Microsoft’s more budget friendly take of its Surface Laptop is getting a second try, as the Surface Laptop Go 2 gets a refresh, kinda sorta.
There are plenty of portable computers on the way out, and even though portability largely was put on hold during the whole WFH pandemic, the laptop choices kept on rolling out. That is still happening, but as we start to shift to a hybrid model of work from home mixed with the occasional day in the office, the need for portability is back to being a thing that matters.
Cost is also important there, because not everyone wants to spend up big, and so Microsoft is giving its cost-friendly and portable PC a good go in a second time, as the Surface Laptop Go hits round two.
The first version wasn’t as impressive as we’d hoped, with last year’s Surface Laptop Go feeling under-spec’d for the price and with a mediocre screen resolution that just didn’t hit the value mark for us when we reviewed it.
This year, Microsoft is changing some things and leaving others, giving us more of a feeling of a question mark, and making us ask, will it be enough to take on the competition?
The new model will be the Surface Laptop Go 2, and will come with another 12.4 inch 3:2 display, making it taller than your typical widescreen laptop, but again with another HD-specific 1532×1024 display.
Microsoft will see new chips form Intel’s 11th-gen Core i5 processors, so not quite the 12th-gen we’re seeing in 2022 machines, but it will see a mostly aluminium design with polycarbonate (plastic) used in the bottom, plus some other bits and pieces, like Bluetooth 5, WiFi 6 (802.11ax), a fingerprint sensor, Windows 11, and some improvements to security.
In Australia, the pricing looks set to start at $1199, but fortunately there are improvements to the spec, with no 4GB RAM option anymore. Rather, the Surface Laptop Go 2 aims to be a touch more competitive, with the $1199 entry level coming with 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD, while a $1229 model will increase the storage to 256GB.
While we’re hesitant on the screen — because that resolution is not super amazing — at least Microsoft seems to have worked out its spec issues, and could hit better value this time around.
We’ll know soon, because with the Surface Laptop Go 2 set to go on sale from June 7 in Australia, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll be able to get our hands on review units soon, too.
