Surface Laptop

[Chiropteran]

Not the surface book. A regular laptop within the surface line.

Note: runs "crippled" Windows 10 S by default, but can be upgraded to Windows 10 Pro (for free initially, $50 after this year).

https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Laptop/productID.5102691100

 

[DaveSimmons]

Review: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/hands-on-with-the-surface-laptop-well-its-a-laptop/

Not the droids I'm looking for, but as always YMMV.

 

[giantpandaman2]

It's a good buy for those people in your life that need a laptop that can "do everything" but you don't want to be "IT guy" for. IE: Relatives.

Also: Kids who attract computer viruses as easily as they do normal viruses.

For professionals they can upgrade to Win10. Personally, I'll stick with my Surface Book for a long time.

 

[MarkizSchnitzel]

No 360 hinge.
And it supports surface pen.
What gives?

A missed opportunity.

 

[giantpandaman2]

No 360 hinge.
And it supports surface pen.
What gives?

A missed opportunity.

Yeah, I wondered about that too. I'm guessing the cloth/keyboard wouldn't work with a 360 hinge...would get nasty resting on a table. Keyboard would have to be inset too, which would probably make it fatter overall. Surface Pro is still best for going from pen/traditional use anyway.

 

[Valantar]

No 360 hinge.
And it supports surface pen.
What gives?

A missed opportunity.

Yeah, I wondered about that too. I'm guessing the cloth/keyboard wouldn't work with a 360 hinge...would get nasty resting on a table. Keyboard would have to be inset too, which would probably make it fatter overall. Surface Pro is still best for going from pen/traditional use anyway.

Uhm ... why would they cannibalize Surface and Surface Book sales by doing that? This is their "entry level" laptop (although the pricing is not quite entry level). For those who want a traditional laptop, but with some Surface flair (3:2 display, pen support, great build quality). A 360 hinge would both add weight and thickness, make the build more complex, and you'd be stuck with the Lenovo Yoga conundrum of what to do with the keyboard.

I think it looks nice, but it's too expensive for me. Not that I can afford a new laptop right now anyway, but I'd be more interested in a SP4 than this even if the extra 1.5" of screen size is nice (well, ideally I'd want the SB+performance base with a GTX 1050, for less than $3000, but now I'm dreaming). I'd want the i7 version if only for the Iris graphics (ideally a Raven Ridge version, when that's out!), but that's a 55% price hike over the base model. And an i5 + 4GB RAM/128GB SSD for 10999 NOK? No thanks.

Also, a rather odd choice to reduce the resolution from the SB, but I guess that just shows how expensive that 3000x2000 panel is (and/or they had to step down resolution to make it that thin).I would have thought manufacturing more of an already existing part would be cheaper than making a new, lower-spec one from scratch. No complaints, though - 2256x1504 @201dpi is plenty for a laptop.

 

[quikah]

I think the only reason it support the pen is that they are using the same screen as the Surfacebook, so it was a "free" addon. Probably not too useful.

I am sure they are doing a balancing act here, trying not to piss on the OEMs while still making a good product.

 

[beginner99]

This is DOA. $999 for 4 GB of RAM in 2017? You got to be kidding me. Proprietary connector and no USB-C in 2017? Did you hire Apples marketing team or WTF?

The screen is good (3:2) but else it's just an overpriced hipster book and those people usually buy Apple. For sure prefer something with a crappy 16:9 screen but USB-C over this like HP spectre /elitebook x360.

 

[Valantar]

I think the only reason it support the pen is that they are using the same screen as the Surfacebook, so it was a "free" addon. Probably not too useful.

a) They're not using the same screen as the Surface Book. They might be using the same touch/pen controller and sensor setup, though.
b) MS has been putting a lot of focus on pen features in Windows recently, including all-new pen-focused Office features launched alongside W10S and the Surface Laptop. This is definitely not random, as the pen is key to a huge productivity/student play from MS. While a laptop form factor is less than ideal for screen writing, it's probably okay for reviewing text, sketching, highlighting and the like. This goes hand in hand with the 3:2 aspect ratio, but without pen support it would be moot.

 

[Chiropteran]

This is DOA. $999 for 4 GB of RAM in 2017? You got to be kidding me. Proprietary connector and no USB-C in 2017? Did you hire Apples marketing team or WTF?

The screen is good (3:2) but else it's just an overpriced hipster book and those people usually buy Apple. For sure prefer something with a crappy 16:9 screen but USB-C over this like HP spectre /elitebook x360.

It's the exact same price range as the Surface Pro 4 products, except it essentially has a free keyboard since you had to pay an extra $150 for the surface keyboard. i5 surface 4 Pro 4GB 128GB SSD $999 release price. With the Surface Pro 4, you can pay an extra $299 for the keyboard & 1 year of office 365 (and a sleeve). The Surface Laptop comes with the keyboard and year of office free out the gate, so you could say it's $300 cheaper, with better battery life as an extra bonus.

No, it's not going to compete with the cheap Lenovo, Dell, or Acer laptops. You can certainly get one of those with superior performance for about half the cost. The difference is none of those will touch the battery life of the Surface Laptop, nor will they have as good of a screen, and they will weight around twice as much at a minimum.

If you buy a Surface Laptop, you are paying a premium for extremely good battery life, an excellent touch-enabled screen, and presumably rock solid build and support. If you don't care about such things, there are better options. If those things are your number one priority, you will be hard pressed to find another laptop superior in all three metrics for the same price range.

 

[quikah]

a) They're not using the same screen as the Surface Book. They might be using the same touch/pen controller and sensor setup, though.
b) MS has been putting a lot of focus on pen features in Windows recently, including all-new pen-focused Office features launched alongside W10S and the Surface Laptop. This is definitely not random, as the pen is key to a huge productivity/student play from MS. While a laptop form factor is less than ideal for screen writing, it's probably okay for reviewing text, sketching, highlighting and the like. This goes hand in hand with the 3:2 aspect ratio, but without pen support it would be moot.

Hmm, OK, I was quoting someone else on that, didn't look close enough at the specs, thought they were identical. The size is the same but resolution is lower on the laptop. My guess is they are using the same digitizer, but a different LCD. Or, since they own n-trig they pretty much only have digitizers with pen support, so that is what they use rather than source a 3rd party product.

Regardless, the pen input is completely pointless on this device as you cannot convert to a tablet, if they included a 360 hinge it would make sense, but as it is now it doesn't. Panos demo of the pen was awkward, you have to hold on to the screen to prevent it from falling over. Tertiary input if that, I can't imagine anyone seriously using the pen on it.

As I said they are definitely being careful not to push their OEMs. They could have easily put a 360 hinge and USB-C on it (the prototype had USB-C as seen in the video), but Lenovo/Dell/HP would likely be a bit miffed at them. By keeping it very focused on a specific set of features they can leave room for their OEMs to put out products with features some may want/need.

 

[KentState]

I'm still trying to figure out why I would want to consider this over a Dell XPS 13 or even the various Lenovo offerings.

 

[beginner99]

I'm still trying to figure out why I would want to consider this over a Dell XPS 13 or even the various Lenovo offerings.

Exactly. The only thing it has going is the screen. 16:9 is just crappy on a laptop not used 90% for move watching.

 

[Valantar]

I'm still trying to figure out why I would want to consider this over a Dell XPS 13 or even the various Lenovo offerings.

Comparable battery life to the 1080p XPS 13 with a far better display, a far more useful aspect ratio, and comparable prices per hardware level? I don't mind that at all. The connectivity is really the only thing holding it back. That's a big drawback for sure, but the screen aspect ratio is a big plus too.

 

[MarkizSchnitzel]

While a laptop form factor is less than ideal for screen writing, it's probably okay for reviewing text, sketching, highlighting and the like.

It most definitely is not okay for pen input of any kind.

 

[KentState]

Comparable battery life to the 1080p XPS 13 with a far better display, a far more useful aspect ratio, and comparable prices per hardware level? I don't mind that at all. The connectivity is really the only thing holding it back. That's a big drawback for sure, but the screen aspect ratio is a big plus too.

The aspect ratio difference doesn't mean much to me when compared to the 4k offering on the XPS.

 

[Valantar]

The aspect ratio difference doesn't mean much to me when compared to the 4k offering on the XPS.

That doesn't really make sense. The XPS still leaves you with the widescreen conundrum: either have two windows side-by-side and too small to be useful, or a single full-screen window with an impractical vertical height. 4K on a 13.3" display pretty much necessitates 200% scaling, which would still be very small - and leaves you with the same usable area as a 1080p display. The simple fact that most productivity applications and web sites simply don't fit the 16:9 aspect ratio very well doesn't change by increasing resolution - quite the opposite. While the Surface Laptop's display would also need scaling, it still has the advantage of a very noticeable actual vertical display height difference. According to screen-size.info, a 13.5" 3:2 display has a full inch more vertical height than a 13.3" 16:9 display - enough to fit the entire Office ribbon, for example. Or 4-5-6 lines of text.

It most definitely is not okay for pen input of any kind.

I'm not speaking from experience, but I don't think I would mind it for my work, at least (reading and annotating papers and articles) given a stiff enough hinge, even if a tablet form factor would be clearly better. Then again, I'm talking about occasional annotations and highlighting, nothing intensive. Do you have experience contradicting this?

 

[tamz_msc]

This is supposedly aimed at students and yet has no Ethernet port? What was Microsoft thinking?

 

[Valantar]

Do students frequently need ethernet ports? My university is pretty much entirely wireless. Heck, I don't even use ethernet in my office (at said university, I should point out) ... Ethernet is for home media and gaming use, at least in my world.

 

[corkyg]

Ethernet still has a place in that it has better speed, latency, less interference, and security. Thus the Surface Book would not be appropriate in an area where privacy and security are paramount.

 

[Valantar]

Ethernet still has a place in that it has better speed, latency, less interference, and security. Thus the Surface Book would not be appropriate in an area where privacy and security are paramount.

Absolutely. But neither would pretty much any other ultrabook. And after all, it's not exactly difficult to find USB ethernet adapters. If I had this laptop, I'd probably get one of those USB hubs with a built in ethernet adapter. But then again, I probably wouldn't get this laptop due to the outdated I/O anyhow. USB-C (with DP alt mode, or preferably TB3) is a must in this day and age. It's a shame, though, as that display looks fantastic.

 

[tamz_msc]

For people who work with their laptops on the table for most of their working hours, ethernet is a must. It is still very much needed in these days of ubiquitous WiFi. Suppose a visitor comes to give a talk and needs to access the internet. The sysadmin has to create a guest login for him to access WiFi, or he can just plug in any of the Cat6 cables lying around and get going without any hassles.

 

[Valantar]

For people who work with their laptops on the table for most of their working hours, ethernet is a must. It is still very much needed in these days of ubiquitous WiFi. Suppose a visitor comes to give a talk and needs to access the internet. The sysadmin has to create a guest login for him to access WiFi, or he can just plug in any of the Cat6 cables lying around and get going without any hassles.

I suppose I'm lucky I live in a rather forward-thinking country where all (public) higher education uses a common network setup that's incredibly easy to use. Not only can I walk around my entire campus (and the three other campuses in town) and have constant WiFi coverage with very few drops, but I can literally walk into any university in the entirety of Norway and my phone and laptop would both have a working WiFi connection (signed in with my employee credentials) within seconds, no user interaction required. Students have the same access (just with their student logins), while guests have to create a guest account or sign onto a separate guest network.

Still, of course, if you're travelling all over the world ethernet is far simpler to use - but the vast majority of both students and professionals work in relatively limited areas, after all.

 

[tamz_msc]

I suppose I'm lucky I live in a rather forward-thinking country where all (public) higher education uses a common network setup that's incredibly easy to use. Not only can I walk around my entire campus (and the three other campuses in town) and have constant WiFi coverage with very few drops, but I can literally walk into any university in the entirety of Norway and my phone and laptop would both have a working WiFi connection (signed in with my employee credentials) within seconds, no user interaction required. Students have the same access (just with their student logins), while guests have to create a guest account or sign onto a separate guest network.

Still, of course, if you're travelling all over the world ethernet is far simpler to use - but the vast majority of both students and professionals work in relatively limited areas, after all.

Well the thing is, not everyone is going to need it, like in your case, but this trend of shedding ports just because you can is irritating. Macbook Pros used to have ethernet ports, but didn't feel cumbersome, a lot of sleek business oriented laptops have them as well, why do ultrabooks have to drop them?

 

[Valantar]

Well the thing is, not everyone is going to need it, like in your case, but this trend of shedding ports just because you can is irritating. Macbook Pros used to have ethernet ports, but didn't feel cumbersome, a lot of sleek business oriented laptops have them as well, why do ultrabooks have to drop them?

I actually tend to agree - the problem is the form factor. While hinged "expandable" Ethernet ports make them fit on some semi-slim laptops, you simply cannot fit one in a really thin laptop. This begs the question why a "slim Ethernet" standard hasn't been made. I mean, the cable contains 4 cable pairs. How hard would it be to standardize on a single SFF connector with 8 pins, that could be entirely passively adapted with a 3" dongle for pretty much no cost at all? Instead we see useless proprietary solutions on the few thin laptops that have this at all. I suppose the best modern solution would be to introduce some sort of Ethernet alt mode for USB-C, to ensure some degree of adoption.

For now, though, USB Ethernet dongles seem to be the preferred solution.