the operating system, but it’s not hard to imagine the company taking things even further. Rumours say about what the new operating system might look like, and some of them are particularly intriguing. 

 While 2023 was a relatively calm year for laptops, it did introduce some important trends. Displays should continue to improve in 2024, with OLED, QLED and mini-LED showing up on more laptops and improving performance. Refresh rates will continue to rise, with 120Hz becoming as common as 60Hz. Even IPS displays will get better, and laptops with subpar panels will become fewer and farther between.

Foldable and dual-screen laptops like the HP Spectre Foldable PC and Lenovo Yoga Book 9i should become more prevalent next year, hopefully at more affordable prices. Many users demand flexibility, and while the typical convertible 2-in-1 and tablet with detachable keyboard are just the beginning, nothing provides the same kind of flexibility as laptops with multiple displays. More than that, they’re just fun new explorations of a form factor which goes beyond a conventional clamshell. 

The most practical trend we saw in 2023, however, was an increase in the number of excellent ,yet highly affordable laptops. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED offered solid performance and a spectacular display for just $700, and it’s one of a number of outstanding laptops for less than $1,000. Expect to see more of the same in 2024 as Windows laptop makers try their hardest to differentiate their products from Apple’s MacBook line up and offer compelling reasons to buy a new PC by the users.