Last Updated on July 7, 2021 by Rick Darlinton
Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop 4 is a beauty to behold. It features a similar design aesthetic to its predecessors, featuring a lightweight, slim body that we all know and love. However, the Surface Laptop 4 comes with bigger battery life, something which was lacking with its younger siblings, and a lot more processing power. Moreover, the laptop does indeed shine in other areas, so read on for a detailed Microsoft Surface laptop 4 review.
Part 1: Basic Specifications
From a longer-lasting to a brighter, vibrant screen, in this Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review, we discuss all the features the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 has to offer.
Display
The Surface Laptop 4 comes with a vivid and bright 13.5-inch, 2,256 x 1,504 pixel IPS LCD screen. Still, the display lacks darker blacks and better contrast levels compared to an OLED. However, it’s still one of the best displays a laptop can have. The bezels are thicker, which is not desirable considering it’s a 2021 laptop, but they aren’t much of a bother after using the computer for some time.
The display comes with an aspect ratio of 3:2, which is better for reading blogs and articles as much more content is available on the screen at a given time. However, the ratio does cause widescreen movies to look a bit off. The added touchscreen feature comes as a cherry on the top with an already vibrant and sharp display.
Design
There’s no debate on how good the Surface Laptop 4 looks in terms of design. The aesthetics are right on point and are not much different from the Surface Laptop 3, but Surface Laptop 3 was a looker. The Surface Laptop 4 comes with a modern look, and there are two designs for customers to choose from, the standard aluminum design or the more fancy Alcantra version.
Performance
The Surface Laptop 3 was already capable, but the Surface Laptop 4 improves upon it by housing an Intel Core i7-1185G7 CPU and 16GB of RAM, which is more than enough for daily tasks. Web surfing, video editing, and even light gaming can quickly be done on 30 fps.
There are no slowdowns during usage, thanks to the super-fast M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD. With a score of 4,829 on the Geekbench 5.4, the Surface Laptop 4 beats the category average and comes close to the XPS 13.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keys on the Surface Laptop are sized appropriately and allows hours of typing before any sort of discomfort sets in. The 1.3mm of travel makes the typing experience comfortable, and each press of a key is followed by a satisfying click. Although there’s no Numpad, the typing experience doesn’t suffer as there is more room for keys to be sized accordingly.
Like the touchscreen, the touchpad is responsive, feels good to use, and shows no signs of input lag. Moreover, the touchpad is also nicely sized with enough place to move one’s fingers freely. Hands with bigger thumbs will also face no problem navigating through the 4.5 x 3-inch glass touchpad.
Ports
With the Surface Laptop 4, users get a USB-C, a USB-A, and a headphone jack. The USB-A is nice to have, considering how several modern machines have started to leave it out. Then there is also a USB-C port that makes sure users have no problems connecting external devices. Microsoft did leave out Thunderbolt 4, which takes away the ability to connect devices such as a GPU.
Battery
Microsoft claims that the battery life should last close to 17 hours on ‘average usage,’ which, according to our tests, is a little far-fetched. The battery will last about 10-12 hours on 70% brightness while using basic applications such as Chrome and Evernote paired with intensive apps such as Affinity Photo.
Although the Surface Laptop 4 lacks behind the top competitors when it comes to battery life, it’s still a significant improvement over its predecessor.
Audio
One cannot go wrong with the Surface Laptop 4 when it comes to audio quality. The laptop features Omnisonic speakers with Dolby Atmos makes sure the sound is crystal clear with a satisfying amount of bass.
While listening to music, the instruments don’t sound all mumbled together, and the speakers are loud, too, with the laptop’s sound being able to fill an entire apartment when set to 100% with little to no distortion.
Part 2: A Review of the New Surface Laptop 4 from Several Aspects
Microsoft tried to make a laptop for a variety of different users. It’s an excellent device for students. It offers enough processing power to run hardware-intensive programs while also being lightweight enough to carry while traveling.
Besides, this new Microsoft laptop in 2021 is an incredible asset for freelancers. It is since they can benefit from the extraordinary hardware, vivid display, and long battery life. The simple fact that several users can use this device as their daily driver and be satisfied with the performance shows how good the laptop is.
The Pricing Policy
The base model of the Surface Laptop 4 is available for consumers for £999/$999. However, the price increases as you beef up the specs. Although the price may seem a little high, when one goes through everything the laptop offers, the price seems reasonably fair. Microsoft has kept a balance on this one by neither overpricing nor underpricing their laptop.
Final Thoughts
The Surface Laptop 4 not only improves significantly over its previous models, but it’s also just a well-made machine overall. It has a premium feel to it, and its design will attract some eyes. The hardware is good enough to offer a satisfying performance. Moreover, it comes with no bloated software trials that plague several other Windows laptops.
Thanks to the large capacity SSD, the computer is fast. However, it would have been nice to have Thunderbolt 4 support, but the ports are sufficient for external devices.
After our Surface Laptop 4 review, we’ll say is that it is a top-quality Windows 10 device. It not only looks great but also performs exceptionally well.
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