- Does the world really need a surface laptop?
I'm going to tell you today, my full review
as Microsoft takes on Apple, stay tuned.
(electronic music)
One thing that makes a surface laptop
stand out is its design.
It's absolutely the reason why you're going
to be paying a lot of money for it.
It's pretty much perfect, it's expertly engineered,
has no flaws and just feels really, really nice.
As made from an aluminum chassis
which feels pretty solid, there's no flex to it
whatsoever and it's very smooth.
It also doesn't pick up fingerprints too well either,
which is a really nice bonus.
So, don't worry about wiping it down,
there's really nothing that's gonna show up.
There's also no screws on it and
no seams whatsoever, it's absolutely clean.
Of course, it means you can't open
and upgrade it, so that's gonna be
a trade off with this device.
Even turning to the bottom here,
you can see, just absolutely immaculate.
There are no marks whatsoever.
You can see the Microsoft logo here
along with some device information,
but it's very subtle, you almost have to shimmer in the
light just to see it.
The feet itself are rubber and give
adequate clearance and there's actually
no venting on the bottom either.
Instead you can see this really nice grill here,
one side basically brings in the air,
the other side shoots it out,
the fan itself is super quiet.
This is the core i5 version and I can say,
it's really, really quiet, I barely
ever heard the fan and when the fan
does come on, it's whisper, you have to
put your ear up to it to actually hear it.
It also doesn't get hot, it does get a little warm
on the bottom, but it never went
over a hundred degrees fahrenheit,
which I thought was pretty impressive.
Coming round to the left hand side here,
of course we have the port or should I say, lack thereof.
You have a USB A, mini display port,
you also have a headphone jack.
This little thing here appears to be for the antenna,
so it's a little bit different from the chassis itself
and that's really the only kind of blemish
on this design, but you're really not
gonna notice it too much.
As you'll notice, there is no USB type C
and that's pretty much one of the biggest
complaints of this device.
I have no issues with it, but with
no USB type C or thunderbolt three support,
this device won't have much forward looking abilities.
Coming around here to the right hand side,
all you have is a single surface connect port,
so that's where your power is
and I mistakenly refer to that as an SD card slot
on the original video and this does not
have an SD card slot, so that is
all you're gonna get for ports here.
Very minimalist, now, I have no
problems with this for my usage.
But, if you're gonna be looking to
buy the surface laptop, just keep that in mind,
this has very limited, input, output option for you.
One of the unique engineering feats
that they accomplished here, is on the front.
There's actually no notch here to open
up the laptop, now that may seem
like a downside, but it's actually not bad
at any point, you can actually
grab the ridge here and pull it up.
In fact, let me show you, you can open it
one handed, just grab it here and it just opens.
It's one of the most elegant features of this device,
it just feels really, really nice.
You see, also how quickly there it logs you in.
I mean, I'm not even seeing in front of this thing
and it still did it very quickly.
Now, how Microsoft explained this to me,
is when the display is about this position,
it's already turning as well as the camera.
As you push it up, it's starting
to skim the room and look for you,
and now, it's gonna log me in.
Now, that may seem kinda subtle,
but it's one of the little delightful things
about this laptop and using it everyday.
The more you open it, the more frequently
you're gonna appreciate how fast this is.
It's one of the defining features
compared to other laptops out there.
Now of course, anyone else can probably
do that as well, but it's what makes a
surface laptop a little bit unique.
Alright, let's talk a little bit about this display,
it is a 13 and a half inch pixel sense
and has this crazy resolution of 2256 by 1504,
which just rolls off the tongue, of course.
It has a 201 pixel per inch, it's also a
three by two aspect ratio.
Now, all that is similar to a Surface Book,
except for the resolution.
In fact, this is the lowest resolution
surface device on the market today,
it's even lower than the Surface Pro,
which is only 12 and a half inch, so keep that in mind.
But, at 201 pixels per inch, I can't really say,
I noticed it, it just looks fantastic.
It also has a layer of corning gorilla glass three,
over the top and now again, little
subtle engineering stuff here.
What's really neat, is there is no ridge
along the edge here, so most laptops
will actually have a little lip
that comes around and that so
when you close it, it separates on the keyboard.
You don't get that here, instead,
it's just a straight piece of glass
that shoots across and it's completely smooth.
Now, that doesn't really affect the laptop,
whatsoever, in fact they're a dozen mark
to screen up or anything.
I haven't noticed any downsides to it,
it just makes it feel really exquisite.
Of course, it's also a touchscreen
and you can use the pen on it.
Now, this is not a pen device
and in fact, if you really want
to use a pen a lot, of course,
Microsoft will sell you a Surface Pro or a Surface Book,
and I do agree with that decision,
that's the way it should be.
But, I will say, I was actually
pleasantly surprised in using the pen with this device.
Now you don't want to use it all the time,
for say, taking notes, but hey,
if you're gonna assign a PDF document
or you just wanna scribble on the screen
and maybe do some arrows, maybe a quick drawing.
It actually is really nice and worked pretty well.
It's one of those features where,
you maybe not use it all the time,
but the one time you actually need it,
you're gonna be glad that Microsoft put it there.
If you have other bits about this display,
Microsoft promises 100% SRGB.
I can actually vouch for that,
we did a test and it does come out to that.
It's also a very bright, I would say
it's bright enough to use outdoors
and although it's glossy, it's not offensively glossy,
so don't worry about that.
It also doesn't pick up fingerprints too well either,
which is again, a very nice feature to have.
I really hate touchscreens, I don't actually
mar them up, but I didn't have a problem here.
After using it for a few days,
it still looked very clean to me.
Alright, let's talk a little bit about light bleed,
so if you've had a Surface Pro device in the past,
this is a very popular complaint.
Basically they are hot spots on the screen,
where it's brighter than dark,
there is not a problem here.
I did not notice it whatsoever, so kudos to
Microsoft for addressing that.
Let's talk a little about these bezels too,
they are narrower than the Surface Pro, but
I know some of you will love like
the Dell XPS 13, they're not quite bezelis, sorry,
doesn't bother me whatsoever.
On top here, you do have a camera
that is a 720p camera, which is not quite
the 1080p that we would like, but
considering how thin this is and Microsoft
considers this to be the thinnest bonded glass touchscreen
in the world, basically, so not a bad thing.
Actually, the camera is very good,
in fact, I really like the way it looks.
You can have your dual microphones up here,
as well as your Windows Hello IR cameras,
which are blacked out, so you really can't see them,
really nice effect, really minimal and clean looking.
Let's talk a little bit about this keyboard,
and the keyboard deck specifically.
Now, it's a really kind of unique device.
This actually feels a lot like the Surface Pro,
including those keys.
Now there are differences, the key travel's 1.5 millimeter,
versus the 1.3 millimeter of the Surface Pro,
so basically the key pushes down further,
feels a little bit more natural.
They are still kinda plastic keys,
which is kinda weird, I was expecting maybe, metal,
like the Surface Book, but instead,
it's literally like, they took the Surface Pro
and turned it to a laptop.
It's not bad, but it's not great either, to be honest.
It's a really good keyboard, I don't
have any issues typing on it, but I just felt
the keys just feel a little not as premium as I expected.
But, overall they work very well,
you also have three stage back lighting
and that's the other change here, of course,
they did change the upper row here.
Thankfully, they actually put screen brightness
dedicated buttons, so you have those here,
you have, of course, the keyboard brightness button
over here and you have some media play buttons as well.
So, kind of a nice change and you can see
there is actually a dedicated power button.
Which is kind of a unique position, but
I guess they don't wanna mix it up
with the delete button, which a lot
of people are used to using their pinkies.
So, i have no issues, I never touched it.
It's also a very quick button,
so you'll use that when it comes out of hibernation mode,
when it's been asleep for a couple of hours.
Very fast, nice button, no complaints.
Overall, the keys are pretty nice,
now let's talk about this deck here.
That is Alcantara, so this is a synthetic fabric,
it's meant to sort of, mimic leather and suede a bit,
and it's definitely unique, now there is some
concern about this, that it's gonna get
marred up and pick up stains over time.
Since I can't fast forward into the future,
I can't tell you that, I've had not issues
for what is almost two weeks now using this device,
so, it feels really nice to me.
I can say this is a little bit different
than the Alcantara that's found on
the Surface ergonomic keyboard,
as well as the old Surface Pro signature type cover.
They basically put a extra layer
of Polyurethane on there, so it feels
really nice and luxurious, no complaints there.
However, I did notice, after a few days,
there is a very pungent smell coming from it,
and that's definitely, I think the polyurethane coating.
Now, it goes away of course, it's like any new
laptop smell that you may experience.
But, being that this is all kinda cloth,
it just stuck around a little bit more
than I would have liked and I think
for people who are really sensitive to smells,
it may actually bother you.
Microsoft did say, if it does get dirty,
you spill anything on it, just take a microfiber
cloth, along with some water and soap
and you can just wipe it down and
that should basically clean it off.
Let's talk a little bit about this track pad,
it is of course, precision, it's also
a very large and has a glass layer on it.
No complaints whatsoever, it is better than
a Surface Pro's and it's very much like
the Surface Book, so Microsoft has really nailed
the track pads in the past and that
carries over here as well.
One thing I really wanna point out
about the Surface Laptop is,
almost how boring it is when you open it.
I mean that actually, in a good way.
When you open this device, all you get is,
display, keyboard and track pad and that's
really how computers should look.
There are no speaker grills, there's no chrome,
there's nothing that's pointing out,
there's no labels, there's nothing.
It's just keyboard and display
and I really appreciate that effect.
In fact, what I said before, there are no speakers,
they are actually below the keyboard deck,
which is really interesting.
Microsoft calls these, Omni Sonic and
they're Adobe Audio Premium.
I can say, these are definitely
the best surface speakers out there.
They are better than the Surface Pro's speakers,
they're definitely better than the Surface Book,
just really good and probably that's because,
in this base, it can resonate a little bit more,
so you get a little bit more richness to the volume.
I have no complaints, it's really, really good sounds,
so if you listen to movies a lot
or listen to music or just wanna use this on business calls,
it's actually gonna be very good.
Performance on the Surface Laptop,
is very middle of the road, do not buy this device
expecting outrageous performance, it's just not there.
Now this version runs a Intel core i7 7200U,
which is a really nice processor,
seventh generation, gets excellent battery life,
I'll talk a little bit more about that later.
Overall though, it's not the quickest machine out there.
Same thing with the SSD, which on this version
is a Toshiba at 256gb and Microsoft
made a big deal here, they put the SSD
into the motherboard itself, as opposed
to a separate module, that'll allow them
to save space and put more battery in this device,
so that's pretty cool, but performance is not very strong.
Now I should point out, even a slow SSD
is really fast compared to say, a hard disk,
so, I have no complaints whatsoever.
But if you're gonna use this to transfer say,
a lot of large files, you will notice some
speed degradation compared to say, something like,
the HP Spectre X360 or Dell XPS 13,
which SSDs are basically twice as fast as this one.
To put this all in perspective,
I have no complaints using the Surface Laptop,
but it's not gonna be the fastest device out there.
In fact, you can get a Dell XPS 13 with a core i7
and you'll probably get much better performance
in that device, but you are going to get
very good battery life here.
For battery life, Microsoft claims
14 and a half hours with the Surface Laptop at core i5
and of course, it's with a closed video loop,
not real world usage, which is closer to eight hours,
maybe even nine, so I consider it to be all day usage.
You'll probably push that further
if you use battery saver and keep your
display down, it's really kinda hard to judge
because while everybody uses their device differently,
overall though, I'm very happy.
I did not feel like I ever needed to take
the charger with me, which is really what
is the important message here.
I will also say, when you close that lid,
you're gonna get very good standby battery life.
There will be no depletion whatsoever,
you can close that lid and come back to it
a few days later, you'll still have a full battery.
It's really impressive, I think they done a really good job.
As a combination of the hardware,
as well as what they done to Windows 10,
so kudos to Microsoft for that one.
No discussion of the Surface Laptop
will be complete without talking about Windows 10S,
so if you heard about this, some people are
wording it as a gimp version of Windows.
It's partially true, but not entirely.
Let me explain to you, what is going on here.
Windows 10S is simply a version of Windows 10 Pro,
that maybe surprising, but it's accurate.
Windows 10S has a lot of the same features as Pro,
which is why you can upgrade to it.
Now the only limitation with Windows 10S,
is you can only install apps from the store.
That means if you download an app from the internet,
it's an executable file and you try to run it,
you are gonna get a little pop up saying, it won't run.
But it's not really that big of a deal,
if the app is found in the store,
the little Windows is gonna tell you that app
is available, you can click and go and download it.
If you really wanna install Pro though,
you can also click another icon and
it'll take you to the store to unlock Pro.
Now, I should mention here, there is
really no downloading of files or anything.
All it's going to do is check a license,
it downloads a configuration file,
it's gonna install and reboot the PC and go into Pro.
The whole process, takes less than three minutes,
now it's a one way street, so once you go to Pro,
you can't go back to S, unless you
factory reset the Surface Laptop, so keep that in mind.
So why even bother use Windows 10S?
Microsoft says, it's gonna get better performance
and better battery life, and I wanna put that
in better perspective, this is really about long term usage.
If you took a Windows 10 Pro machine
and a Windows 10S machine and ran them side by side,
you're gonna get the same battery life,
the same performance, everything
is exactly the same between them, there's no differences.
What Microsoft is talking about is long term usage,
if you install a lot of executable apps
and you start running it in your taskbar,
and you get that whole thing where it's like
10 apps running, that's gonna start to impact
your battery life, it can make the device slower.
What they are saying is, with Windows 10S,
that laptop is gonna run the same on day one as day 1000.
It can't guarantee that, when you do Windows 10 Pro,
so that's where all the differences come.
If you actually upgrade to Windows 10 Pro
and you don't install any executable files
or you don't put anything in the taskbar,
it's running in the background.
Well, it's gonna perform exactly the same as Windows 10S.
So there's really going to be no battery difference,
to be no performance difference.
But keep in mind, running things like chrome
and Adobe elements and all these kind of apps,
do put a little updater apps in the background.
They're always going to affect battery life and performance,
so that's where it comes in, a lot of these things
are hidden, same thing with iTunes,
if you dare to use that, will also do the same.
So just keep that in mind, I like Windows 10S,
but the choice is yours.
The upgrade is free through 2017,
afterwards it'll be about $49.
I don't consider this a big deal,
keep in mind though, it's only a three minute process
to upgrade to Pro and that's it.
Alright, let's bring it all home.
What do I think of the Surface Laptop?
So, I've given this a lot of thought,
I actually have two answers.
If you're comfortable with the fact
that this does not have USB type C
and you're really okay with the price of it.
I say, go buy it.
If you're just looking for validation,
it's a great device, there's nothing wrong with it.
I didn't find anything that was really bothering me.
It gets great battery life, the performance was good,
it feels nice and it looks awesome.
It's just that premium Windows 10 experience
that Microsoft was promising.
So, go get it.
If, however, that person was looking for a
13 inch ultrabook and you're open minded
to other devices, like the HP specter X360
or the Dell XPS 13, well, I have a tough time
recommending this device.
First of all, it's expensive,
you're gonna get a lot less port on it.
The performance is not nearly as good,
so it's kinda hard to say, not to look at those devices.
For instance, the HP specter X360,
especially at 4K, turns it to a tablet,
it has a pen, it's just a beautiful device.
Like why would you try to get that device instead?
Same with the Dell XPS 13, it just a good value
and has really awesome performance
and then you get that infinity edge display.
So I have a touch time recommending this device
for those people, but if you do end up
going with the Surface Laptop,
you'll still be very happy with it.
You'll just be paying a little bit more for it.
In conclusion, there's a few ways
to think about the Surface Laptop.
If you're comparing it to just other 13 inch PCs,
I think it's kind of a failure.
After all, there's nothing unique about it,
it's a straight up laptop, a very nice one
but it lacks a killer feature,
which is why many of you don't feel very strongly about it.
Other Surface devices did something unique
that was never seen before and that's lacking here.
If, however, you compare it to say, an Apple Macbook
or Macbook Pro, well, now
the game is a little bit different,
after all, that's what this device is aimed for.
It's meant to lure people from the Apple world
to the Windows 10 one, and I think
it's succeeds there by offering them
a ridiculously luxurious experience.
It's not for everyone, but for some people out there,
they're gonna absolutely want this,
so just keep that in mind when you're
evaluating the Surface Laptop.
So here's my full review, the Microsoft Surface Laptop.
Now if you want more information on this review,
head to Windows 10 show and don't forget
to subscribe to this channel, because
we'll be covering the Surface laptop
and new Surface Pro extensively for a next month.
Thanks for watching, take care everybody.