Customer Ratings & Reviews

I have used and tested this Surface Copilot+ laptop out for about a week now. It very much reminds me of a slightly thicker Windows 11 version of my 13” MacBook Air. The Dune (gold-ish) color is actually nice and I can see the keys clearly (note: they do not have a backlight though if you are in a dark setting). The trackpad is very smooth and I like the gestures that can be set as well. Very responsive in my use. 120hz display is really nice for motion and mouse pointer movement and accuracy. While the display is quite glossy it is very clear and the colors and contrast is great. I set my brightness at 60% and the power setting to peak performance (slider all the way to the right). Responsiveness and opening apps seemed very fast in all uses. Battery life with this laptop paces out at over 11 hours for me. I'm sure I will get much longer life if I dial it back a bit, but this is pretty good at these settings. Most usage was web browsing, email, MS Office apps, and light YouTube watching. Testing out CoPilot has worked ok so far, but I can see this improving over time as well. In summary, I think it is a good and light laptop for on the go use. Certainly has more than enough power, speed, and smoothness for all the apps I have used so far. Recommend!

Microsoft’s marketing for their new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro tout devices that are not just faster, but smarter. I picked up the new Surface Laptop 7th edition because I’m interested in not just a laptop upgrade, but an entry into the nascent world of AI computing. So, I’ll discuss the usual topics of hardware and performance, but also whether this laptop really does represent a new direction for personal computing. ------ Hardware ------ The hardware is excellent! Just like all of Microsoft’s machines, the fit and finish on this one is impeccable. The new Dune color is striking, and the coating on the aluminum surfaces resists fingerprints and looks great. Marketing touches, as usual, are minimal, with just the shiny metallic Windows logo on the top, and the word “Microsoft” printed discreetly on the bottom. The keyboard is not quite as good as the one on the Surface Book 3, but it’s still very good, and better than those found on many laptops today. The keys have a decent amount of key travel and “clickiness”, and overall they feel very good. Spacing of the keys is good and the keyboard doesn’t feel cramped at all. The new haptic touchpad is fantastic. I was worried that it would feel fake or be too loud, but that’s not the case. It is super smooth, and clicking it is solid and responsive. Microsoft really got it right on the touchpad. The screen is beautiful, as usual, but I’m disappointed that MS didn’t include an OLED display on the laptop, like they did on the Surface Pro. Resolution and brightness are great, but OLED displays just look better. Nonetheless, this is still a beautiful display, and the 3:2 aspect ratio makes for a more spacious screen. The SL7 runs cool and quiet, even under a moderate load. If there are fans, I haven’t heard them yet. Microsoft made a big deal about battery life. I have the 13.8” model, which is supposed to get up to 13 hours of battery life doing web browsing. Web browsing is probably less demanding than a normal workload, but I was still hoping for something close to that. What I’m seeing in practice is around 8-10 hours, which isn’t bad. It’ll get me through a work day, but not with enough margin to confidently leave the charger at home. One thing to keep in mind when talking about battery life is the processor that’s under the hood. The main difference in Microsoft’s new machines is that they’re not built on Intel or AMD x86 chips, but use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors instead. These are ARM chips, which means that applications need to be recompiled for ARM in order to get the performance gains that are possible. Since most software outside of Microsoft’s offerings has not been recompiled for ARM yet, a large number of applications will need to run in emulation mode. Microsoft has included their PRISM x86 emulator, and I must say it does a very good job. Applications that are supported run seamlessly, with no additional configuration necessary. I’ve only found one application so far that would not install. Emulated applications deplete the battery significantly more than native applications, so that will have a big impact on overall battery life.   ------ Performance -------- The Surface Laptop 7 is the successor to the 5, which featured an Intel i7 and, similar to other models I’ve used, had 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. While it’s not a gaming machine, I wanted to see how the SL7 would handle Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well the SL7 performed! I’m not a hard-core gamer, so I don’t have stats on frame rate or anything like that, but Civ VI looked good, and the GUI was very responsive. I didn’t play to the end of a full game, so late-game mechanics weren’t tested, but the “launch it and play a little” test passed impressively well. Microsoft says the SL7 is 86% faster than the SL5. Running a standard Excel test consisting of 100,000 VLOOKUP formulas took an average of .05 seconds, which matched my Dell XPS desktop sporting a 13th gen i7, but only 40% faster than an 11th gen i7, which is older than the one in the SL5 that MS is using for comparison. So, no 86% speed boost, at least not on this test. As always, you have to exactly replicate all of the test conditions, which I did not, but this gives you some idea of how well it performs. Another test recommended by a friend was to create a passage guide in Logos Bible Software. A passage guide is basically pulling excerpts from your library on a particular topic or passage. The Dell XPS 8960 handled it in 5.69 seconds, and the SL7 did it in 9 seconds. However, consider that this is not a native ARM application, but is running using Microsoft’s PRISM emulation layer. Given that, it’s really not a bad result! So, while I don’t think I believe Microsoft’s claims of an 86% speed improvement over the SL5, the SL7 is a remarkably solid machine, given that it’s running a mix of native ARM applications and emulated x86 applications at any given time. If I could get all of my software in native ARM versions, I think the performance would be excellent, and a significant bump over prior machines I’ve used. ------ AI Features ------ Copilot+ features seem to be in the early stages. If AI is your reason for looking at this machine, you should probably look elsewhere. Microsoft should make it easier to find and use the Copilot AI features on the machine. - Co-creator didn’t work very well for me. It seems to be just a GUI interface for using DALL-E inside of Paint. It’s supposed to allow you to use a text prompt or a sketch you draw to tell the program what to create. The results vary based on the level of creativity you select, but it’s not intuitive as to how to get the best results out of this tool. I’m sure I could work with it to get better results, but I don’t often need custom images, so I’ll get back to it later. There is also Image Creator inside of Paint, which is text only, but it wasn’t clear to me how to get it to work. Next to the “create” button was an icon which seems to be indicating that I need credits to use the tool, but I could not see how to get any credits. - Live captions were easy to turn on, and it adds a bar across the top of the screen where the audio is translated in real time. It did a pretty good job, but sometimes missed a word here or there. As a built-in tool that you don’t have to purchase and install, this is a nice feature. I suspect that downloading the language files locally might allow for better performance. - Windows Studio Effects for the camera are very good. The background blur is impressive, and is much better than what is possible in Teams today on most computers. The eye contact feature can be a little creepy, but I’m sure it will get better. These features are valuable improvements for those of us who are in online meetings frequently. - Image Creator in the Photos app: I didn’t even realize that the Photos app had this. There is actually another version of image creator included there. This was easier to use, and created a number of nice digital images based on my text prompt. Beyond these fairly limited uses of AI, the dedicated Copilot button just brings up a version of the web site where you can engage AI in a conversational style. This is indeed convenient, and I appreciate how easy it makes it to bring up Copilot, but it’s not much more than I already had with Bing. This button will certainly get a lot more functionality as Microsoft improves its AI offerings. For a PC that wants to focus on AI features, I think the overall presentation could be a lot better. An easy to find set of tutorials could teach new users how to get the most out of the AI capabilities. Instead, we’re left to figure out how to find the AI features and use them. ------- Conclusion --------- Microsoft is planning to roll out more features in the future to take advantage of the neural processing unit (NPU) in the Surface Laptop, but until then, I don’t think the existing AI features make a compelling case to choose this device on AI alone. Without a compelling set of AI features, you have to evaluate this machine like any other, on things like performance, price, compatibility and build quality. Using that framework, it would be hard to justify the extra price of the Surface Laptop 7 when there are other options with better specs at lower prices, and without the need to use emulation software for some applications. On the other hand, this is one of the first of the new Copilot+ PCs, and it’s always bumpy when you’re pioneering. As publishers re-compile their applications for ARM processors, we’ll get the performance we expect, with better battery life all around. It seems like Microsoft got it right this time with the Snapdragon X Elite processor, so this machine is only going to get better with time. If you’re willing to look at it that way, then this is a machine you should be considering.

I have the opportunity to try this Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 out and overall it is a great laptop if your looking for a premium device for productivity like Web browsing, Microsoft Office apps like Excel, Word, Powerpoint and etc. One of the biggest weakness for windows for window laptops in the past has been poor battery life. Intel powered ones were just horrible or underpowered and AMD powered ones were better but still was lacking compared to the newest MacBooks with the M chips. The early adoption of ARM chips with Windows the apps were lacking. Even more recent ones like the Qualcomm 8cx Gen2 chips the chip was ok and the support was ok the laptop's I've seen were more of the budget kind and the power didn't work well with traditional apps that still use X86 and not native to ARM Specs; 13.8 HDR 3:2 Aspect ratio LCD Screen with 120hz and 600 nits of brightness ( reported) 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM 512GB SSD Qualcomm X Elite SOC X E80-100: The middle variant of the X elite chip The thing with these new Co-pilot + pcs are the min specs are 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD so you know you'll get a decent amount of RAM in the base model if that is all that you want. Plus with the Surface laptop you can upgrade the SSD with a 2230 sized one if you want so you don't need to pay the premium for the bigger ssd if you don't want to. I have been using this for a while now and the battery life is better than what I have gotten compared to other Intel/AMD powered general purpose premium laptops. I mostly been using this for web browsing, youtube,netflix, and some very light gaming. The games are older so not gpu intensive at all. The GPU in this computer is lacking compared to the integrated ones in intel and AMD chips but this isn't meant for gaming or like intense video editing. As far as the apps that run native on ARM like Microsoft Edge the battery life and experience is great. I have noticed apps like discord is kind of sluggish but this Prism emulation is new so we need to give devs time to make their apps ARM native Now onto the Copilot part of this computer. They did remove the recall feature as of the writing of this review. Though if you sign up for the windows insider you can try it out I believe which is basically a beta. I have tried the live translate and the co create in paint and its nice. The live translate would be great for Video calls If you both don't speak the same language or in videos like youtube even. The Cocreate is nice as well you can make some nice pictures of what you tried to draw or make. Conclusion: I do hope Windows makes the effort to keep on working on Windows on ARM with them and their partners because it is the future. The better battery life with ARM chips and the power we can get from it is great for portable devices.

I have had a number of Microsoft surface both tablet and laptop devices. The build of this machine reflects the continued evolution of the Microsoft surface as a top-notch consumer grade laptop Smooth, metal surfaces and very, very thin build along with almost nonexistent screen bezel makes for a gorgeous looking machine machine. Aside from some of the under utilized AI features on this machine that will be handy in the near future as Microsoft rules out more integrated Copilot features. My biggest concern is the ARM Chip ecosystem. I did already run into a few softwares that I downloaded that I was unable to run because it was incompatible with Windows on ARM. These seem to be getting fewer and far between, But it still exists. CPU and GPU performance kept up with Intel and AMD counterparts And didn’t make me question the hardware choice in other places. Overall, this laptop is fairly well built, Battery life has been amazing It’s apparent that the ARM ecosystem is going to be easier on batteries than counterparts. If you are someone who believes that you were going to follow Microsoft into the AI space, then an early purchase of a QUALCOMM snapdragon Chip is a good speculative one and will likely serve you well in the future even if that does put you in a machine machine that cost a little more for similar specs.

The history of Windows on ARM is a long path of stumbles and failures. The bright spot turned out to be running Windows on Apple Silicon MacBooks via Parallels. The latest MacBook Pro with M3 Max was nearly as fast as my large desktop gaming machine in terms of day-to-day use. The benefit was always great performance with terrific all-day battery life. The holy grail of computing. Now, with all that out of the way, it is Microsoft's turn at bat with Windows on ARM. The ARM based processor in this instance is the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. It promises fast performance, AI neural co-processing, and all-day battery life. The new Microsoft Surface Copilot+ brings forth Qualcomms latest and greatest in the hopes of stealing the crown from Apple and their M-series based machines. The new Surface Copilot+ is as close as I think Microsoft has ever gotten to building a true MacBook competitor. The problem is that I still prefer Windows on my MacBook.... so what's the deal? Well, frankly, the M3 Max is just better even when running Windows virtualized. The single core performance is nearly 50% higher than the Qualcomm. Now, is this really noticeable in day-to-day use? For me, yes, as I tend to run Microsoft Excel extensively with multiple worksheets open at all times I can feel the difference. For the average user it is probably more than adequate and the Surface is substantially less expensive to boot. Everything else is good to great on the new Surface. The build quality is excellent, the keyboard feels great and has no flex with good tactile feedback, and the trackpad is uniformly top notch. The screen is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The resolution is good, but the variable refresh rate isn't terrific despite offering a wide range of rate. Scrolling is always noticeable and never really feels smooth on or off battery. Color is good and brightness is about average. The battery life is the really interesting aspect of the new Surface Copilot+. When it isn't heavily taxed I can see battery life of 10+ hours easily. This is what I would expect. The problem is as soon as you tax the processor even moderately the time starts to drop fast. I lost 10% of the battery life in a less than half an hour doing some Excel work, a few browser tabs open, and a video playing in a small window. It was honestly a little alarming. Now, I know the machine is new and probably has some firmware updates in its future that might help some of this, but considering that Microsoft hasn't even launched the forthcoming AI features I have to wonder how much worse it might get. Now there are a few factors to consider. I was running some x86 applications and not native ARM. The added translation does impact performance and battery life as it is more of a strain on the processor. This is an area that Microsoft really needs to continue to concentrate on. They want developers to start pushing towards ARM, but there are millions of applications built out there that are not native to the platform and will either run through translation or not at all. This will continue to be a performance and battery life hit depending on the applications one uses. Only time will tell how this will change, but keep it in mind if you use something small or not heavily supported. It may be an issue and it may not. Overall, the Microsoft Surface Copilot+ is a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Unfortunately, Apple is almost four generations ahead so Microsoft has some catching up to do. Microsoft is bringing to the table a well built, stylish, and generally good performing laptop at a great price with the promise that they are committed to the future they are giving one a glimpse of. For now, for me, it feels like a half-measure and I will be sticking with my MacBook Pro and Parallels.

The Surface Laptop - Copilot+ PC seems to be an exciting and promising addition to the lineup. I just picked up the Snapdragon X Elete version with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. My initial thoughts - display is plenty bright with great resolution, trackpad and keyboard are excellent, and it includes a decent variety of ports, especially when compared to the MacBook Air. My initial gripes are the display not being OLED, the massive hit on battery life running non-ARM apps, and how heavy it is. If you’re after performance and AI capabilities, the Surface Laptop 7 is worth considering, but make sure you go in understanding what you are getting into.

Great device. Conpact, fast, convenient. I got the blue one sapphire.

TLDR: Had high hopes for this, but there's so much to be desired. Having major network spike issues while my M2 Air, HP Spectre 360 never had this issue. Hoping the next set of updates fixes it. I can't recommend the Surface at this time due to the network and display issues I'm having. Maybe in a few months this will be worth the price tag. Get a Vivobook or a Samsung Edge unless you care that much about the trackpad and keyboard. Didn't have issues testing out those machines with the same issues I have here. Cons: - Network spike issues with the latest drivers. I can only join meetings while hard wired now - Issue with the display as others mentioned. It looked like the NPU was dying after 1 day of use? Did a reboot and it hasn't come back yet - Battery life is nowhere near as good as Qualcomm or Microsoft say it is with basic office usage Pros: - Gets bright enough to use on a daily basis and even in the sun. - Doesn't get as loud as the HP Spectre - Fans don't ramp up as quickly on the better performance mode or recommended - keyboard and trackpad are on par with my M2 air. - Performance is great issues with my tech stack - Fast boot-up time - Feels and looks like a $1300+ laptop

So I'm generally a Mac user but am used to using Windows at work. On my work PC we are currently running Windows 10. This Surface laptop has Windows 11 installed which seems to be a nice upgrade from some of the 10 features. The build quality on this laptop is nice - it seems sturdy. There's a dedicated AI button for you to bring up what is essentially the Edge browser AI interface. The trackpad is smooth and glides nicely. The screen is essentially akin to a 14 inch screen (technically 13.8 inch) and is a touchscreen which is nice. However, it doesn't seem to get very bright. The refresh rate, however, is fast at 120. My main uses have been web browsing, some video watching and music listening. Office applications too, but that is mainly related to my work. While using the Surface during my routine tasks I was a bit disappointed with the battery life. The battery life seemed to drop precipitously during what would otherwise be considered table stakes tasks that shouldn't cause the battery to deplete quickly.

I’ve always loved BestBuy for their great deals. This device is sold $400 cheaper at microsoft. I wish they offered the same price.

The initial estimated delivery date was December 20th, which I ordered on December 16th. However, there is currently no estimated time of arrival (ETA). The call center representative is also uncertain about the availability of the stock and has no alternative options.