Microsoft Surface Laptop
The Microsoft Surface Laptop’s design seems timeless, but its specification is dating fast
SCORE PRICE £833 (£999 inc VAT) from microsoft.com
When Microsoft released the Surface Laptop last year, it proved that you could build an innovative and portable laptop without taking your design cues from Apple. It’s still hard not to love the matte-finish aluminium chassis, soft colours and deliberately angular style. The design’s not just good looking, but practical, and the 13.5in screen and 1.28kg weight make this a laptop you could easily lug around all day.
It’s a slight shame that the hinge isn’t more flexible – using the optional pen or touchscreen never feels quite natural on a laptop, and it’s easy to forget that touch is an option and stick to the silky smooth, beautifully responsive touchpad. The soft-touch Alcantra around the keyboard is a love-it, hate-it kind of thing, but the keyboard itself is a pleasure, with well-sized, perfectly weighted keys that seem designed to keep up with speed demon typists.
Subjectively, the screen is fantastic, with the 2,256 x 1,504 resolution delivering images of stunning clarity, helped by lovely vibrant colours and a high maximum brightness level of 362cd/m2. The only problem is that, under test conditions, colour accuracy isn’t quite so good, with a surprisingly poor Delta E of 4.69. On extended use, we also have some doubts about the 3:2 aspect ratio; it’s fine with a single app open or if you stack apps vertically, but snap two windows side by side and they look oddly thin and difficult to read. There’s no questioning the audio, though; with enough weight and detail for music or movies, it’s about as good as you’ll get from a slimline device.
However, the most serious problem with the Surface Laptop is that the few elements that hold it back now will date it even more in a year’s time. There’s no USB-C connection, just a single Type-A USB 3 port, along with an audio jack and a mini DisplayPort output. What’s worse is that the performance of this mid-range model with a two-core, four-thread Core i5-7200U and 8GB of RAM looks weak against a field of four-core, eight-thread Kaby Lake R processors. The price has dropped to make the Microsoft Surface Laptop more attractive, but this still desirable laptop needs a refresh to get back on top of the back.