- Hey guys, this is Austin.
The Microsoft Surface line has been growing a lot lately.
With everything from a desktop All-In-One
with the Surface Studio all the way
down to the cheap and tiny Surface Go,
there's a lot to like.
But one of my favorite devices
has always been the Surface Laptop.
So when Microsoft sent over their brand new
Surface Laptop 2 to take a look at, I got very excited
until I took a little bit of a closer look.
The overall hardware hasn't changed too much this year
which is certainly not a bad thing.
It's all made out of aluminum,
and it does sort of give a little bit of a MacBook vibe.
At least until you open up the lid.
The keyboard and deck lid are lined in Alcantara.
Now this is pretty unique in the PC space.
As opposed to seeing aluminum here,
it is much more of a fabric material,
and it kind of gives you a little bit of a unique look.
It's typically found in things
like high-end BMWs and Porsches and Audis
but having it here on a laptop is nice.
Now, sure it will wear and get a little bit dirty over time,
but as far as I'm concerned, that's totally
worth the trade-off of a nice, soft, typing experience.
You're also getting a terrific display.
So just like last year, it is a little bit
of a weird panel with a 13.5-inch size
and a 2256 by 1504?
Yes, I got the resolution right!
It's really unusual but one of the nice things they have
here is that it, not only is a touchscreen, of course,
like a Surface should be, but importantly,
the screen doesn't really wobble when you touch it.
I mean, it wobbles a little bit,
but it's much better than most other Ultrabooks out there.
The actual panel itself is high quality,
but what I really appreciate is the aspect ratio.
Unlike most laptops which are 16:9,
this is 3:2 which means
that you get a lot more vertical screen real estate
which is helpful for things like web browsing
and you know, productivity.
Everyone loves productivity
in their really expensive laptop, right?
Something else you can do, of course though, is watch video.
And even though you do get a bit of a letter box,
you have a super-crispy video
like Jake's new Can You Survive the Movies? over on Vsauce3.
You'll find that there's a lot of crispiness to watch.
That aspect ratio also pays off
for the keyboard and trackpad.
So specifically the keyboard is terrific.
It's backlit; it's got a really nice sort of feel.
And on top of that the trackpad is actually fairly large.
Most of that is because that the screen is taller
which means that there's just a little bit more space here.
One of the big new features this year
is not a feature at all!
It's the brand new matte black color!
Can I just stop for a second,
and say, that yes, I love a good silver laptop.
It's classic, it's great.
But this?
Matte black?
I mean I can feel Marques's heart just fluttering.
It's so, so cool.
I mean, I did not expect out of all people,
Microsoft to make a murdered-out Surface Book.
It is so, so cool.
Or Surface Laptop, whatever it's called.
You know what isn't new this year?
The ports which if you take a look
consists of a single USB-A, a single Mini DisplayPort,
a headphone jack, and the magnetic Surface connector.
You know what we don't see?
A USB-C, or I don't know, a Thunderbolt 3 port?
(metal music)
Can you feel my frustration?
I kinda get that last year the Surface Laptop 2 did,
or the Surface Laptop 1, didn't have a Thunderbolt port
or at least didn't have a USB-C.
But I mean, you see what this is?
This is a $400 Surface Go.
Guess what that port is?
Do you see that little round, not round,
the little circular, what, what, what shape is that?
- [Matt] Oblong.
- Oblong, thank you.
Do you see that little oblong port?
That's USB-C.
It supports power.
It supports data.
And oh look?
It supports full DisplayPort just like this
useless Mini DisplayPort here.
So even the USB port apparently is USB 3 and not USB 3.1.
I'll give them a little bit of credit
because there is the Surface connector
which can give you some of the functionality of USB-C.
But I mean, it's 2018.
It's going to be 2019 soon.
This laptop is going to be around for a while,
and USB-C is absolutely the future.
It just, it's crazy to me that
they didn't just include USB-C here.
I mean, it's on the $400 Surface!
Why couldn't they put it on the $1300 Surface Laptop 2?
One of the major upgrades for the Surface Laptop 2
this year are in specs.
So last year, it was good, but it only had
the 7th Gen dual core processors.
This year however, we have the full
quad core Core i5 and Core i7 options.
Now, no, you won't be able to game
particularly well on the Surface Laptop 2
mostly because it doesn't have any kind
of dedicated graphics as an option.
And you can't connect any external graphics,
but having the quad core design
does make a big difference for things
like being able to do a little bit more video editing.
And you do have all the Surface accessories
including the Pen as well as the Dial.
So this might actually be a pretty solid Photoshop machine.
Software wise this year it ships
with Windows 10 Home out of the box
which would sound totally normal
and not exciting at all until you remember
that the last year's version of the Surface Laptop
shipped with Windows 10 S which thankfully
has kind of been pushed along to the wayside.
You've got a very nice clean build of Windows,
and of course, you can install all the apps you might want.
There are some nice features
including Windows Precision Drivers
for the touchpad as well as an IR camera
that does support Windows Hello.
Speaking of that camera, it is a 720p webcam.
It sounds pretty decent, but most importantly,
it actually is a pretty high quality device.
Unlike some other laptops that have webcams
on the bottom of the display where this
is the angle you get all the time.
Battery life is solid.
Now Microsoft claims 14.5 hours on a charge
which is definitely a little bit ambitious.
But you should easily be able to last through a normal day
of light use, for example, at work or school.
Something that's not going to be taxing it all that heavily.
The Surface Laptop 2 is expensive.
It starts at $1000, but that's only for 128 gigs of storage.
If you want bump up to a 256 gig SSD,
that's gonna cost you 300 more dollars.
The drive is decently fast, but it's nowhere near as fast
as the custom SSD inside the MacBook Pro
which is actually a less expensive upgrade.
Apple charges you $200 on the MacBook Pro
where it is they charge you $300 on the Surface.
So you know, when you're charging more than Apple
for an upgrade, you might wanna reevaluate your decisions.
I really wanted to like the Surface Laptop 2.
It's got killer hardware.
I love the black look.
I really appreciate that it is much more powerful now.
But the issue is that it doesn't
even have USB-C much less Thunderbolt 3.
Especially considering this kind of price,
the Surface Laptop 2 is a good laptop,
but it is not a great one.