Quick review
The good
The not-so-good
Microsoft’s take on the MacBook Air gains the heart of a chip optimised for battery life. Is the Surface Laptop 7 one of the year’s best?
Metal, smart, and premium. They’re words already connected to the “Surface” series of laptops Microsoft is known for, offering a computer that stands out often for all the right reasons.
It comes with the specs. It comes with the design. And this year, it comes with a new bit of hardware designed to make the Surface Laptop more portable than ever.
It might not seem like much has changed, but there’s a little more going on under the hood of the 2024 Surface Laptop.
Design
Little has changed in the look and feel, though. The Surface Laptop has been ticking around for a few years, and this version, the 7th generation made for 2024, largely keeps things the same.
There’s no lush Alcantara pad for your wrists, but the aluminium chassis is plenty comfy for long sessions, all the while helping make that laptop feel a little more durable for al one time.
It’s a slick design, and one that kind of exudes the “what would a PC look like if designed with the premium look and feel of a MacBook”. The premium materials are great, the minimalist aesthetics is great, and all up, even though little has changed, it is lovely all the same.
Features
While not much has changed up top, inside there are changes.
The most obvious is a change from Intel to Qualcomm, as the Snapdragon X Elite takes the spot of an Intel Core chip. In the 15 inch Surface Laptop 7 we’re reviewing, it’s a 12 core processor paired with a minimum of 16GB RAM, but in our review model, there was 32GB. Storage starts at 256GB, but ours saw 1TB inside.
A new chip isn’t the only change. There’s also a move to WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, with the wired ports covered by two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, one old-school rectangular USB-A, a 3.5mm headset jack, a microSDXC card slot, and the Surface port connection, as well.
Up front, there’s a 1080p Full HD camera for video chat, effects, and Windows Hello facial security, and it arrives with a 65W Surface-specific power pack, though USB-C can charge the laptop, as well.
Display
The screen adds to the feature set, delivering a fast 120Hz display with plenty of resolution, offering up 2496×1664 on the 15 inch size.
It’s not just a large screen, but also a touch screen, which means you can use it for swiping and prodding and touching and the like, plus a coating of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5.
In-use
You’ll get a full size keyboard on the 15 inch Surface Laptop, a delightful set of keys with decent traction that lets you type for hours on end. We did, building this review and a few other articles, and the keys offer some nice action. Errors could still pop up throughout, but they were low.
There’s backlighting here, too, with a few levels to work with, while the mouse side of things provides you a sizeable trackpad as well as a touchscreen you’ll probably never use.
It’s not that the touch on its display is useless per se, more that the need for drawing and touching on a hinged display that only ever really sits perpendicular to the keyboard isn’t fantastic. The screen’s use of touch is handy, the angles at which it sits less so.
Ideally, if you like the idea of a touchscreen Surface, look to the tablet-inspired Surface Pro, not the Surface Book. This is more a laptop with the added benefit of having the touchscreen if you need it. You probably won’t.
AI features
You also probably won’t use the AI features on the laptop, though they are here if you want to dabble.
The ChatGPT-connected CoPilot is an obvious part of the package — clearly part of the name, too — able to be triggered by this year’s change to the Microsoft keyboard layout, the CoPilot key found on the right side.
Microsoft’s AI features also include additions to Paint, effects on the camera, and an eventual use of Windows Recall that wasn’t ready at the time of launch. That’s something also available on the Surface Pro, but in a tablet style.
Performance
There is a lot in common with that other Surface model, of course, and one of the features is the chip.
In the current generation, Microsoft has moved to the world of ARM processors, giving Windows on ARM another shot in the arm, so to speak with an obvious “pun intended”.
This isn’t the first Windows machine we’ve seen with the Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM chips inside, and it won’t be the last. You actually get a choice of two on the Surface Laptop varieties, with the 13.8 inch offering the 10-core X Plus and the 12-core X Elite, while the 15 inch only seeing the more performant 12-core Snapdragon X Elite.
The latter of these is the chip we’ve seen across other Snapdragon laptops this year, including the HP Omnibook X 14 and the Dell XPS 13, so Microsoft is in good company.
Weirdly, though, it also manages to be slower than both of those, despite running the same X Elite processor.
Technically it’s faster than other laptops we’ve seen in the same class, but only in processing. In graphics, it can’t quite compete, and tends to be slower than some of the Intel and Apple Silicon chips we’ve seen that it should compete with, as well.
The frustrations come out in more than synthetic benchmark tests, too. You can see some of the slowdowns in apps at times, and it is startlingly confusing.
The Surface Laptop we’re reviewing came with a staggering 32GB RAM, and yet would often take several seconds before loading installers, forcing you to click several times in frustration and then having them all come to the surface at once.
Typing into apps could also feel slow, as if the letters and words would struggle every few minutes to come to life.
Technically, the Surface Laptop has all the makings of a modern, fast computer. It just doesn’t feel that way. It’s crazy.
About the only way this laptop reverses that trend is with the startup times: pulling the Surface back from standby is immediate with zero wait time. It’s about the fastest log-on we’ve seen from any Windows PC in recent times. Combined with the facial security that is Windows Hello, you’ll be back to working on your laptop in literally no time at all.
Battery
Working on your laptop will give you a reasonable amount of battery life, too. We found between 14 and 20 hours of life on the Surface Laptop 7 for regular productivity work, a result that is fantastic and really puts it up there.
Charging options come in two forms: USB-C and Microsoft’s Surface Dock connector, each found on different sides.
USB is our favourite, largely because the ports and power packs are so easy to find and accommodate for, while the Surface connector is proprietary and requires the Microsoft power pack. Worse, the Surface Dock is hard-wired into the power pack itself, so you can’t just plug it into a Type C charging port and go for your life.
Several generations into Surface models, we’re still not sure why Microsoft keeps with this connector. By now, it could have moved onto an extra USB-C or something else. If anything, it just feels like a nod left in for the few folks who have Surface Dock port replicators. Prove us wrong.
Value
Price is where things get a little complex. While the 15 inch Surface Laptop feels like a dead ringer for competing with the 15 inch MacBook Air equivalent, the price is a little off the mark. It’s high for a Windows equivalent, and we’re not entirely sure it’s worth that much.
Officially, the 15 inch Surface Laptop 7th-gen models start at $2399 for a 16GB RAM 256GB SSD model, a difference of $200 more on top of Apple’s 15 inch identical equivalent.
The model we reviewed with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD pushed that price up to $3699, some $600 more than the M3 MBA 15 with 24GB RAM. The memory is different between these models because the M3 MacBook Air maxes out at 24GB, it seems.
Competition is healthy, and yet finding the Microsoft equivalent costing more doesn’t seem like as solid a value from where we sit. It’s just a little more expensive than it needs to be.
What needs work?
Price is one factor, but there are still things Microsoft could improve, which in its seventh generation definitely need some tweaking.
The move to a new variety of processor means performance is, unfortunately, one of them. You’ll find it just doesn’t match competitors, and at times feels slower than it should.
The trackpad could also be improved, and while it’s a nice tactile clicker, you may find errant wrist pickup still pops up at times, moving your cursor as you type, while the click action can sometimes be better, also.
Final thoughts (TLDR)
These are but minor things in the grand scheme of things, of course, and may not be enough to dissuade.
Much like how a Google Pixel phone is often the best example of an Android phone that yet — because Google makes the operating system that runs on the device, so it should make the best template version of a phone — Microsoft should also technically deliver the best Windows laptop in the Surface.
In the 7th-gen Surface Laptop, Microsoft gets the formula really close, but just doesn’t pull it off at the end. Out of the models we’ve tested and reviewed, Dell’s XPS line hits perfection before Microsoft’s nails it.
There’s still plenty to consider in the Surface Laptop 7, with the battery life key to that. Need a Windows laptop with plenty of juice? This one has it.
Could things be a little more economical? Sure. But the Surface Laptop 7 is one of the better PCs we’ve seen this year, and that counts for something. Recommended.
