Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So Microsoft launched their Surface Laptop the other day, and I think it's a really cool product
I'm personally very interested in it. I think it looks awesome
I think they're going to sell lots of them, but I think there's some potential problems with this product
And I wanted to go through them with you in case you're interested in purchasing one
So the first thing is the design. I really like the design
I think a lot of the interest about this product comes from the fact that it looks as good as it does because let's be
honest if this thing was super ugly, it would be a much less exciting product, but it's really good-looking. So here we are.
It's one hand openable. The keyboard and trackpad look really promising.
But the most interesting thing about this product is the fact that they're using this
Alcantara material on the keyboard deck, and if you're unfamiliar with it. It's this fabric type material
It's a synthetic fabric that Microsoft uses on their signature keyboard on the Surface Pro product
and it feels and looks
really inviting to use.
It's much more durable than what you would imagine a cloth type material to be but that being said it's not metal
It's not plastic, so there's going to be some wear over time. Now,
I've seen Alcantara keyboards that looked really good after six months, and I've also seen some that looked really worn down after six months
So I don't know it's going to vary from person to person
but one thing's for sure: you can't just replace the keyboard the way that you could on the Surface Pro because if you really wanted
To and you had a gunky Surface Pro Type cover, you could just buy a new one for a couple hundred bucks
This is built into the laptop. It's kind of like fused onto the keyboard deck
I don't think it'll be as easy to just replace that. Okay. Let's talk about the operating system
These come with Windows 10S and, if you want to the first year, you can upgrade it for free to Windows 10 Pro.
After that first year, or after 2017, it's going to become a $50 upgrade. So the biggest difference between
Windows 10 and Windows 10s is that 10s can't run any kind of executable program so any kind of like .exe file
You can't run it. There's not even a command prompt. This is crippling to a lot of users. There's no steam
There's no Chrome you're going to be stuck with Microsoft Edge and you're going to be running bing for the search engine
It's streamlined and it focuses on the core of Windows, and I think for system administrators
It's a lot easier to get something like this deployed. And for the user, you're getting a better battery life
You're getting a faster experience like a more optimized experience, but it's a very limited experience. So if you're using just regular
Applications that you're used to you're gonna have to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro
Okay. Looking at the hardware, the base model comes with four gigs of RAM, and that is tight
I really feel like they should have put an eight gigs and the argument is that for most people that are interested in this base Model
So like the University student that doesn't have a lot of heavy computer tasks, four gigs should be enough
Especially if you're not using Chrome. So if you're just web browsing
editing PDf documents, typing up word documents
Just doing very productivity focused tasks then yes, four gigs should be enough
But the thing is, if you ever want to do something that's a little bit more RAM intensive
You can't upgrade that.
Now, I understand they had to do this to create the price structure that they wanted but I'm just not a fan of that base configuration
in terms of USB ports
We're looking at a single USB-A and no USB-C ports and the thought process behind that is that right now their Target demographic
Of students is a predominantly USB-A market so thumb drives, external hard drives, mice
they're just all type-a and I understand that, but this is a device that's supposed to last multiple years, so
You won't be upgrading this thing or you won't even think about upgrading the same for like two three
Maybe five years and in that amount of time, USB-C will be everywhere
Why not give it to them now so that people have access to universal charging? To universal display output?
It's so weird that they're using USB-A and they even had USB-C ports on prototypes. We were so close
Okay, next up is pricing even the base surface laptop isn't meant for high school or grade school kids
It's meant for
University students and up and when I'm looking at pricing that base model feels a little expensive and I understand there's a premium with the
Awesome build quality, the design, the amazing screen, the material choices and it's very nice-looking
But in 2017, you're just not getting good long-term value with four gigs of RAM
The mid- and top-tier models seem to be priced well or at least in line with the competitors
It's just the base model that I'm concerned about. But one thing to note, if you are students
You're able to apply your student discount to these you're going to get about ten percent off
So the base model is at nine hundred dollars US. The display panels are awesome with basically 100% sRGB Gamut
And they're all individually calibrated at the factory for color accuracy the 3X2 aspect ratio
I mean, this is great for tablets because you get a little bit more usable space vertically
But on a laptop only device, I would prefer the 16 by 9 screen just for consistency for other devices
more importantly though even though the screen supports the surface pen
Writing or drawing on a vertical surface like a laptop screen is not an enjoyable experience
During the presentation pano's had to hold the screen to annotate on it
But I feel like this product wasn't designed around using it with a surface pen. If you want to write or draw
Frequently, I would get a Surface Book or a Surface Pro instead
So I want to talk about some things that I think Microsoft did right just to kind of close this off
They're running PCI-e drives for storage
So those are going to be really fast, way faster than the ones on the Surface 3
The CPU selection is good that top end i7 actually has an Iris+ graphics chip
I'm really glad they went with that instead of the more common
7500U. The battery looks promising. They're claiming 14 and a half hours running Windows 10s
I'm assuming. But the way that I use my computer, it's probably gonna be 10, 11 hours
Which is still really long. Overall, I think this is a great product despite having a couple concerns
I think Microsoft did a really good job on this thing
So I will be doing a full review when I get the unit in
If there's stuff that you guys want me to kind of take a look at in particular
Let me know I'm going to be spending more time in a comment section of this video
Just because I know a lot of you guys are students, and you might have an opinion
I'd love to talk to you guys about it. Let me know! Questions, comments
I'm going to be down there for quite a bit in this video
Hope you guys enjoyed this! Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. I'll see you guys next time