Microsoft Windows 11 Review: The World’s Most Popular Desktop OS Keeps Improving

Lately, the biggest changes to Windows have focused on the fundamentals. For example, the Widgets experience on the taskbar no longer displays viral headlines by default. Other changes in the works include the ability to move the taskbar and the option to turn off Bing search results in the Start menu. Additionally, the company says it’s optimizing Windows 11 for PCs with 8GB of RAM, which is especially important given the memory crisis. More changes should arrive in stable versions of Windows 11 later in 2026 and into 2027, with many already present in Insider builds.

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AI features, such as Click to Do, Cocreator image creation in the Paint app, Recall, semantic search, and Super Resolution in the Photos app, for NPU-equipped Copilot+ PCs are now less of a focus. Microsoft didn’t mention Copilot+ PCs at Build this year, focusing instead on agentic AI features that don't require special hardware. The company now says it’s “making every Windows 11 PC an AI PC.”

The 25H2 update delivered improvements to the Start menu, lock screen, and other parts of Windows.

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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. You can get a Windows 11 Home ($139.99) or Windows 11 Pro ($199.99) license from the Microsoft Store online for a DIY PC or a virtual machine. We break down the differences between the two versions in our head-to-head comparison. Windows 10 licenses are no longer available.

The system requirements for Windows 11 are the subject of much controversy, but the specs are very low on paper: a 1 GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. A 64-bit processor is a must; a 32-bit version of the OS is no longer available. You also need a computer with a TPM security chip and Secure Boot capability. The real limiter is the CPU model, which needs to be from roughly 2018 or later. The PC Health Check app can assess your PC's ability to run Windows 11. One note on the requirements: Even if Windows 11 technically supports systems with 4GB of RAM, we recommend at least 16GB for most use cases.

Windows 11 runs on 64-bit Arm CPUs, including Qualcomm Snapdragon processors and Nvidia’s RTX Spark hardware. The Prism feature allows traditional Windows software written for x86 AMD and Intel processors to work on Arm PCs. Unlike macOS Golden Gate, which requires Apple’s Arm-based M-series processors, Windows 11 still supports both traditional x86 and Arm chips.

To start using the OS, you need to sign in with a Microsoft account. You can bypass this requirement, but Microsoft frequently blocks the workarounds people find. However, you can easily switch to a local account after setting up Windows 11. If you’re concerned about Microsoft's data collection, Ubuntu or another Linux distribution is worth considering.

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 extended support for Windows 10 for individuals through October 2027, while businesses can pay for support until October 2028. 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 should feel familiar. 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.

All windows now have rounded corners (like those in macOS), giving the OS a slightly smoother, more consistent look. Microsoft's Fluent Design System and its Mica material play major roles in the redesign. This semi-transparent look is more prominent throughout the core apps and utilities. However, Windows 11's Control Panel and File Explorer still use outdated elements. Microsoft is slowly updating the interface, but Apple's Liquid Glass design is much more cohesive (especially in macOS Golden Gate).

The Start menu gets a complete overhaul, with pinned app buttons at the top of its panel. These icons are adequate for touch input, but they aren't nearly as useful as the live tiles in Windows 10. However, Microsoft continues to tweak the Start menu. It's making it faster and more configurable, as well as adding options to turn off Bing web search and Store app search results so you can find your files more easily.

For decades, the Windows Start button lived in the lower-left-hand corner of the desktop. Getting used to it being centered could be one of the bigger adjustments you need to make in Windows 11. We’ve adjusted to this placement, but a taskbar alignment option in Settings lets you move the Start button back to its traditional position in the left corner. Windows 11's taskbar resembles ChromeOS's app shelf.

We weren't thrilled about the taskbar in Windows 11's initial release, but subsequent updates have largely rectified our issues with it. You should always turn on the Never Combine option in Settings, for example, if you want to keep app instances separate. Microsoft will soon let you move the taskbar to any edge of the screen, as with previous versions of Windows.

File Explorer is a good example of Windows 11’s fresh 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 in Windows 10. 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 third-party software.

Windows 11 brings modernized context menus, but the classic ones remain accessible. Each right-click menu has distinct options, and the multi-layered experience can be confusing. A future update will let you customize these.

The File Explorer is sometimes noticeably slower than in Windows 10 and more prone to crashes. The Windows team promises fixes. If you want more functionality out of your file manager, you can use one of several File Explorer alternatives. But you no longer need one of those to get tabs. And if you're on a Copilot+ PC, you now have natural-language semantic capabilities for descriptive searches.

Windows has long been better than macOS at arranging app windows on the screen, and the gap widens with Windows 11’s Snap Layouts, even after macOS Sequoia copied this feature. You get to Windows' Snap Layout feature by hovering the cursor over the maximize button at the top right of any window. You should see a choice of layouts—two windows side-by-side, three with one large and two small, and so on. The layout thumbnails even show you the app icons of running apps to help you choose where to place them. I prefer Windows 11's window management tools to the more complex ones on macOS. Ubuntu's default Gnome desktop doesn't offer anything as flexible, either.

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 multiple apps on an external monitor. Snap Layouts works on touch tablets, but using it isn't particularly intuitive on such devices.

Windows still offers multiple virtual desktops, which we find incredibly useful for separating work apps and websites from personal ones. Press either Ctrl-Windows Key-Arrow to move back and forth between them or Windows Key-Tab 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. We like the ability to set different backgrounds 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.

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. We appreciate the circled number for pinned taskbar apps that shows the number of notifications you have in any case.

The Quick Settings panel opens when you click or tap the connection, speaker, or battery (on a laptop) icon. The included buttons vary by PC, but you usually see convenient 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.

By default, the taskbar has a widgets panel that shows the news and weather. As mentioned, Microsoft no longer shows a feed full of viral articles here without your permission. Although third-party app developers can create widgets for this pane, few do. The Spotify widget is a good example of what’s possible. Still, we don't view this feature as especially useful for anything other than glancing at the weather.

Windows 11’s Snipping Tool replaces the Snip & Sketch app from Windows 10. Pressing the Windows Key-Shift-S keyboard shortcut lets you select an area (either rectangular or free-form), a window, or the entire screen, and snap a screenshot you can paste to the clipboard or open in an image editor. The Snipping Tool has an optional timer delay, and it can also capture videos of your screen. It can convert those videos into animated GIFs, too. The Snipping Tool supports optical character recognition (OCR) for extracting text from screenshots. Read our article on how to take screenshots in Windows 11 for all the details.

The Task Manager also gets a revamped design. 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 system drain. Windows still requires third-party tools to inspect application behavior in greater depth, however.

Windows 11 has a more cohesive settings experience than Windows 10. However, you might occasionally still need to pull up the older Control Panel. Some options in both experiences: You can uninstall apps from either, for example. Apple's System Settings app on macOS is more cohesive and powerful, but Windows 11's Settings app still beats Ubuntu's minimalist offering.

The Light and Dark mode settings are still in the Personalization > Colors setting area. Both look much better than on Windows 10, particularly the Dark mode, which effectively uses transparency. However, some legacy parts of the OS ignore your preference. macOS still has a more consistent look, and we like its unique option that dynamically changes the theme based on the time of day.

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

Windows 11 now gives you more control over updates. You can pause updates for up to 35 days at a time and extend the pause indefinitely. Microsoft has also announced plans to release future updates on a single day each month, with the goal of requiring only one reboot per month.

Microsoft Copilot is a preinstalled AI tool that is becoming increasingly sophisticated, although it doesn't feel particularly seamless in Windows. It can do much the same as other AI chatbots, and it's available as a dedicated app on every major platform. You give Copilot prompts or commands by typing in a chat box or clicking a microphone icon and speaking. Copilot Vision lets the AI model see your screen so you can discuss what you see with your voice in real time.

The aforementioned features for Copilot+ (Cocreator image generation, Live Caption translation, Recall, Studio Effects for video calls) are sometimes useful, but aren't a reason to seek out dedicated hardware. We don't actively miss these Copilot+ features on PCs that lack them.

Microsoft pitched OpenClaw and similar AI agent systems as part of the future of AI on Windows at the Build. However, based on our testing, OpenClaw is nowhere near ready for the masses. Even technical users might struggle to find a good use for it, despite Microsoft's dedicated app.

Overall, Windows 11 has a confusing mix of AI features, some of which are available on all PCs and others of which work only on PCs with specific hardware. The good news is that Microsoft seems intent on delivering future AI features to all Windows 11 PCs in a more unified way. Apple is doing a much better job of this at the moment. Apple Intelligence features are available across all modern Macs, while Google plans to deeply integrate Gemini into a forthcoming line of Googlebooks. Ubuntu is integrating open-source AI features, but with a more cautious approach compared with Windows.

Windows 11 comes with a set of standard apps, including the updated Photos app (which now lets you easily sync iCloud photos), the new Media Player app (which replaces Groove Music and the older Windows Media Player), Voice Recorder, the redesigned Paint app, and more. A dedicated template-based video editing app called Clipchamp now comes with Windows. Note that Microsoft discontinued the Mail, Calendar, and People apps and replaced them with the new Outlook. The Windows team is focusing on native apps after relying on web technologies for the last few years. Microsoft has confused developers with a series of technologies, including the Metro experience on Windows 8 and UWP apps for Windows 10. Apple's bundled apps on macOS are often more mature and feature-rich than their Windows counterparts.

Below are some key changes to the default apps in Windows 11:

• Notepad now supports AI features, autosave, basic formatting, spell check, and a dark mode.

• The updated Clock app's Focus Sessions tool can help you get tasks done. It integrates with the To-Do app, as well as Spotify to give you appropriate background music for your work.

• The Paint app now has AI Background Blur and Cocreator AI image generation features.

• The Photos app gains Background Blur, Generative Erase, Retouch, and semantic AI search features.

• In Clipchamp, you can describe the kind of video you want, which will build a template for you using AI.

When it comes to setting apps as the default for certain file types, Windows 11 makes things unnecessarily tricky. 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.

Edge

The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is the default browser. Companies that need IE functionality for their custom business apps can invoke it through Edge. Windows 11’s Settings app has a Set Default Browser button that lets you choose your preferred browser, but some operating system functions, such as the Start menu, always open Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Edge includes Copilot; it can answer questions in a sidebar, chat about web pages in voice mode, and take actions as you browse.

OneDrive

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 them easy to access from a web browser anywhere, including on your mobile phone. It also considerably eases the process of moving to a new PC and can automatically save screenshots you snap with the Print Screen key. However, OneDrive often starts syncing folders like your Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Videos to cloud storage without first obtaining explicit permissions. That's a problem because moving your files out of cloud storage locations can be a pain.

Like the rest of the interface, the Microsoft Store app gets a slick design refresh. For some ideas on what to install, read our roundup of the best apps for Windows 11.

The most significant recent development for the store is that developers no longer need to follow the UWP framework. Even Microsoft's gargantuan Visual Studio development program is on sale now. The Store has many traditional desktop applications, from Adobe Photoshop and Apple iTunes to Discord and Mozilla Firefox. However, some application developers still haven’t embraced it. For example, Google hasn't added Google Chrome. You can still install apps from outside the Store, of course.

The Store is finally as useful as it should have been 14 years ago with the launch of Windows 8. However, most Windows users still ignore it, and many applications aren't available. Apple has a more cohesive App Store experience on macOS, but many Mac apps aren't available here, either. The Microsoft Store makes more sense than ChromeOS's equivalent, where Google frequently pushes touch-first Android apps.

Though support for running Android apps directly was a much-anticipated new feature at Windows 11's launch, that endeavor fizzled out. Microsoft retired the Windows Subsystem for Android in March of 2025.

For Windows 11, Microsoft enhanced Windows 10's Your Phone app, renaming it Phone Link. It's a powerful way to connect your phone to your PC, although we sometimes experience connection stability issues. These hiccups make the experience less seamless than working with an iPhone and a Mac. Windows 11 also has a cross-device Resume feature that only works with a handful of apps, most of them from Microsoft. In addition to Microsoft 365 apps like Excel, OneNote, and Word, it works with Spotify and WhatsApp.

Phone Link works best for Android users. Some Samsung and other manufacturers' phones (but not Pixel phones) even let you 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 connect an iPhone to Windows 11 to make calls, receive notifications, and text, too.

Windows 11, regrettably, ditches a couple of its best touch-friendly features. Most importantly, you can no longer swipe in from the left to open the task-switching view or down from the top to close an app. On the plus side, Windows 11 tablet users have stylus options and on-screen touch keyboard tricks. Windows 11 no longer feels designed with tablets in mind, a shift from Windows 8 and Windows 10. It still works with touch-screen laptops and convertible machines.

PC gamers benefit from several features that launched with Windows 11, as well as more recent ones. These benefit both game selection and performance.

For game selection, the included Xbox app provides access to Game Pass through an optional paid subscription. The app also enables Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft’s streaming game platform. It puts PCs on par with Xbox consoles, while giving users control over how much hardware power they want to throw at their games. PCMag 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 optimizing 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 (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 improved gaming on Windows on Arm PCs. Copilot+ PCs have an AI-powered upscaling capability called Auto Super Resolution.

Other technical advances in Windows 11 include Dynamic Refresh, which can save your laptop's battery life by reducing the screen’s refresh rate when it’s not necessary.

Windows 11 supports the Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 standards, although these require a compatible wireless router and PC hardware. PCMag managing editor Tom Brant says Wi-Fi 7 is an astonishing upgrade that's several times faster than previous Wi-Fi standards at theoretical maximum speeds. Both standards are backward compatible.

The OS also supports Bluetooth 5.4, enabling simultaneous shared audio across multiple wireless audio devices.

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

The aforementioned TPM and Secure Boot requirements are part of Microsoft’s efforts to beef up the OS’s security—a topic worthy of a separate article from PCMag lead analyst Neil Rubenking. And although Microsoft Defender continues to improve, he still recommends using third-party antivirus software.

Windows 11 is getting an increasing number of security patches to keep up pace with AI-discovered exploits. Windows 11's July 2026 update, for example, had 570 fixes. Meanwhile, Windows 10 receives fewer security patches, focusing only on the most severe risks. Microsoft continues to experiment with features such as Smart App Control, which automatically blocks dangerous-looking apps.

Microsoft has written extensively about the new accessibility features in Windows 11. These include AI-powered voice typing, high-contrast themes, redesigned closed-caption themes, and APIs for building assistive apps. Even the Windows Subsystem for Linux now has accessibility options. This is all in addition to existing tools such as Magnifier, Narrator, and Windows Speech Recognition. Windows 11 also supports third-party assistive hardware and software.

Windows 11’s speech-to-text Voice Access feature continues to improve rapidly and now uses machine learning algorithms to correct its guesses and punctuation. Live captions can display transcriptions of spoken words, whether they come from playing video or audio, or from the PC's microphone. And Windows 11 offers braille display support that lets users switch between Narrator and other screen readers.

It only makes sense that some legacy features no longer jive with Windows 11. Aero Peek and Aero Shake are off by default in Windows 11, though you can enable them in Settings. The Cortana voice assistant is gone. As mentioned, live tiles are gone, too, with Widgets replacing their functionality. Microsoft now refers to what was Tablet mode as "new functionality and capability...for keyboard attach and detach postures."

Another casualty is the Windows 10 Timeline, though the Start menu's Recommended section still shows your recent documents and apps, and the Recall feature on Copilot+ PCs represents a rebirth of Timeline in some ways.

More recently, in the 24H2 update, Microsoft removed the WordPad app, Windows Mixed Reality support, and the Tips app. Microsoft also removed all traces of Paint 3D.

Windows 11 is still a work in progress. The company aims to deliver some feature updates when they're ready rather than waiting for a major release. Updates arrive sporadically throughout the year in Patch Tuesday updates on the second Tuesday of each month. Microsoft also issues annual updates in the fall, which have become increasingly less significant as the company rolls out more things as they’re ready.

As with Windows 10, you can let the company know what you'd like to see it change via the dedicated Feedback Hub app, which the team says it will be more responsive to. Anyone can sign up for OS preview builds through the Insider Program, which lets you experience new features before they're available to the general public.

In the near term, the company wants to improve and modernize Windows. Microsoft employees told me it has no plans to release Windows 12 in 2026. The company shows off its vision of an agentic Windows at Build, which could mean that the aforementioned OpenClaw agents play a bigger role in the coming months.