The Surface Laptop Studio is Microsoft’s high-end hybrid laptop that replaces the Surface Book in a completely different form factor. Instead of being a laptop with a fully removable display, the Laptop Studio’s screen can be pulled out in front of the keyboard or laid flat on top of it. This makes it technically a 3-in-1 device, although it loses the flexibility to be used as a tablet. It is also limited to these three fixed positions, unlike convertible laptops with 360° hinges. In particular, pulling the display forward in Stage mode creates an unnatural angle for watching videos, but there is no way to adjust this.
The Surface Book showed that Microsoft has the design power to do more than the average laptop and that the demo could offer an ‘other’ moment of detaching the screen from the keyboard. This detachment leads to the Surface Book’s biggest problem… When you change mode to tablet, you have to leave the extra battery and graphics power behind, reducing the effectiveness of the top half.
Surface Laptop Studio solves this problem. By keeping the screen attached to the base at all times, all of the battery and processing power is always at hand. However, when in tablet mode, all the weight remains. This is not the case with the Surface as a tablet, but with the Surface Pro series. Instead, the Laptop Studio follows in the footsteps of its (much) larger desk sibling, the Surface Studio, offering an easel-like experience for drawing, a comfortable viewing experience and a laptop that can quickly transition into traditional work mode.
Open the lid of the Surface Laptop Studio and you are greeted with a Windows laptop that is the closest thing to a MacBook Pro I’ve seen this year. There’s no speaker grille surrounding the keyboard, but otherwise you’re looking at a very similar matte silver chassis with a thick black bezel around the screen, soft grey plastic keys on the keyboard and a tactile touchpad laid out underneath.
MacBooks have had tactile touchpads for years, but they are still fairly rare on Windows laptops, and the Surface Laptop Studio’s touchpad uses software and tactile motors to make it feel like you’re clicking something The touchpad on the Surface Laptop Studio is a real work of art.
In practice, the Studio’s hinged display is very cool, but hardly useful. If you intend to use this laptop for digital art production, you might have a different impression, as it is nice to have supported screen positions other than flat and open. with a ‘zero gravity hinge’ similar to the Surface Studio 2, the display height and angle could be more finely adjustable, which would have been even better.