Customer Ratings & Reviews

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.

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.

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.