Microsoft Surface Laptop Go
Steer clear of the two cheapest configurations and this is a compact, beautifully made laptop
SCORE
Range starts at: £458 (£549 inc VAT) Model tested: £935 (£1,122 inc VAT) from businessdirect.bt.com
The Surface Laptop Go is a phenomenal little machine. While buying the lowest-spec version would be a mistake – 64GB of eMMC storage and 4GB of RAM is a combination that makes grown IT support teams weep – once you step up to the £699 model with a Core i5, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, it begins to look like a compelling system.
Microsoft even believes it has enough about it to work in a business situation too, sending us a £1,122 system that features a Core i5-1035G1, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and Windows 10 Pro. It points out that there’s “enterprise-grade” protection courtesy of the t Windows Hello infrared cam camera and fingerprint reader built into the pow power button (this isn’t pr present in the 4GB/64GB 4GB/64G version), plu plus a TPM for har hardwarebased encry encryption.
We’re no not so convinced, in part because the support and security y on offer doesn’t match that of, say, Dynabook, HP or Lenovo. For instance, we had a problem with the installed image and attempted to use Microsoft online support to get it back to factory fresh; a lack of documentation and circuitous instructions put pay to this. Note also that this is not a machine you can fix yourself, and the one-year warranty hits the bare minimum of our expectations.
For now, we think the Go is better suited to home users, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work on it. The keyboard in particular is superb: the keys have a gentle, quiet nature that we quickly adjusted too, and it helps that Microsoft has eked out every millimetre of space in this compact chassis. Its only compromises are half-height function keys and cursor up/down keys that are both small and close together. Then there’s the trackpad, which is coated in glass and, compared to the rest of the laptop, huge: it’s ideal for Windows gestures that rely on three fingers.
The screen is similarly excellent. It’s the smallest here at 12.4in and also has the lowest resolution at 1,536 x 1,024, but its slim bezels mean it never feels crowded. Technically, it’s a fine panel. It’s geared towards wards the sRGB colour space, e, covering 94% of it in our tests, and an average Delta E of 0.76 demonstrates its excellent xcellent accuracy. Strong trong peak brightness and contrast ontrast figures of 356cd/m 56cd/m2 and 1,158:1 158:1 mean it’s up there re with premium laptops p ps for quality.
You don’t get many ports. Microsoft arguably wastes the right-hand side by only including a Surface Connect interface there, with the left-hand side home to a 3.5mm jack, USB-A and USB-C port. The latter is your sole way to connect a monitor (unless you buy a £260 Surface Dock), and it can charge the Go too. However, if you buy a USB-C docking monitor, you can connect your peripherals directly to the screen.
The other benefit of this arrangement is that, when you want to take your Go out, you only need to remove one cable. It’s perfect for life on the move, weighing a frothy 1.2kg, while its tiny dimensions mean it begs to be thrown into a bag.
There’s a real feel of ruggedness
“The Go is perfect for life on the move, weighing a frothy 1.2kg, while its tiny dimensions mean it begs to be thrown into a bag”
to this machine too, with a firm metal lid protecting the screen and a solid polycarbonate base.
Its battery life is less exceptional, lasting 7hrs 50mins in our videorundown test. With judicious use, it could creep through a day away from the mains, but we recommend that you invest in a travel USB-C charger rather than carrying the clunky supplied Surface Connect charger. It will do the job, but the magnetic connector likes to fall out.
Another annoyance is the webcam, which is fuzzier than that of the Surface Laptop 3. That’s made more irksome by the fact that Microsoft gets the other parts right: yes, the mic is echoey but it’s effective at picking up voices, while the speakers are the best we’ve heard on a mini laptop.
Finally, we should cover speed – except there isn’t much to say. Avoid the lowest configuration and you’ll be buying a responsive system, but this laptop is designed for lightweight workloads, rather than crunching data. It’s only a tenth-gen Core i5 inside, so you don’t get much in the way of gaming ability, either.
But to criticise the Go for this is missing the point. It’s a charming lightweight laptop that would make an excellent travelling companion, while having enough oomph to be your main PC if you connect it to a monitor. We reserve our real criticisms for Microsoft’s configurations, because the £699 model only has 128GB of storage. That means the 256GB model is the obvious choice, and, at £899 (with Windows 10 Home), it isn’t cheap.