On-device AI technologies are revolutionizing workflows and broadening our understanding of what workers can learn and accomplish in amazingly short periods of time. Powerful AI tools and AI-enabled workloads—from localized chatbots to image analysis to process automation and more—can bridge skills, resource, and information gaps for professionals and serve as rocket fuel for forward-thinking innovation. But older, less capable laptops can hold you back. Performance ceilings and slowdowns that currently seem like minor inconveniences can become serious pain points when it’s time to integrate new AI capabilities—stalling progress before you can even build momentum. New AI PCs with higher-performing processors and neural processing units (NPUs) can help carry you forward, but not all such processors are created equal. We recently tested three new laptops with built-in NPUs to see which one could provide the biggest boost to productivity.
We used industry-standard benchmarks to compare the overall system responsiveness and on-device AI performance of three new AI PC laptops with integrated NPUs: a Dell Pro 14 Copilot+ PC, an HP ProBook 4 G1a 14, and a Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 7. We configured each system with the best AMD Ryzen 5 processor available for that model at the time of our evaluations. An AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 340 CPU powered the Dell Pro 14, and an AMD Ryzen 5 230 CPU powered both the HP ProBook 4 G1a and Lenovo ThinkPad E14, respectively. We also ran battery-life benchmarks on all three devices to gauge the type of battery endurance that users could expect in common office productivity scenarios using Microsoft 365 and Adobe Photoshop apps.
We found that in the real-world use cases we tested, the Dell Pro 14 Copilot+ PC with the Ryzen AI 5 PRO 340 outperformed both the HP ProBook 4 G1a and Lenovo ThinkPad E14 AI PCs. The Dell Pro 14 performance advantage was massive, including up to 29x the NPU performance in on-device image processing tasks, up to 27.3 percent faster initial responses to chatbot prompts, and up to 22.6 percent better productivity app performance. The Dell Pro 14 also delivered a full workday of battery life (8 hours and 4 minutes) while handling resource-intensive workloads.
Based on our results, the superior on-device AI and overall productivity performance from the AMD Ryzen AI 5 PRO 340 CPU-powered Dell Pro 14 laptop—along with battery life that can take you all the way through a busy day—could help professionals fast-track the integration of paradigm-shifting AI tools and workloads without the hindrances of older, slower hardware or lower-performing competitor systems.
To find out more about our Dell Pro 14 Copilot+ PC performance and battery life tests, check out the report and infographic below.
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