Customer Ratings & Reviews

First impressions were great. It’s a nicely constructed thin and light laptop with decent performance. The trackpad is amazing and the keyboard is excellent. For the first week or so of ownership I had absolutely zero issues with this laptop. Battery life was excellent, screen was great, was pretty snappy and it seemed perfectly reliable until today. Today it got a random blue screen so I installed blue screen view to read the dump file and there wasn’t one. Ran an sfc scan and a dism scan health operation and nothing was wrong. Used the laptop a bit more then put it to sleep. An hour later I heard the Windows 11 bootup chime and low and behold, the laptop crashed in sleep mode and rebooted. I figured maybe an update bricked the OS so I attempted to reinstall windows via the built in reset. I chose the cloud reinstall option because I assumed it would give me the latest stable fresh Windows 11 build. It crashed again 40% through the download. No biggie, I’ll just reboot to recovery, enter my bitlocker recovery key, and choose cloud reinstall again. Nope. So I resorted to a local reinstall. Fully cleaned the drive, setup the Surface again, signed into my WiFi, my Microsoft account, chose to restore settings and files from OneDrive, installed an update and then got to the desktop. Boom! Immediate BSOD and again no dump file after restart. I wanted to give Microsoft a chance after I had horrible experiences with my corporate issued Surface Pro 3 from ages ago. But it seems several years later, Microsoft can’t cut it being a first party manufacturer for THEIR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM! It’s honestly pathetic. I will be returning this laptop promptly and getting a refund. At least my Xbox Series S and X work fine.

Presentation: Opening the package containing the Surface 4 laptop helped me enjoy the upscale packaging that I’m sure Microsoft was aiming for. The employees took there time to make sure every inch of the boxing process was perfect. I took my time to live that moment longer. Setup: After removing and opening the Surface 4 laptop out of the box I was greeted by Cortana (Microsoft’s personal voice assistant). Cortana walked me through the initial setup and all I had to do was speak and she took care of the setup. The choice to click and manually make the selections is also available. Appearance: The Surface 4 laptop feels great to handle and weighs less than 5 pounds. I decided on the aluminum Matte black color and it looks fantastic. I don’t see it attracting fingerprints on the housing unless filthy hands get to it but it will be more for my personal use with school. For now I do Zoom meetings for school and the 720p front facing camera is perfect for it. The Surface 4 is equipped with a 15 inch crisp, and clear HD display that’s made for just about anything in touchscreen. Movies look amazing and browsing the web in 2496x1664 resolution detail make all the online shopping experience better and safer because I’m at the comfort of my home. This is faster than my other laptop from a well known company and it weighs less. Negatives: Where are the ports Microsoft? -No HDMI (not everyone do casting) the HDMI comes handy when and if I’m doing a presentation and easier to setup in my opinion. -Only 1 USB port can work but a backup would be nice. -Not a 2 in 1. It’s a touchscreen laptop and if it was designed to fold into a tablet I think it would make it more comfortable to have the option. Positives: -The Surface 4 laptop is fast. This is faster than my 2 years old laptop but I’m not sure it’s 70% faster. -The battery holds the charge for a good duration of the day depending on what I’m doing on the laptop. -Facial recognition is also a big deal to me. I’m seeing that feature more but I appreciate having it. -Keyboard keys are responsive to touch and smooth by not sticking when pressed. -Touchscreen is there when I need it. It’s a bonus to have especially when browsing. -Atmos Dolby surround sound makes watching a movie on the surface 4 laptop better when you don’t have your Surface buds nearby. -Fast charger. It comes with a magnetic fast charger that fully charge in about 2 hours. Other Mentions: For the tech gurus out there I know the specs might be a big deal. 512GB SSD 8GB RAM AMD Ryzen processor Which is enough for what I’m using it for. If the Surface 4 can’t handle the task I’ll hop on my desktop but for now it fits my need. Small things can make this Surface 4 closer to perfect but I think Microsoft is on the right path elevating there products.

I am someone that I would describe as techy, but at the same time, not overly so. The TL;DR of this review is that that is the type of person this laptop will suit best. PROCESSOR AND PERFORMANCE I have two laptops in my house. One is my work computer and the other is my personal laptop, which this is a replacement for. My personal laptop was a 2010 value laptop and there's no comparison between it and this. Things are a little closer with the company supplied laptop. That has a 2015 core i5 processor and an SSD as well. I thought maybe they'd be fairly comparable, but the Surface Laptop 4 is soooo much snappier and responsive. The extra 5 years (these have 2020 Ryzens in them) and this being more on the level of an i7 make the two processors feel night and day. Microsoft went for processing power on this and it shows. Very fast in everything it does. Opening programs, installing them, running large Excel sheets, etc. I can't compare it to Surface Laptop 3s as I never had one, but compared to my decent work laptop, this is much better. One thing to note though is don't get this expecting it to be a gaming laptop. You can play some of the less demanding games on it, but if you like 4k @ 120hz+, you've come to the wrong machine, though I'm sure someone with those tastes knew that. Gaming that would probably work well on here would be streaming like Microsoft's Xcloud or Google Stadia. Something where the computer isn't being tasked with rendering the game. Thanks to Wifi 6 built in, you could stream games. Speaking of, wifi 6 is amazing. My phone gets 250 to 300 Mbps downloads and uploads over my gig speed wifi. I ran the test on the Surface Laptop 4 and hit over 400 Mbps both ways, which is a massive gain. I wish everything had wifi 6. BATTERY LIFE: This laptop has great battery life. I charged it the night I got it and have been using it each night over the last 5 days or so and still haven't had to recharge it. That's a win in my book. Every other laptop I've ever used gave me maybe 7 or 8 hours. STORAGE AND RAM: Storage is ample with a 512GB SSD in mine. I love the SSD. A cold boot and this is up and at your desktop in maybe 20 seconds. It's fast. No complaints here. As far as RAM though, I do wish there were more. It's a little light at 8GB and considering a lot of top end phones carry around that, I wish there was more on a machine expected to do more. I believe it is upgradable down the line. Plus, this laptop carries a premium price tag so it really should come with a little more. USE This is a dream to use. Fast, responsive, and has a comfortable, wonderful feeling keyboard to type on. The touchscreen is nice, but admittedly I'm avoiding using it to keep oil streaks off my pristine screen. The color accuracy of the screen is great and it makes video really pop. The only downside I find here is that while it does support HDR, it has to be on certain apps. You can't go on youtube in Edge or Chrome and watch HDR. That's my biggest complaint as everything else about the screen is a thing of beauty. I also enjoy the 3:2 aspect ratio as 16:9 is much more suited to movies and TV. The webcam works great for video calls, though I only briefly tested it. Speakers sound good too, though I would encourage anyone to set up a nice set of external speakers. These are laptop speakers after all. You're not going to get a home theater experience from them. VERDICT: If I could give it 4.5 stars, I would. It's a beautiful laptop that runs exceptionally well. Incredibly polished experience all around. The only things I would knock it for are RAM, though more is available for extra money, and smaller things like a lack of legitimate graphics hardware, or the HDR thing I mentioned previously. As I said early on, if you're techy enough to like the finer things in the world of consumer electronics, but not so techy that you're building your own PC or looking for your next gaming laptop, this will be a great laptop for you.

/////////// First Impressions and Features /////////// The Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 15” is definitely a premium laptop. It is one of the rare laptops where its hardware and software come from under the same roof. It shares the look and feel of its predecessor, and I have no issues with that at all. This is my first Surface Laptop (I currently own a Surface Pro 3, still kicking!). It is equipped with a Ryzen 7 8 core/16 thread APU, 512GB SSD and 8GB DDR4 RAM. The unit feels premium and sturdy, the hinge that holds the screen upright is very strong, and the backlit keyboard is probably one of the best keyboards I’ve ever typed on in a portable laptop. The cool metal feels smooth on your palms as you type and the touchpad registers all single and multi-touch gestures without a hitch. The panel is a touchscreen and I feel that it won’t be utilized very much, but it does become very handy when you need it. Trying to buy that elusive gpu online before everyone else? With a touchscreen, you are now the fastest ‘add-to-cart’ online shopper this side of the Mississippi! Contrary to what most others say about the thick bezels, I actually appreciate them. Where else are you going to hold the screen to open it up or make tilt adjustments without touching the panel itself? It’s one of those things that we take for granted as we prioritize looks over functionality. Ok, maybe they can be shrunk down a tad...but it doesn't bother me. One of the most satisfying aspects of the Surface Book is the display’s 3:2 aspect ratio, with a resolution of 2496x1664. From a general use and productivity standpoint, the vertical real estate gained allows the natural viewing of websites, documents and the like. Think about it. Most physical documents are printed in portrait, so there is a welcoming familiarity once you begin using the laptop. It is most definitely refreshing. The I/O is sparse on the laptop, having only a single USB-C, USB-A and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The only other means of connectivity is the Microsoft proprietary charge port that can also double as an I/O port with their proprietary dock. The limited amount of I/O helps keep the laptop thin, as evident in other laptops designed today, and the only way to expand I/O is to purchase a separate docking station or USB hub. The USB-C can also double as a charge port as well if you have a means of charging it that way. I own a monitor with a USB-C connection that acts as both a 65W charger and hub. This is a perfect complement to the Surface Laptop 4. /////////// Processing Performance /////////// A big omission is the use of the newest Ryzen 5000 Series mobile processors for this latest generation of Surface Laptop. This is an automatic star deduction in my book. Microsoft pinned the last generation’s Ryzen with the latest silicon to come from Intel. That being said, the Ryzen 7 4000 Surface Edition mobile processor is still a great everyday mobile APU. It is an 8 core/16 thread 7nm that should satisfy most users and their processing needs. The CPU core speeds will behave differently on battery versus when plugged in, and I’ve provided a table of the tests I ran for each power mode using Cinebench R23: <<- On Battery, 4 Modes ->> Battery Saver (Single 2GHz, Multi 1.4GHz) Recommended (Single 2GHz, Multi 1.6GHz) Better Performance (Single 2.9GHz, Multi 2.4GHz) Best Performance (Single 4.2GHz, Multi 2.9GHz) <<- Plugged In, 3 Modes ->> Recommended (Single 3.95GHz, Multi 2.5GHz) Better Performance (Single 4.3GHz, Multi 2.4GHz) (dipped as low as 1.5GHz in Multi, thermal throttling?) Best Performance (Single 4.3GHz, Multi 2.7GHz) (dipped as low as 1.3GHz in Multi, thermal throttling?) A couple of things to note. Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, but if you’re looking for top performance out of this laptop, you’re going to have to plug it in. When plugged in, the base single core speeds are increased almost by 100%. The laptop does not need to worry about battery conservation and can allow the cores to run full blast. The other thing I noticed is that when plugged in and running multi-core tests, the speeds start off strong but begin to taper off. I took note of the temps during testing and the core temps held under 70 degrees C, so I don’t know if it’s thermally throttling or something else relating to its TDP. When running off the battery, the speeds and performance are expected; the APU is intentionally limited to conserve battery. Still at Best Performance, you can squeeze out a single core speed of about 4GHz, which is impressive. /////////// Graphics Performance /////////// The Ryzen 7 Mobile is baked in with Radeon graphics. The graphics had no trouble running games like Roblox. I had my daughter give it a test run (she plays on my desktop PC with a dedicated GPU, for reference) and she gave it two thumbs up. I know, Roblox isn’t a demanding game, but it’s nice to know she can Roblox on-the-go on a PC rather than on a smartphone. So I took it to the other extreme and installed Shadow of the Tomb Raider for another test run. Running the in-game benchmark tool, I was able to squeeze out 13fps. This is with all graphics settings set to the lowest setting. During the benchmark, the APU shot up 91 degrees C! Terrifying. For my last test, I decided on a middle ground with Halo MCC. This was actually playable! Frame rates were around 30-40fps and the APU temps were hovering around 67 degrees C. Not bad at all. I had the laptop plugged in while gaming and did notice that the laptop became warm to the touch with the fans quietly spooled up, but nothing to be alarmed about. /////////// Battery Performance /////////// Ultimately if you decide to go with the Ryzen APU, you reap the benefits of the 7nm process which equates to lower power consumption and ultimately longer run times. This will be evident as you begin to configure your Laptop 4 with either Intel or AMD. If you go Intel, your battery times are reduced by as much as two hours. Intel Tiger Lake uses a 10nm process on their mobile chips which results in more power use. The Intel chips are fast in both processing and integrated graphics and may have advances in their silicon process, but you lose out in runtime. And it costs more, too. From the standpoint of costs and battery life, Ryzen would be the way to go. Just something to think about. Speaking of battery life, Microsoft states a battery life on this 15” Ryzen model to about 17.5 hours. We don’t know how they arrived at that number, but my regular use brought about 11-13 hours with the battery set to Recommended mode. That’s essentially a full day before reaching for the wall charger. You can easily mitigate battery usage by reducing screen brightness as well as disabling keyboard backlighting and turning off Bluetooth if you’re not already using it. Also, the more applications you have running in the background, the more battery will be consumed. /////////// Summary /////////// At its price point, it will have to trade blows with Dell, Lenovo and even the upcoming Samsung for ultra portable PC laptops, and many may find the other brands more visually appealing if we consider all their models comparably equipped. It boils down to preference and what is value priced at the moment. But again, there is something to be said about a company that designs both the hardware and the software of a device and even collaborates with chip makers like AMD to make a premium product, and so I recommend the Surface Laptop 4 15” Ryzen Edition as a buy. It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t go with the nextgen of Ryzen processors. Apple is at the forefront of hardware and software, with their new M1 chip being all the rave at the moment, and is another alternative to the Surface Laptop 4 if you don’t mind running MacOS. Another avenue would be gaming laptops that offer much more performance at the same price point, but are larger, heavier and will need to be plugged in most of the time. I recommend that you think about your daily use cases and make a decision on a certain type of laptop from there.

For a long time there was not a lot of competition for high end (non-gaming) laptops, with the Surface Laptop 4 it looks like things are changing. With the new AMD Ryzen 7 Microsoft Surface Edition processor they claim 17.5 hours of battery life on this model and I didn't quite get there but there was more than enough battery life to get through a long day of work and home use. The touch screen and trackpad were very responsive and the backlit keyboard was a joy to type on. The speakers were loud as well as clear and the build quality felt very premium and balanced in the hand. The usb-c, usb-a and headphone jack ports were all a welcome sight. The only knock I have would be that they didn't go for an exotic feature such as a digital screen button row as I feel that would lead to new and exciting ways to use your laptop. Overall I'm very happy with the Surface Laptop 4 and have no qualms about recommending it to anyone in the market for a higher end laptop.

Very happy with this new laptop...starts fast, no problems. Clear, crisp image on the screen, lightweight and easy to tote. Would definitely buy again....and Geek Squad was super-helpful moving everything over!

The best laptop on the market!!! This laptop is beautiful! It is slim, great screen and color clarity, with a beautiful minimalist design. I hate when there a bunch of stickers on my laptops. It is just wonderfully sleek, The Ryzen 7 is lightning fast. It beats out an 11th gen i7 in most performance benchmarks. The graphics are good too. The Radeon graphics are better then most Intel Iris versions and it does have 512mb of dedicated memory which actually makes a big difference, The keyboard is the best but that is nothing new as Microsoft makes the best keyboards. Another thing I noticed (this is my 7th different surface device) is that the windows hello on this laptop is better then any other. The battery gets about 11 hours in real life for me with the screen at 40%. And the if this helps the USB-C port Supports DisplayPort 1.4 Alt Mode for 2 HD monitors

Fantastic! Exactly what was expected. Super fast, very light weight, great battery life, keyboard has a great touch. Very happy!

The build quality and pricing both place this laptop in the range of a new MacBook Air. The laptop is very well built and feels great to use. For the price you could probably do better if MacOS works for your needs, but if you need something that natively runs windows without the compromises of most windows machines, this is it. You can find an identically equipped windows ultrabook for hundreds less, but if you can get a discount it is worth it, even if it still costs a little more.

Excellent build quality laptop. Like the keyboard and touchpad. Good screen too!

I bought a Dell XPS but returned it, low resolution screen and so heavy. Exchanged for this, best decision I ever made. This computer is so well made, sturdy and at the same time thin and light, not sure how they did it, but they did. The screen is beautiful, battery life is great, such a joy to travel with this. Only slight is that I wish it had thunderbolt port instead of just USB C and USB A

There is no better built Windows laptop than this, the whole thing feels premium from the keyboard to the trackpad and the sturdiness of the chassis. No bloatware installed from the box and runs great. Love it in black!

We like it! We bought this to replace a Microsoft Surface Pro 5. We like the speed, the size of the screen, weight and the attached keyboard. A nice improvement!

Love this laptop its fast and elegant extremely well built. Love the touch screen its very responsive well done Microsoft.

It is a great Laptop, especially the compatibility with Microsoft products and the Keyboard.

Great computer. Screen quality is wonderful. Performs all tasks required. Price was best I could find. Size is perfect for a laptop.

An incredible screen and an unbeatable keyboard. Very solid computer. I also bought the Samsung book 2 pro 360 15 and I definitely prefer the Surface much more.

Very well made, good build quality and very thin, awesome laptop

PROS + Bright, beautiful, and functional 3:2 screen + Fantastic keyboard + Sleek & thin design + All-day battery life + Ryzen CPU performs great + Speedy SSD + Big trackpad to match longer screen + Speakers surprisingly punchy + Windows Hello features integrate very well + Touchscreen CONS - Minimal port selection - 8GB of RAM pretty low for being paired with a Ryzen 7 CPU for power-focused users - Pretty thick bezels by modern laptop standards - Black color shows fingerprints/grease pretty easy THE LONG & SHORT OF IT Since working from home over the course of the past year, I have truly learned to appreciate the smaller conveniences that make a good laptop great. Things like a long battery life, clear screen, speedy performance, and much more. The Surface Laptop 4 is in many ways the best laptop I have ever used. It is amazingly well constructed from what appears to be one solid piece of metal, which also helps make the laptop very thin and light. The keyboard (one of the most underrated pieces of any laptop) is possibly the best I have ever used, with a solid key travel that feels just right, and a crisp bottom that easily allows me to generate some of my best words per minute typing scores. It is the screen that is maybe my favorite feature of this laptop. With a 3:2 aspect ratio, it has more height than a typical computer screen. For things like media consumption, means you will likely end up with much larger black bars on the top and bottom than something like a more standard 16:9 screen. However, what you gain with this aspect ratio is more height when viewing documents/pages, which helps make work production so much smoother. I’ve actually gotten pretty spoiled on the 3:2 aspect ratio, and often find I miss it when going back to my standard desktop. On the brightness, sharpness, and color aspects, this laptop also excels. The screen gets plenty bright, punchy, with a 2256x1504 resolution that allows text to appear crisp and clean across the board. I don’t have the equipment to officially measure color accuracy, but have owned many screens, including several calibrated ones, I can say this laptop looks great to the eye. As for performance, the AMD Ryzen 7 CPU in here performs amazingly well. I write code for a living, and I found this processor to be fantastic at powering through most computational tasks I threw at it. It’s super speedy, and even for day-to-day work, it blows through everything I threw it at without skipping much of a beat. The one area of performance I am less than thrilled with is in terms of RAM. With only 8GB, the package feels a little lackluster, and I would often run out of memory in more computationally expensive tasks before I hit any CPU bottlenecks. At this size and price point, 16GB of memory standard would have been much preferred to pair with this kind of CPU. All this being said, for the average consumer or daily worker, I still think 8GB is plenty of memory for most scenarios, but just be aware you may see slowdown when running lots of memory-hungry programs at once, like Microsoft Teams with several Chrome browsers open, or for serious gaming. On the note of performance, the internal SSD is plenty fast with very quick file transfer speeds and no read/write issues to note. For battery life, I didn’t run a formal clock on how long it took to go from 100% -> 15% (when I typically charge it), but it easily lasted me a full day without issue, and I have no doubt that you can easily get 12-14 hours out of this machine on a single charge if needed. It is simply a workhorse when it comes to longevity. In general, there is so much to love with this machine, and apart from some thicker bezels (which seems a bit out-of-date in 2021 where many laptops are boasting near bezeless displays), there is very little to complain about. The only other area where I think this machine is lacking is in the port department. Specifically, you only get one USB-A and one USB-C port, which means you will almost certainly need a USB dock if you plan to use any more than one or two USB devices at the same time. I am not a fan of needing to carry a dock with me wherever I go when I want to use multiple USB ports at once, and so the lack of reports is a shame here. Not a deal breaker by any means, but certainty lacking if you use things like HDMI or many connected devices at once. Outside of the USB ports there is a headphone jack and propriety power jack with the included magnetic laptop charger. All-in-all, I love this device. Like other Microsoft hardware I have owned in the past, the machine exudes quality and excellent performance. Unfortunately, it trades some function for these things, and may not be perfect for anyone. This being said, if you need a blazing fast CPU, amazing screen, and long battery life, look no further. I have no issues recommending the Surface Laptop 4 for others, and fully plan to use it as my daily productivity driver from now on. It simply feels like a quality device through-and-through.

This is a great machine! Fast, Quiet, Awesome sounding speakers, Great screen and the keyboard is just perfect for me. This is my first Microsoft Surface Laptop and I'm not unhappy at all.