Customer Ratings & Reviews

I purchased the laptop in April by May it was dead. Exchanged it for a new one. Thankfully, the exchange process with Best Buy was smooth. Ask me again in a month and I will let you know how the new one works.

Let’s delve into the details of the all-new Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 for 2024. Design and Unboxing: The unboxing experience is reminiscent of Apple products, featuring a paper pull tab and a touch of finesse. Inside the box, you’ll find the Surface Laptop 7, a 39-watt power adapter, and the accompanying cord. The Sapphire Blue 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 is simply gorgeous, and the packaging strikes a balance between simplicity and effectiveness. Display, Camera, and Setup: When you lift the lid, the laptop powers on automatically, similar to Apple laptops. Kudos to Microsoft for this thoughtful feature! The vibrant IPS 13.8-inch Pixel Sense Display boasts impressive specs: 120Hz maximum refresh rate 2304 x 1536 resolution with variable refresh rate Peak brightness up to 600 Nits Supports Dolby Vision and HDR. Windows Hello Authentication is handled by the 1080P front-facing camera, allowing you to log in swiftly. Performance and Hardware: The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus CPU, running at 3.34GHz, paired with Adreno 741 Graphics, ensures incredible performance with efficient power consumption. With 10 CPU cores, Snapdragon Elite NPU, and 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM running at 8443MHz, it’s a very capable machine. Audio from the OmniSonic Speakers with Dolby Atmos support is impressive, considering the laptop’s thin profile. Ports include a 3.5mm headphone microphone combo jack, 2 x USB-C, and 1 x USB-A 3.1. Plus, it can be charged via USB-C. Storage is provided by a Samsung 512GB Gen 4 NVMe SSD Drive for your favorite applications. WI-FI 7 is onboard to provide next-gen wireless connectivity. The keyboard features decent key travel with three levels of backlighting to round out the hardware. Software and Compatibility: Windows 11 Home runs seamlessly on the Snapdragon X processor, thanks to the Prizm translation layer. However, be aware that compatibility with certain software may be lacking initially. AI features show promise but are not fully developed yet. Gaming Considerations: Gamers should hold off for now due to limited compatibility. As compatibility improves, the Surface Laptop 7 with Snapdragon X Plus will become a highly recommended choice. Overall Impression: This laptop is a marvel, especially for productivity and creative tasks, with all-day battery life. Over time, it will likely become a flagship device sought after by professionals and creators alike. Keep an eye on the evolving AI features—they’ll make it an even better investment!

Rating this laptop proved to be somewhat challenging because there really is no way to separate the hardware from the operating system. (While I would love to be able to compare speed, RAM, resolution, and other similar statistics to competing products, the synergy between the hardware and OS is part of the selling features of the laptop. Therefore, I am looking at this laptop as a whole/complete package with hardware and software/operating system.) To begin, I really like the form factor and construction of this laptop. I have used numerous other laptops before and the build quality of this laptop matches that of more expensive competitor laptops. The aluminum body is solid and sturdy with a nice tactile feel to it. I have the blue model, which is very nice to look at as well. The laptop does have a little heft to it, but nothing crazy and the squared edges are comfortable when carrying it. The screen is beautiful with rich colors and adequate brightness. To take things up a notch, it is a touchscreen as well. (I am used to laptops without touchscreens.) What really impressed me, however, was the touchpad. I have yet to find a touchpad that I like on a Windows-based PC; that is, until now. The touchpad on this laptop is silky smooth, provides haptic feedback, and allows for tapping/clicking anywhere on the touchpad (including a right-click with two fingers). There are other gestures supported by the touchpad as well. Very well done. If I understand correctly, the CPU in this laptop uses ARM architecture (as opposed to the competing x86 architecture that has defined Intel chips forever), so I was curious as to how the usability experience would be. Without comparing side-to-side to another laptop, all I can say is that the laptop seems very fast and capable to me. Ultimately, I look at a laptop like this as a tool for using the Internet, maybe watching videos, and taking care of office-related tasks like checking email, checking social media feeds, and working in an office suite to create, view, and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. In this respect, the Surface Laptop feels just as fast as other more expensive laptops I have used. I also really like the Windows "Hello" feature that recognizes my face and unlocks the computer based upon that biometric measure. (As opposed to using a fingerprint, the facial recognition is much more convenient as it does not require any physical intervention on my part. Just open up the laptop, click on the login screen, and it recognizes me and boots up to the OS. Nice.) Microsoft claims up to 20 hours of battery life with the unit. While I have not run a battery test to verify that claim, I am more concerned about having decent battery life to last a full day at work or on a four to five hour flight (plus some time sitting at the airport). Thus far, it appears as though the battery life on the unit is more than adequate for my needs when completing the relatively "simple" (non-processor-intensive) tasks that I mentioned above. I suppose playing games or processing video would take a toll on the battery, that is not how I use this laptop, so I did not evaluate it from that perspective. (Along those lines, I do not know how long it takes to process certain types of video projects or what the frame rate is for a game.) My particular unit has 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, which is a decent size for all those office tasks that I mentioned before. If I were using this laptop for gaming or video/photo work, however, I would want more storage than that. (I think the Surface tops out at 1TB? The laptop I currently use for processing video has 8TB of storage.) Speaking of battery life... The unit includes a separate power supply with a proprietary connection for charging the laptop that reminds me of a magnetic connection available on another series of laptops. The power supply is not very large, so it is convenient for traveling. It is my understanding that the laptop can also be charged through the USB-C ports (and I also saw options to buy a Thunderbolt 4 hub to also drive a couple 4K displays from the laptop [although this is not something I tested]). Given the form factor of the unit and the thin bezels around the screen, there is no manual shutter to occlude the 1080p camera, so those who are concerned about that sort of thing may be a bit disappointed. (I was also surprised that the camera was 1080p and not a higher resolution.) As I have not used this laptop for teleconferencing, however, I really cannot say how good the camera is. (The camera is supposed to follow you around to keep you in the center of the frame when using the laptop for videoconferencing.) Lastly, this laptop incorporates Microsoft's "Copilot+" features, which is their integration of AI technology into the operating system. Some of the things that the AI can do is generate automatic captions for video (and translate to different languages), generate illustrations from sketches, an help with writing (similar to other AI platforms). Personally, I am not that creative and I also enjoy writing without relying on AI features, so I really have not used the Copilot+ features that much to fairly evaluate them for this review. As that technology continues to advance, however, I can only imagine the other tasks AI will be able to perform in the years to come (and this laptop appears to be well-positioned to take advantage of those features). So, are you looking for a Windows-based PC that can accommodate your business and recreational tasks while traveling without having to worry about finding an outlet? This unit definitely seems to fit that bill in a package that is compact and attractive. While I have been using non-Windows-based laptops for years, this is the first laptop offering I found that could possibly convince me to switch back to using Windows again.

Computer is great for commuting. Touch screen is very useful great battery

The high quality of this laptop can be seen as soon as take it out of the box. It seems heavy for the size, but not enough to be too hefty. The entire case has a smooth metallic feel. The sapphire blue color is light and looks great with out standing out too much. It is super thin and the screen hinge is a little stiff and gives it a quality feel that should last a long time. Microsoft took care of providing the same quality to their branded laptop as their feature filled Windows 11 operating system. Startup is fast and the 13.6 inch screen is gorgeous and has a vibrant glossy look. The front facing camera can be be seen and works well in utilizing Hello for facial recognition logins. It supports HDR and the native resolution is 2304 X 1536. The screen adjusts very well to be clearly seen in high and low light conditions. The technical specifications are sufficient to handle all your productive needs. The Snapdragon processor has 10 cores and has an exclusive NPU (Neutral Processing Unit) for handling AI (Artificial Intelligence) tasks. There are 16GB of RAM and decently sized 512GB solid state drive. OneDrive can handle storing all your large files safely in the Cloud. CoPilot is included on all Windows 11 machines running Windows 11. CoPilot+ laptops take this to new level by building the processing around running CoPilot AI. The Snapdragon processor runs on a 64-bit ARM based processor. The positive is that this runs CoPilot queries very well. The negative is that many older software and internet security programs do not support ARM processors yet. This is a common occurrence with new technology but you may want too keep this in mind that some of your current software may not be supported yet. An example, is my current internet security software gave an error that it must run on Windows when installing. However, if you do a search you will find there are many top security software suites that currently support ARM. Now to the bread and butter of this laptop. CoPilot is an awesome new technology. You can use it totally free or for a $20 per month subscription you can tap into all its features and full power. The free version allows you to do query searches, similar to Google, Bing, etc. CoPilot+ allows the power of AI to enhance emails in Outlook and documents in all your Microsoft suite applications (Work, Excel, etc.). Keep in mind that the premium subscription is for CoPilot+ only and you will need a separate O365 subscription to take full advantage of all the features. You can type in CoPilot to create an image, with specific parameters, and it does a surprisingly great job of creating the requested image. It looks like Microsoft has also put in safe guards to keep students from using AI to create their school work. I asked CoPilot to create a 1000 work essay on the effects of climate change and it would not create the actual essay, but gave very useful bullet statements in creating the document. I highly recommend this product if you need a quality, portable and powerful PC for productivity on the go. The powerful efficient new processor and CoPilot+ will keep this laptop running the latest AI innovations for a long period of time.

Windows machines finally have a win on the ARM platform, I charged this laptop once when it arrived, and I was setting it up, and haven't needed to charge it yet. I'm not stress testing and benchmarking it, there are enough people you can find doing all of that, I am just using it like a regular, average get things done laptop. Email, writing, browsing, light games, and goofing off. So far it's been a smooth ride. Windows on arm still isn't 100% Arm compiled it looks like, but the Prism compatibility layer that translates x86 to Arm64 seems to be putting in the work for the parts of the OS that aren't native, and the majority of programs you will likely be installing as well. Games being the sticking point I can see being a problem for now, both because of the relatively anemic onboard graphics power, and the troubles of trying to run more complicated stuff like graphic intensive games through prism, big sticking points in that front you can see in some YouTube videos, it seems a lot of anti-cheat enabled games either fail or refuse to launch. The hardware and general fit and finish are really good here though. There is basically zero deck flex on the keyboard making for a solid typing experience as far as laptop keyboards go. The trackpad is nice and big, and haptic, has all the multi finger gesture fun you expect on modern touch pads, and a nice setting to set a corner of it to be 'right click' dedicated so you dont always have to 2 finger click for a right click, making it a little more accurate. The haptics on it are strong enough that it feels like a nice satisfying little click is happening. It's a little light on ports and would really benefit from a micro sd card slot, but the available full sized usb and 2 usb c ports are enough in most cases. The screen is nice and bright but has a non standard resolution that might make it a little hard to get a perfect wallpaper for it, just little 1st world problems that don't really affect anything. The hardware is not the only thing that this new breed of "Copilot+ PC" machines are trying to sell themselves on. and unfortunately, I think it needs more time to cook, and Microsoft needs to dedicate more time into fleshing out the on-device capabilities. It's nice marketing that the onboard NPU is 45 TOPS of performance, but that doesn't really mean anything to the average person. Copilot is an always online service and remains an always online service on these new Copilot+ PCs as well weather any of their workload can be done locally is irrelevant if it will not even try when it doesn't have an internet connection in the first place. While connected to the internet it feels no different than the copilot beta that's been available on windows this past year. You can ask it questions, it has integration with the web browser for additional context etc, I used it to help me better write out a resume, and a few emails that I wasn't really sure on the best way to phrase things, and that's really helpful. But It's far from the game changing future of PC's the marketing would suggest. I think the Co Creator in Paint is a cute feature, but paint is quite possibly the worst thing in the world for doing any kind of graphic design and it's only recently gotten the ability to handle 'layers' and still immediately rasterizes text so you can't edit things in it well, but I guess if you just want to play around, the image generation can be interesting. I have experience with AI image generation models and the gamut of settings and tweaks that can be done to adjust their output, and this doesn't really have anything more than a slider for how 'creative' you want it to be, and I think that's just how firm it sticks to your prompt or not. but I don't know what's really going on under the hood there beyond that. As much as a selling point, they are pushing all of the AI features to be, I don't recommend buying one of these on that. I do think that the hardware is good enough to warrant picking this over an intel/amd option if you aren't looking for a gaming machine. It's light, sleek the Sapphire and Dune colors both look amazing if you want something other than Silver or Black. In the end, I give it a solid 4 out of 5, amazing hardware, but I feel like if you're going to really push for on device processing of the AI features, you need to make those features accessible for offline use, even if it is using smaller models and may not be quite as fully featured as the connected resources allow. I hope they continue to improve on what they have, and I hope they take public feedback seriously as they shape the services and features going forward. Till then, I'm happy to let the features cook a little longer till they are done and ready.

The Microsoft Surface Copilot+ laptop might be the best answer to the question "Why should I buy a new PC?" even without considering the AI hardware enhancements. I'm writing this from the new 13.8" Surface Copilot+ Laptop for Business, Snapdragon Plus processor, 16gb ram, 512gb ssd. It seems about as fast as or maybe a little faster than my previous I7 (gen 14) laptop, and some quick benchmarking seems to bear that out. The battery life is fantastic! I've been using it for a little over five hours of active use (email, web, excel, word, and a couple compiles) and the battery is at 63%. It is really living up to the all day computer moniker. And there are no vent holes and no fan noise; it's totally quiet! Solid build, nice chiclet keyboard with good feel, awesome high res (2304x1536) touch screen, and charging by either Surface Connect or USB-C port. I've had no problem with Windows apps compatiblity so far. The most hyped part of the Copilot+ PCs is the built in AI NPU (neural processing unit). This effectively does the AI processing on the PC instead of sending it to the cloud. This has the obvious advantage that your data, queries, and results aren't sent to the cloud; they stay local. There are very few programs that take advantage of it yet, and most feel like demonstrations. The two I found really useful were LiveCaptions and Webcam effects. The Copilot app doesn't use the local NPU yet, but I would guess that will change soon. All in all, an exceptionally capable, quiet, well built laptop with awesome battery life and a stellar display. Add in to that a capable NPU and the promise of local AI processing, the Surface Copilot+ Laptop is well worth your consideration.

Wow! I have to say that I have always appreciated the Microsoft Surface line for its style and form-factors, but have always been a little 'meh' about the innards. This time, Microsoft hit on all cylinders. Not only is this a solid and nice looking laptop, but the new ARM architecture and the POTENTIAL of the Copilot+ system really make this a powerful system for pretty much anyone (with the exception of graphics creatives and gamers), but especially for students. I am really impressed with the power that we are seeing from these new ARM chips, especially when you factor in the battery sipping specs. I have been working on this laptop for almost a week now, doing all sorts of test and a lot of Copilot testing and still have not had to recharge it from its initial fill up. Now granted, I was not doing any of the 'usual-suspects' for battery drain (that is: gaming and photo/video/audio encoding), but that is mainly because there aren't any 'big-name' pieces of software out yet for the Windows-ARM environment. Still, this really isn't intended to be that kind of platform in the first place. Once we see some inroads with GPUs in this sphere, THEN we can talk about real horsepower and battery sipping ability. It has been a joy using the laptop over the last few days. The screen is beautiful and bright. The keyboard is pleasant to type on, and the trackpad is large and responsive. I don't touch my screens so I can't speak to that (I hate fingerprints on my laptops), but I have always been a fan of the 3:2 aspect ratio on laptops and I'm glad that Microsoft is sticking to its guns on this and leading the way. I've also been really lucky over the years and have never really had to have any work done physically on any of my laptops (software is another issue altogether), but from what I understand from other reviewers, is that the Surface is relatively easy to fix which should translate to a longer useful life and/or cheaper repairs if needed. My only gripe with the physical features of the Surface Laptop is with Microsoft continuing to use its own proprietary charge port. I am less frustrated with this since you CAN use USB-C to charge your laptop but it's more the principle of the matter. The power brick is relatively tiny and light (as to be expected with something that only cranks out 39W), but there is ZERO reason why it is not just a simple USB-C brick and a nice cable to go along with it. Just sayin'. Getting back to the good stuff. What has REALLY been fun over the last few days or so has been playing with Copilot+. I've never really had any need to use any of the AI platforms previously, and to tell the truth I didn't think I ever really would, but after just a bit of work with Copilot in both office apps and as a stand-alone, I think the POTENTIAL for Copilot is absolutely crazy. It's fun to play around with writing prompts and see where they lead. This will actually be a pretty cool tool to use for my writing, especially with character development. It has also been good to help me identify tropes that I may be leaning on a bit too much. I put in a few sci-fi story ideas and let Copilot run with them, and quite a few of those tropes kept popping up (hence them being tropes), but it becomes glaring once you see them in several different story ideas. While I can also see how this can make someone pretty lazy with their work, for me it frees up some brain cycles for me work on plot and dialogue and less on the peripheral characters. My biggest gripe with Copilot+ though, is the content restrictions. I completely understand the AI not wanting to generate material that is sexual, hateful, defamatory (though really, it ought to do it if asked, or there should be a setting to do the processing locally if the issue is using Microsoft servers for the work), but some rather anodyne requests were met with statements from Copilot that said that it could not do that and encouraged me to generate that material on my own. Again, we are still in the early stages of the 'AI Revolution', but I think we could use a bit more 'Wild West' and a little less 'Corporate Boardroom'. As a former educator, this platform really excites me and scares me a bit. It excites me to think about the ideas and content that students could produce with such a powerful platform, but then the teacher in me worries about how I could ever separate the student from the AI with the current tools available. Fortunately, I'm retired and that is no longer my problem, and so I can just be excited to see what my rather gifted nephew is going to churn out with this laptop once I give it to him next month for his birthday. Microsoft has really hit it out of the park with this generation of Surface devices, and I think you are getting a really high-quality laptop with tons of power and phenomenal battery life for a really good price. If you are looking for a solid laptop that is light, powerful, beautiful, and in the Windows ecosystem, then the Surface Laptop with Copilot+ is a no-brainer. It

This laptop is an absolute joy to use for about every task I’ve thrown at it. It is lightweight, fast, sturdy feeling, has a good keyboard and touchpad, and is quick with everyday tasks that include web browsing, productivity stuff, and photo editing. It’s very good camera and AI features make it a wonderful WFH machine, and the AI features can translate for you as well as run real time filters on your video. Gaming is limited right now, but I’m sure it will improve very soon as more devs port their apps to run ARM native or get ported over from mobile where they are already running on ARM. If you’re considering this laptop, go ahead, it’s a great value! Packaging is wonderful. Everything can be put in the recycling as far as I can tell, even the cord wraps are paper. Excellent. The Surface 7’s build feels rock solid, full aluminum chassis, very subtle branding on the lid, not a single RGB decoration to be found. The backlit keyboard is comfortable and easy to type on. The aluminum has a good feel, I prefer the keyboard 100% more than my ***Book Pro. It has two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and a headphone jack on the left side, while the right side hosts the Surface power adapter port, which can also be used for Microsoft’s proprietary docks and port replicators that will power the laptop and add the ports with just one plug. This machine straddles the past and future by also offering current standard USB-C with PD and DP, so you can use a third-party dock to get the same functionality, super flexible! Wifi 7 is a notable feature to have on your computer going forward, it’s the new standard in Wi-Fi and the Surface’s Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip works great on Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 networks. I used Bluetooth for connecting a keyboard, controller and headset and did not have any problems. I think the Copilot+ features that are enabled on these new machines are limited right now just to a few “demonstration” features in Windows. The possibilities are wide open. Hopefully developers going forward can leverage the NPU to do some really cool stuff soon. Even beyond the Copilot+ features and all of the future promise, this is a very well sorted computer. I really enjoy the lack of OEM junk hanging out in every corner of the machine. I can use all the power the computer offers because it does not have to continually run the unstable system resource drains that are on almost every OEM machine. This computer has a big advantage that it does not run the background tasks that OEMs run, so it will almost always be faster than other machines with the same specs. I’ve gotten great battery life on this machine, more than enough for my needs. The Surface Laptop 7 13.8” Copilot+ is arguably the best everyday laptop you can buy right now, and it’s only going to get better. Folks may balk at the price, it’s a good value. Recommended.

On a surface level, this is a really good laptop. The hardware construction is great, and it feels nice to the touch. It's not horribly heavy, and it doesn't feel flimsy. The face unlock is reliable, and the screen is amazing - it's crisp and clear, and the brightness can go up so high it actually hurts to look at. It also works flawlessly for all of your basic tasks, such as YouTube or word processing. The battery life is decent, and despite being an ARM64 processor it can run standard X86-64 apps just fine. Here's where it starts to fall apart. First off, the battery life doesn't feel like it's up to where they promised it to be. I've also noticed that it drains alarmingly much while sleeping - I left it sleeping for a day and it lost half of the battery charge. Second, despite all the fanfare about how while this machine isn't for gaming it is capable of it, it's really... sad. Even with the Windows update that says it introduces support for a lot of anti-cheat software, I haven't had any luck getting any games that use anti-cheat to actually run. A lot of newer games just crash immediately, and some older games will run great for a bit then freeze the whole computer. Indie games at least run great, as well as Borderlands 3. The big marketing feature about this laptop was that it was able to run AI. For instance, certain AI features of Photoshop (like background replacers) can run on the device rather than in the cloud, which saves on both time and bandwidth. Having this ability is nice. However, having the hardware there doesn't really save AI that's not that great. I was really excited, for instance, to try out the Live Captions - being able to watch videos that aren't in English and don't have subtitles sounded lovely. Unfortunately, it wasn't very good. The translation quality felt pretty bad. It was like Google Translate - I could get the memo, but it took some figuring out errors and I'm certain some stuff was lost along the way. Windows Studio Effects and Cocreator worked... fine? Cocreator was decently quick, too. I'm not *super* impressed with them, but I'm not really the target audience for them. They don't seem *bad*, at least, which is nice since I didn't really have a great experience with Live Captions. (For what it's worth, I will say as far as Cocreator goes, that I'm genuinely glad that this laptop comes with a USB-A port instead of just USB-C ports. A lot of drawing tablets use USB-A cables. Making sketches for Cocreator to work off of was a lot more enjoyable when I was able to use my drawing tablet than when I was trying to use a trackpad or a mouse.) The AI component that really shone was Automatic Super Resolution. Remember what I said about Borderlands 3 running? At times it looked a little rough (especially text), but it always ran smoothly after loading was done. It ran *surprisingly* smoothly. It actually reminds me of the early Arc graphics drivers - they were really rough, and only a few games worked right on them, but the ones that did work right worked great. So, I suppose that Auto SR actually gave me faith that this will improve as time goes on, and lightweight gaming laptops powered by Qualcomm will actually be a viable gaming platform for casual titles. Maybe even this one, if Qualcomm does enough work on their drivers and Microsoft keeps improving Auto SR compatibility as well as the X86 emulation. I would *love* to play Destiny 2 on this thing in between classes or on my lunch break. Overall, I really like this laptop. It's a genuinely good computer. However, it feels like it was released to the public a little too quickly. Most of the AI is okay at best, and the AI that is genuinely good is hampered by the fact that a lot of games are incompatible with the system. (Though admittedly, I do think a professional could get more mileage out of Cocreator than an amateur like me.) While I do have faith that the AI pertaining to gaming will improve with time, I do think that maybe it would have benefited with Microsoft waiting a few more weeks to release this thing. I would *cautiously* recommend it, just for being a good machine in general, but I would say to temper your expectations, as it has the "new technology" issue of a bunch of problems that need ironing out.

I like it the color its very nices also the brand also