Microsoft Windows 11 Review: A Redesigned, Copilot-Powered OS

Lately, the biggest changes in Windows have come exclusively to Copilot+ PCs, which are now available in both long-battery-life Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs and those from Intel and AMD. These NPU-equipped devices get new AI-powered features like Click to Do, Cocreator image creation in the Paint app, Recall, semantic search in OS components, and Super Resolution in the Photos app.

For all PCs, the 2024 update of Windows 11, also known as version 24H2 (2024 second half), reengineers much of the underlying kernel code for better performance and security. Rather than exciting new features, it added helpful interface tweaks, such as the ability to scroll the Quick Actions panel for more settings and a redesigned Copilot that no longer plants itself on the right side of your screen. New File Explorer and Phone Link features also appeared.

The latest versions of Windows are never the end of updates. Microsoft adds new features in what it calls "continuous innovation." In other words, in addition to an annual big update, you get new features and changes throughout the year at no additional cost.

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Windows 11: The Review

Windows 11 is a free upgrade for Windows 10 systems. The new OS is an option for all PCs that meet the requirements (more on that in a moment), and new computers ship with it preloaded. Anyone with a recent CPU, though, should have no trouble installing Windows 11 via Windows Update.

Can you buy Windows 11 without updating or buying a new machine? Yes. You can buy a Windows 11 Home license ($139.99) or Windows 11 Pro edition ($199.99) from the online Microsoft Store for a DIY PC or virtual machine. To find out the differences, read our Windows 11 Home vs. Windows 11 Pro comparison. The company no longer directly sells Windows 10 licenses in its online shop.

Much has been made of the system requirements for Windows 11, but they’re very low: 1GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage. A 64-bit processor is a must; there's no longer a 32-bit version of the OS. You also need a computer with a TPM security chip and Secure Boot capability. That has been standard on most PCs for the last six or so years. The real limiter is the CPU model, which needs to be from about the last four years. The PC Health Check app is a tool that assesses your PC's ability to run Windows 11.

Another type of CPU that runs Windows 11 is Arm64. The company has shown commitment to this lower-battery-usage, always-connected platform by producing a full set of development software for it. The recent Prism feature allows non-Arm software to run on Arm PCs, most popularly of the Qualcomm Snapdragon variety. The neural processing units, which power AI, will become very prevalent in computers, as evidenced by nearly every PC at the 2024 Computex trade show. AI is already built into Windows with the Windows ML component.

To start using the OS, you need to sign in to an online Microsoft account. This requirement raised the ire of some commenters, though I don’t think it’s an issue worth getting worked up about. You can easily switch to a local account later. If you really object to signing in with an online account for your operating system, since macOS and ChromeOS also de facto require it, may I suggest Ubuntu?

A final note about installation: If you prefer the older OS version, you can roll back to Windows 10 for 10 days after upgrading. Microsoft has announced support for Windows 10 through 2025, though individuals and corporations will be able to extend security updates for it beyond that date for a fee. Another (unofficial) option if you want to keep using the superannuated OS is to install 0Patch.

Much of the work on the initial Windows 11 release went toward redesigning the interface rather than building wholly new features, so the OS is more familiar than you might expect. It borrows ideas from ChromeOS, though you can still place app icons on the desktop background, which Google’s lightweight desktop OS doesn't allow.

Windowing and multitasking remain more advanced in Windows than in its competitors. The interface has rounded corners (like those in macOS) for all windows, which is not a significant change but does give the OS a smoother, more consistent look. Microsoft's Fluent Design System and the system's Mica material play large roles in the redesign. This semi-transparent look is appearing in more and more included apps and utilities.

Copilot in Windows

Microsoft Copilot is an optional AI tool that has become increasingly humanlike. In the 24H2 version of Windows, you access it and resize its window just as you would any other Windows app. You give Copilot prompts or commands by typing in a chat box or clicking a microphone icon and speaking. The updated app now carries on remarkably natural conversions in one of six humanistic-sounding AI voices. A Quick View option displays a smaller always-on-top Copilot window.

Plug-in support is gone from the latest incarnation of Copilot, though similar agents will be coming, and other new tools are arriving at a good clip. Copilot Vision, for example, conversationally provides information about webpages you visit in the Edge web browser. The Think Deeper option, which uses more advanced AI models to delve into topics, is now free for all Copilot users.

The Microsoft Copilot Labs blog says Think Deeper can "help with anything from solving tough math problems to weighing up the costs of managing home projects." It also notes that the feature "can take more time before responding, allowing Copilot to deliver detailed, step-by-step answers to challenging questions."

Strangely enough, Copilot+ has little to do with Copilot itself; it's instead a set of locally processed and unique AI features that some newer PCs offer. Among them are Cocreator image generation, Live Caption translation, Studio Effects for video calls (like background blur and live filters), and the aforementioned Recall feature, which lets you search for recent actions on your computer via a timeline.

Start Menu and Taskbar

The Start menu gets a complete overhaul. Pinned app buttons (larger than icons but smaller than Windows 10 tiles) are at the top of its panel. The Recommended section below them doesn't work well for me. I prefer simple Recently Added and Most Used sections like those in Windows 10. The Start menu’s icons are adequate for touch input, but they're smaller, and you lose the info that Windows 10's live tiles offer, as annoying as some users find those to be.

Another quibble I have with the Start menu is that it's harder to get to the All Apps view than in Windows 10. With that version of Windows, you can see all installed apps as soon as you open the Start menu; they're in a list on the left, while tiles for your pinned apps are on the right. You can now group pinned app icons into folders and change the portion of Pinned vs. Recommended icons that appear in the Start menu. News is out, however, of changes coming to the Start menu: You will be able to see every app by scrolling down, and a side panel for your smartphone can accompany the main Start menu to its right.

For decades, the Windows Start button lived in the lower-left-hand corner. Getting used to it being in the center instead could be one of the bigger adjustments you need to make in Windows 11. The issue for me is that, until now, the Start menu has always been in the exact same place. Now, if you run more programs, it moves a bit more to the left. Not having to think at all about the Start button’s position was a plus in Windows versions going back more than 20 years. Happily, a taskbar alignment option in Settings lets you move the Start button back to its rightful position in the left corner.

I wasn't crazy about the new taskbar in Windows 11's initial release, but subsequent updates have rectified my issues with it. You can choose to have the taskbar buttons wider by selecting the Never Combine option in Settings. In Windows 11, you can still hover over the buttons to see a thumbnail of the app window and right-click to view the Jump List, which shows recent documents or other common actions for the app.

File Explorer

File Explorer is a good example of Windows 11’s new look, particularly its left panel controls and colorful folder icons. Note the simplified ribbon along the top, which is far less busy and distracting than Windows 10's File Explorer. It also now has tabs, so you can use several pages in one window. The Gallery view shows recent photos you've added, no matter where they reside on the disk. Finally, the system can handle 7-Zip and RAR files without the need for third-party software.

File Explorer's New button at the top left works for new folders or documents supported by your apps, and the same viewing options (list, details, differently sized icons) for files are available. The overflow menu has file compression, selection, and Properties options, as well as the old Folder Options dialog. The right-click context menus get a small update for version 24H2: They now show text in addition to the icons for copy, paste, and so on across the top. The context menus, in general, are clearer, shorter, and smarter in Windows 11. They show only the most often-needed options, but you can tap "Show more options" to see the extra menu items that installed programs add.

If you want still more functionality out of your file manager, you always have the option of using one of several File Explorer Alternatives. But you no longer need one of those to use tabs. And if you're on a Copilot+ PC, you now have natural-language semantic search in File Explorer, meaning you can type something descriptive rather than exact.

Windows Search

The search function started life in Windows 11 as a mere button, but it can once again display as a real entry box that you type in. You can choose whether you want a button, a box, or no search at all in Settings. Just clicking in the search box shows you a daily spotlight on the left (World Donkey Day in the screenshot above) and a list of icons of recent apps along the left. This layout is actually more useful than the Start menu if you're just looking to jump back into an app. Once again, Copilot+ PC users get semantic search here.

Widgets

Windows 11 has a Widget panel that shows you tiles for news, weather, stock quotes, sports scores, and more. It’s not entirely new since the News and Interests taskbar pop-up in Windows 10 is similar, down to including a weather indicator on the taskbar. You can full-screen the panel if you really want to dig into it. In addition to Microsoft-produced first-party tiles in the Widgets panel, third-party developers can offer content through Windows 11’s widgets. Third-party entrants include Spotify and Meta Messenger. If your machine has a touch screen, you can easily swipe in from the left to open widgets and full-screen the panel to get a bigger view.

The left column is where the widgets you choose appear, and the right side has widgets in the Discover, Following, Play, and Gaming sections. The first three from the latter group are mostly content from news sites. An Entertainment widget surfaces new movies and TV shows, and the Family widget is good for those who use Microsoft Family Safety parental controls tools.

Notifications and Quick Settings

Windows 11's Notifications resemble macOS's previous notification area, which used to be a clean, simple, single panel but is now a collection of smaller pop-ups. The Windows 11 version isn’t as bad as the macOS one since it doesn't pop up a new box for every notification that you must dismiss by clicking an X, but I still prefer Windows 10's single Action Center panel for notifications and quick settings. I appreciate the circled number that shows how many notifications you have. Touch users can swipe in from the right to display the Notifications panel.

The Quick Settings panel opens when you click on or tap the connection, speaker, or battery (if it's a laptop) icon. The included buttons vary by PC, but you usually see buttons for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, Energy Saver, and Accessibility, along with sliders for audio volume (now with a source mixer) and screen brightness.

The 24H2 update adds the ability to scroll the panel so that it can accommodate more control buttons. The panel includes Cast (for external displays and audio), Nearby Sharing (like AirDrop for PCs), Night Light, and Project. Copilot+ PCs get more buttons here for exclusive features like Live Captions, Recall, and Studio Effects. You can still hover over each of the three icons in the taskbar to see their status, but I prefer to have just sound settings pop up when I press the speaker and just Wi-Fi options when I press the Wi-Fi icon.

Snap Layouts and Multitasking

Windows has long surpassed macOS in the way it lets you arrange app windows on the screen, and the gap grows wider with Windows 11’s Snap Layouts option, even after macOS Sequoia started mimicking the Windows feature. You get to Windows' Snap Layout feature by hovering the cursor over the maximize button at the top right of any window. When you hover over the maximize button, you see a choice of layouts—two windows side-by-side, three with one large and two small, and so on, as shown above. The layout thumbnails even show you the app icons of running apps to help you choose where to place them.

Snap Layouts appear as options in the taskbar, so you can either open a group of apps or a single app. You also see layouts preserved when you open a group of apps on an external monitor multiple times. Snap Layouts also works on touch tablets, but using it isn't particularly intuitive.

Windows still gives you multiple virtual desktops, something I find incredibly useful for separating work apps and websites from personal ones. I either press Ctrl-Windows Key-Arrow to move back and forth between them or the Windows Key-Tab keyboard shortcut to choose one from Task View. With Windows 11, you can use a four-finger swipe to move back and forth, something Mac users have long enjoyed, though only via trackpad rather than right on the screen. Also new is the ability to set different desktop backgrounds (aka wallpapers) for each desktop. Setting up a wireless display is another option for separating computing tasks, and Windows 11 doesn't make that process too difficult.

One of the more irksome things about Windows 10 is the inconsistent settings of windows and dialogs. Sometimes, you uninstall a program in the Settings app, and sometimes via the antiquated Control Panel. That inconsistency goes away almost entirely in Windows 11. For some detailed controls, such as sound devices, you still see the content in the old style, though the window uses the new design.

The Light and Dark mode settings are still in the Personalization > Colors setting area, and the modes look much better than in Windows 10, particularly the Dark mode, which effectively uses transparency. Dark mode can now proudly hold its head up when compared with that of macOS.

You can still change system sounds in Settings, but the Windows 11 default set of sounds is slick, quick, and modern.

Another area with a fresh design is Task Manager. It lets you shut down misbehaving programs and see which are hogging system resources like the CPU, disk, and network connection. An Efficiency mode lets you reduce an app's drain on the system.

Windows 10 introduced a terrific utility for taking screenshots called Snip & Sketch. With a press of the Windows Key-Shift-S keyboard shortcut, it lets you select an area (either rectangular or free-form), a window, or the entire screen and snap a screenshot you could paste from the clipboard or open in an image editor. Windows 11 instead has a Snipping Tool. It's named after an earlier, less functional screenshot tool that had been a fan favorite among Windows enthusiasts.

The Snipping Tool adds an optional timer delay before taking a screenshot, and it lets you record screen activity and still images of the screen. Other ways to take screenshots in Windows 11 remain, including the tried-and-true PrtSc key, the Game Bar, third-party screenshot utilities, and so forth.

This tool's latest capability is extracting text from screenshots. It uses AI to determine sensitive text, such as phone numbers and email addresses, and redact it automatically. What's more, you can use these tools with any image on your PC that has text in it.

Read my article on how to take screenshots in Windows 11 for all the details.

Since most people carry a small mobile computer wherever they go, it's essential that any tech product includes a way to link to it. For Windows 11, Microsoft enhanced Windows 10's Your Phone app, renaming it Phone Link. It's a truly powerful way to connect your phone to your PC.

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I used to be envious of the way Mac users could send messages via their iPhones, but no more. Windows Phone Link goes way beyond that for Android users. Photos you take on your phone appear instantly on your PC, and some phones allow you to run multiple mobile apps on your computer's screen. That's in addition to calling and texting capabilities. You get desktop notifications from any app with messaging features and can respond directly from the notification.

You can also connect an iPhone to Windows 11 for texting, notifications, and calling. The ability to transfer files between Windows and iPhones is also in the works.

Another way your phone and PC can interact is with the mobile version of the Edge browser, which lets you see sites you've visited on either device and send files back and forth using the Drop feature.

Windows 11, regrettably, ditches a couple of its best tablet- and touch-friendly features. Most importantly, you can no longer swipe in from the left to open the task-switching view, a gesture I use all the time on my Surface Go tablet. You can no longer swipe down from the top to close an app, either. This change is less of a big deal because you can still press the X in the window’s upper right corner as you would in desktop mode. You get to the Snap layouts by holding a finger on a window's top bar, which causes a bar to descend from the top with choices of layouts.

The 24H2 update introduced new three-finger swipe gestures to show the Task View and to minimize (but not close) an app on the desktop. A sideways three-finger swipe switches between running apps. You can use the Task View button in the taskbar, but it's not as immediate as a swipe of the thumb. I’d argue that switching tasks is more important to tablet users than accessing Widgets, which is what swiping your left thumb in from the edge now accomplishes.

On the plus side, Windows 11 tablet users have stylus options and on-screen touch keyboard tricks. The Surface Slim Pen 2 has haptic feedback—always a plus. This pen (available on the latest Surface devices) buzzes in your hand, for example, when you delete previously written text and when you tap the Back button to open the Whiteboard app. In that app, you can experience the full digital inking experience, which now rivals a traditional writing experience. You can, for example, highlight text, write freehand (even sloppily), and sketch diagrams. You can even convert what you write to digital text. The on-screen keyboard supports swipe text entry, gives you a healthy selection of emoji and GIFs, and lets you choose custom backgrounds.

Speaking of emoji, Microsoft released Fluent design-influenced emoji. On Windows 11, just as on its predecessor, you can tap Windows Key-. (period) to access a small panel with a generous selection of symbols, special characters, and emoji.

Like the rest of the interface, the Microsoft Store app gets a slick design refresh. In addition to apps, the Store offers movies, TV shows, and games. For some ideas on what to install, read our roundup of the best apps for Windows 11.

Though support for running Android apps directly was a much-touted new feature at Windows 11's initial launch, that endeavor has fizzled, and Microsoft decided to retire the Windows Subsystem for Android, effective March 25, 2025. That doesn't stop you from running multiple Android apps on your Windows 11 desktop via Phone Link (see above), which I find preferable anyway since this doesn't restrict you to apps in the Amazon Appstore like the Windows Subsystem for Android did.

Perhaps even more significant for the store is that developers no longer need to code with the UWP app type to be included. Even Microsoft's own gargantuan Visual Studio development program is in the store now. Microsoft also announced that Progressive Web Apps, which are websites with some extra code that bestows app-like qualities, will also find their way into the Store. Win32 apps can now be submitted by any developer. PWAs also get some nice new capabilities, including Meta Quest VR support, URL protocol handling, and custom title bars.

The Store even lets you play casual games without the need to install them—you can play directly in the Store app. An AI hub highlights apps that use artificial intelligence to help you write a resume, fix a photo, and more.

At launch, Microsoft’s Teams app was a prominent part of the Windows taskbar by default. Teams continues to grow rapidly, but it hasn't impacted consumers as much as businesses.

Microsoft recently combined the previously separate Teams Chat and Teams Meetings apps into one, and you can separate work and personal communication in that one app. A cool feature is that it lets you call or text anyone's mobile phone from your PC for free!

Teams Chat on Copilot+ PCs includes AI-powered Windows Studio Effects that you can control from the taskbar in Quick Settings. These effects include eye contact, background blur, automatic framing, and voice focus.

In addition to apps you can get in the store, Windows 11 comes with standard apps like an updated Photos app (which now lets you easily sync iCloud photos), the new Media Player, Voice Recorder, two Paint apps (3D and a redesigned classic Paint), Mail, Calendar, and more.

The Paint app has received several updates, including an AI Background Blur feature and Cocreator AI image generation. New versions of Calculator and Notepad with Dark mode and autosave are also available. A dedicated template-based video editing app called Clipchamp now comes with Windows. AI lets you describe the kind of video you want to create, and Clipchamp will build a template for you.

New Windows Photos app AI tools include Generative Erase (which removes objects and replaces them with background content), Retouch, Background Blur, and an AI search feature that lets you find photos based on their contents.

Both the legacy Windows Media Player and the Groove music player are gone in favor of the Media Player app. If you stored music in Groove, your library and playlists automatically migrate to the new Media Player when your PC gets the update. The new player does not, however, replace the Movies & TV app, the default video player and catalog app for content you buy via the Microsoft Store. Movies & TV also supports the cross-platform Movies Anywhere system. The 22H2 Windows 11 update added CD ripping capability to the Media Player app.

The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is the default browser, with Internet Explorer no longer existing as a standalone program. Companies that need IE functionality for their custom business apps can invoke it through Edge. Web pundits have panned Microsoft's decision to require Edge for some OS-related features like the news widget and the built-in search, but you can still use the browser of your choice as the default link opener. The company has added a Set Default Browser button to make switching easier.

Of special note is the updated Clock app, which has a way to help you complete tasks. Its Focus Sessions feature integrates with Spotify to give you appropriate background music for your tasks. It also works with the To-Do app, so you can check off those tasks upon completion.

When it comes to setting apps as the default for certain file types, Windows 11 makes things somewhat trickier. For most app types aside from web browsers, you have to change the settings for each file type rather than just choosing an app to handle, for example, all photo files.

The OneDrive cloud storage and syncing service and app are key pieces of the Windows ecosystem. It can automatically back up your desktop folders, documents, and photos, making it easy to access them from a web browser anywhere, including your mobile phone. It also considerably eases moving to a new PC and can automatically save screenshots you snap with the Print Screen key.

PC gamers benefit from several features that arrived with Windows 11's initial release and other new ones. These benefit both game selection and game performance technologies.

For game selection, the Xbox app built into Windows 11 gives you access to the Xbox Game Pass collection of video games. It includes titles like Age of Empires IV, Halo Infinite, and Twelve Minutes. The app also enables Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft’s streaming game platform. It puts PCs on par with Xbox consoles, though with users in control of how much hardware power they want to throw at their games. PCMag gaming senior analyst Jordan Minor goes so far as to declare that with Windows 11, Microsoft makes every PC an Xbox. You can also read about how to optimize your Windows 11 PC for gaming.

As for new gaming technology, Windows 11 introduces Auto HDR and DirectStorage. The first expands the color space to reveal superior clarity even with non-HDR game titles. The second technology, DirectStorage (a subset of the Xbox Velocity Architecture), can speed up game loading times by bypassing the CPU and allowing graphics memory to load directly. Microsoft and Qualcomm have also made strides toward improving gaming on Windows on Arm PCs. And the Copilot+ PCs just got AI-powered upscaling capability in what Microsoft calls Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR).

Other technical advances in Windows 11 include Dynamic Refresh, which can save laptop batteries by decreasing a screen’s high refresh rate when it’s not necessary. The OS also supports the much faster Wi-Fi 6E standard.

The requirements of TPM and Secure Boot are part of Microsoft’s beefing up the OS’s security technology—a topic worthy of an entire article. PCMag lead analyst Neil Rubenking has written one on how to keep Windows 11 secure. He also notes that the included Microsoft Defender antivirus software has greatly improved, though he still recommends using third-party antivirus software.

In terms of raw performance on traditional synthetic benchmarks, the new OS is largely equal to Windows 10. Our hardware team ran benchmark tests for gaming and productivity performance on the same PC with Windows 10 and then again after upgrading to Windows 11. The team found that Windows 11 performs just as well or even better in terms of frame rates and has a slight edge in the productivity tests. In any case, you can still speed up Windows 11 with a few tricks if you notice it getting sluggish.

Microsoft has written extensively about the new accessibility features in Windows 11 that join existing ones like Narrator, Magnifier, Closed Captions, and Windows Speech Recognition, along with support for third-party assistive hardware and software. For example, Windows 11 has Contrast themes, redesigned closed caption themes, and AI-powered voice typing. The OS also adds APIs for programming assistive apps, and even the Windows Subsystem for linux now has accessibility options.

Windows 11’s speech-to-text feature has improved remarkably in recent years and now uses machine learning algorithms to correct its guesses and punctuation. It now goes by the name Voice Access. As with the previous dictation feature, you press the Windows Key-H keyboard shortcut or press the on-screen touch keyboard’s mic icon to launch the tool. Then, you simply dictate the text you want to enter in any on-screen text area.

Live captions can display transcriptions of spoken words, whether they come from playing video or audio, or from the PC's microphone. And Microsoft has added braille display support that lets users switch between Narrator and other screen readers.

Copilot on Windows is adding accessibility features, too, such as skills for turning on Narrator, launching Magnifier, changing text size, and starting live captions.

It only makes sense that some legacy features no longer fit in with Windows 11's new approach. A couple of conveniences I like (but are apparently hardly used) are gone. Aero Peek and Aero Shake are off by default in Windows 11, though you can enable them in Settings.

The Cortana AI voice assistant isn't preinstalled on Windows 11 systems, but it's still available in the app store, for now. Microsoft is quietly retiring it. Live tiles are gone, too, with Widgets replacing their functionality. Tablet mode is now gone in favor of what Microsoft calls "new functionality and capability...for keyboard attach and detach postures."

Another casualty is the Windows 10 Timeline, although the Start menu's Recommended section still shows your recent documents and apps, and the Copilot+ PCs' Recall feature could be considered a rebirth of Timeline.

More recently, in the 24H2 update, Microsoft removed the WordPad app, Windows Mixed Reality, and the Tips app. Other removals were also made, but they were less consequential.

The software-as-a-service strategy has hit its stride with Windows 11, so it's still a work in progress. The company is committed to delivering some feature updates when they're ready rather than waiting for a major release. Anyone can see feature updates in the Windows Insider builds of Windows 11.

Alongside the slipstreamed updates, Microsoft issues big annual updates, with the 2024 version clearly going even deeper into generative AI. These new features are increasingly relegated to Copilot+ PCs, but the general run of Windows 11 PCs still gets some love with new features. ChromeOS similarly benefits from a steady stream of updates rather than a big annual one like those Apple releases for macOS.

As with Windows 10, you can let the company know what you'd like to see it add to the software in a dedicated Feedback Hub app, and it responds more often than you might expect. Anyone can sign up for preview builds of the OS through the Windows Insider Program, which lets you experience new features before they're available for general release.

Microsoft has updated its major upgrade schedule to a more traditional three-year release cycle. But it doesn't seem likely that we'll see Windows 12 in 2025. Instead, Microsoft is making a push toward moving users from Windows 10, for which support is ending later this year, to Windows 11. At CES, it even proclaimed 2025 as the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh.