The screen is still crisp and good looking, perfect for working at home or in the office, but the maximum brightness is only 400 nits (competitors have 500 nits) and is not particularly smooth, especially on the Surface Pro 9 tablet. 720p webcam is similar, still fine, but usually no progress with competing products that run at 1080p.
Inside this machine, Microsoft has reduced its chip choices since last year to only Intel’s latest 12th generation Core i5 and i7 processors. The new chips are said to offer up to 50% speedup in some tasks. In addition, for the first time on a Surface Laptop, there is a Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 port. This allows for faster, higher-performance connections to docking stations and other peripherals.
We’re not going to spend too much time describing the Surface Laptop 5’s appearance, as it is the same chassis Microsoft has used for the past three or four generations; both the 13- and 15-inch models feature tall 3:2 displays in an aluminum body for The 13.5-inch review unit weighed 2.86 pounds and was only 0.57 inches thick. Overall, it’s a very sleek and truly beautiful package that shows why Microsoft doesn’t want to mess around with the design; it’s thin and minimalist, just like the MacBook, but you won’t confuse the two. But I think Microsoft is fully capable of tweaking the current chassis to accommodate the new components without compromising its beauty.
Ultimately, the Laptop 5 continues to be a well-made and well-functioning laptop, expensive but not so high in the retail cloud that substantial flaws are a non-starter. (This is a good computer that I enjoy using. It has more than enough power for general use, but those who need heavier graphics performance may prefer the heavier Surface Laptop Studio, which has a discrete GPU available.
Battery life, however, is not as good as last year’s AMD model offered. Trading off some efficiency in exchange for additional power is justified. Some shoppers will be willing to make the trade-off. But that was not what Microsoft should have asked of them. Microsoft should have been able to get both.