Maybe a mid year refresh will have their in house discrete GPU's.
I like the Surface book. This like all other foldables is a compromise. The book, disconnects and I have a nice thin tablet, connect, I have an excellent laptop with great battery, KB/TP and a DGPU. both of these are noticeably heavier than the previous kitted out Surface Book. Wish they'd keep selling the Book.
You know what's funny? "Acer ConceptD 3 Ezel 14" laptop is basically identical to this (because MS copied it), but the original Acer wisely used a 8-Core Intel + GTX 1650 and saved a few bucks on their low-end model.
The Ezel 3 costs $1200 on eBay right now, VS the SLS that costs $2500 with a 2 year warranty, for almost identical specs.
Acer will refresh their whole Ezel lineup (5 laptops, goes up to i9/Xeon and 3080/Quadro A5000) in a few weeks, and for $2500 that Microsoft charges, you can buy the Acer Ezel 7 that will have an i7-11800H + 3060, and a much better Wacom EMR stylus.
That 'flip screen' form factor dates at least back to the 2013 Vaio Flip, and I'm pretty sure there was at least one Netbook (remember those?) that used that layout even earlier.
The device comes included with AES 1.0 but third party AES 2.0 pens do work on it, which is on par with the Surface Slim Pen 2's performance in terms of diagonal jitter and input lag.
You think that's bad---my current Dell has on-chip Intel 620 and for some reason they also threw in the nearly useless MX130 from Nvidia as well. Talk about wasted silicon.
100% This is exactly why I canceled my order. Coming from my Surface Book 2 with a 1060... the 3050Ti isn't really that much of an upgrade, like an exceedingly minor upgrade compared to if they put a 3060 in there.
As a diehard lover of the SB lineup (still rocking that SB2 15 with 1060), I'm incredibly sad to see them go, particularly as it is finally feeling like good 15-25W cpu's are here/approaching to limit the need to go for a 35W (ala Zen 3 or otherwise), and honestly I think this folding hinge is a serious step back in ID, but I recognize it seemed inevitable when the gaps between models had been farther and farther apart.
The M1 is an impressive feat of cpu performance no doubt but to discount this computer on that alone is foolish.
This offers a touch screen, pen input, optional internal graphics, and support for external graphics. It also has an articulating display in a form factor that is only 2 mm thicker than the Mac book pro.
You can say you don’t want or need any of those features which is fine but to say it’s a slam dunk for a MacBook Air is stupid.
Apple put out sub par cooling designs for their MacBook’s for year and now that the M1 exists suddenly every apple fanboy loves absolute cpu performance.
For now the Macbooks are glorified ipads with keyboards. They just throw away decades of programs. I may be a MS whore, but I do run iPhones only and iPads. I guess it is fitting Apple will just do their own thing and you have to go MS or Linux to do real work.
This doesn't make any sense. No software has been thrown away (all old Intel apps works) and major stuff already natively works on ARM anyway. My entire dev and data science setup has been ARM native since early spring 2021.
Apple's CPUs have been more efficient/powerful than Intel's for years. It has taken this long for their software engineers to perfect x86-64 emulation. The M1 also employs a few unique tricks for making x86-64 emulation perform better.
To discount this product is only fair (esp. given the price point), just like discounting pre-m1 `macbooks` was fair game before this. Also, there isn't anything extra that surface book is offering apart from touch screen / pen input.
Another silly review with no 999$ MBAir and/or M1 comparison at all, and silly irrelevant battery life testing instead of doing all the testing on battery power and add something for performance when plugged in.
Completely fucking irrelevant, what can you even DO on a M1 trashbook? Fucking nothing. Just scroll facebook/instagram. You can do that on a $200 chromebook.
Did MS actually state this device replaces Book or that the Book is going the way of dodo? I see this repeated very often but I remember only MS claiming "this is the most powerful Surface". So, yeah, it is their premium "ordinary" laptop ... but this doesn't mean there won't be Book 4 later with similar or even higher performance. (though at 16 months since last update it does seem abandoned)
Hi Daeros. I've not been sampled the Apple M1 in a laptop so it is not in our database.
Most of the "H" series we've tested are bigger gaming systems with much larger GPUs. This is called an H35 but really it's more of a U-series with some headroom.
So perhaps a stupid question: based on what I see from the battery life and charge time page, charging only happens through the Surface Connect port and not through Thunderbolt at all? Correct? If so, that is annoying as it means a normal Thunderbolt dock is next to worthless with this.
I picked up my Surface Laptop Studio yesterday and confirmed you can charge with any standard PD charger over Type C on both ports, this is a requirement to be called "Thunderbolt" if less than 120 watts I believe (I could be wrong on the wattage number). I have a 65 Watt PD charger and it works GREAT.
Excellent battery life for a 56 WHr 35W GPU + ~35W dGPU; these idles states are working well.
And great to see, from the surface, a quite decent SSD (as I don't think SK Hynix makes QLC or DRAMless SSDs, do they?).
But, *quite* disappointed to see not a single type-A port and a silly, selfish omission. Following Apple's worse trends: "$1600 MSRP system with a dGPU and not a single USB type-A port."
//
The oddities are those browser benchmarks.
Either Windows 11, Edge, or some system timers are either beyond amazing or beyond borked. That 192 Speedometer 2.0 score for an i7-11370H (4.8 GHz Turbo) is 34% faster than AnandTech's CPU Bench all-time record of 143 by the i9-11900K (5.3 GHz Turbo).
Also would've liked an M1 comparison at least for battery life or CPU performance, though the main seller here is the hinged touchscreen.
Finally someone mentioned this! I've been waiting for some in-depth pictures of this laptop, and after reading something like five reviews I haven't seen _a single_ close-up shot of the hinge. Wtf? There's even a whole page here dedicated to the design, yet the only photos are of the front?
Saying that "shows the hinge" is pretty generous. It's a photo of nearly the whole laptop showing what it looks like with the display folded back. Definitely not sufficient to gain any real insight into what this assembly looks like irl.
Looks nice, is expensive. Among the things I don't get: why no larger battery? It's not an ultraportable, and not meant as such, is it? If this could be had with a 90 or 95 Wh battery, it would last a lot longer when not plugged in, and that might be worth the extra weight for some
Some people already commented on the comparisons to other laptops. I noticed that there were no comparisons to Ryzen 5000 laptops. In particular, the Acer Swift X will be an interesting comparison, as it's a ultraportable with a 3050 Ti. Would be nice if you could get one for review.
"... already great keyboards in previous Surface devices."
I strongly disagree. Slick types of plastic. Bumpy space bars. Miniscule key travel. Keys too wide. And the arrow keys are still in a large-half-large configuration and not a proper inverse-T like what even Apple has reverted to.
Dolby Vision fails to work on $3000 HDR10 certified TVs due to the lack of brightness and colors. No laptop in existence can display "True HDR10" so more demanding DV isn't going to work obviously, it's just a marketing buzzword.
If you want to watch Blu-Ray content that supports DV, you'll want to buy either a $10K+ Micro-LED TV, or a $20K+ Reference-Grade Monitor.
I'm getting a strong feeling of déjà vu. Back in 2012-2013 several laptop makers had a similar hinge design at the start of the Windows 8 era. Back then the hinge design that Microsoft is using could not survive constant use and other issues which is why almost all 2 in 1 designs are like the Lenovo Yoga series. After 9 years maybe Microsoft has overcome the issues that plagued that earlier hinge design.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
Back to Article
cknobman - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
I feel like Microsoft made a bad decision to go with the 3050ti.Nvidia hamstrung the 3050ti really bad with its memory capacity and bandwidth.
One of the few times I'd say save your money and stick with integrated graphics.
Manch - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Maybe a mid year refresh will have their in house discrete GPU's.I like the Surface book. This like all other foldables is a compromise. The book, disconnects and I have a nice thin tablet, connect, I have an excellent laptop with great battery, KB/TP and a DGPU. both of these are noticeably heavier than the previous kitted out Surface Book. Wish they'd keep selling the Book.
tipoo - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
This isn't really a gaming system and the RTX stuff can help with some pro apps (such as OptiX), there's not really a comparable IGP yet.gescom - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
I feel like Microsoft also made a bad decision to go with a 4 core Intel cpu.timecop1818 - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
As opposed to what, 8 core piece of shit from AMD that doesn't have USB 4.0 or working IGPU?Prestissimo - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
You know what's funny? "Acer ConceptD 3 Ezel 14" laptop is basically identical to this (because MS copied it), but the original Acer wisely used a 8-Core Intel + GTX 1650 and saved a few bucks on their low-end model.The Ezel 3 costs $1200 on eBay right now, VS the SLS that costs $2500 with a 2 year warranty, for almost identical specs.
Acer will refresh their whole Ezel lineup (5 laptops, goes up to i9/Xeon and 3080/Quadro A5000) in a few weeks, and for $2500 that Microsoft charges, you can buy the Acer Ezel 7 that will have an i7-11800H + 3060, and a much better Wacom EMR stylus.
cknobman - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
Oh wow good catch!!Looking at the Acer it appears like Microsoft did copy their design.
edzieba - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
That 'flip screen' form factor dates at least back to the 2013 Vaio Flip, and I'm pretty sure there was at least one Netbook (remember those?) that used that layout even earlier.Tams80 - Thursday, October 7, 2021 - link
It's a shame that the ConceptD 3 Ezel uses AES. The 7 is a bit too big, but Wacom EMR...Prestissimo - Saturday, October 9, 2021 - link
The device comes included with AES 1.0 but third party AES 2.0 pens do work on it, which is on par with the Surface Slim Pen 2's performance in terms of diagonal jitter and input lag.blppt - Thursday, October 7, 2021 - link
You think that's bad---my current Dell has on-chip Intel 620 and for some reason they also threw in the nearly useless MX130 from Nvidia as well. Talk about wasted silicon.Awells62 - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
100% This is exactly why I canceled my order. Coming from my Surface Book 2 with a 1060... the 3050Ti isn't really that much of an upgrade, like an exceedingly minor upgrade compared to if they put a 3060 in there.amschroeder55 - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
As a diehard lover of the SB lineup (still rocking that SB2 15 with 1060), I'm incredibly sad to see them go, particularly as it is finally feeling like good 15-25W cpu's are here/approaching to limit the need to go for a 35W (ala Zen 3 or otherwise), and honestly I think this folding hinge is a serious step back in ID, but I recognize it seemed inevitable when the gaps between models had been farther and farther apart.lemurbutton - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
These laptops should be worse less than the M1 Macbook Air. At $1600 and $2,099.99, they're a joke.Wait for the M2X (A15-based) Macbook Pros coming out in a month.
lemurbutton - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
worse --> worthZeratul56 - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
The M1 is an impressive feat of cpu performance no doubt but to discount this computer on that alone is foolish.This offers a touch screen, pen input, optional internal graphics, and support for external graphics. It also has an articulating display in a form factor that is only 2 mm thicker than the Mac book pro.
You can say you don’t want or need any of those features which is fine but to say it’s a slam dunk for a MacBook Air is stupid.
Apple put out sub par cooling designs for their MacBook’s for year and now that the M1 exists suddenly every apple fanboy loves absolute cpu performance.
Byte - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
For now the Macbooks are glorified ipads with keyboards. They just throw away decades of programs. I may be a MS whore, but I do run iPhones only and iPads. I guess it is fitting Apple will just do their own thing and you have to go MS or Linux to do real work.misan - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
This doesn't make any sense. No software has been thrown away (all old Intel apps works) and major stuff already natively works on ARM anyway. My entire dev and data science setup has been ARM native since early spring 2021.Findecanor - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
Apple's CPUs have been more efficient/powerful than Intel's for years. It has taken this long for their software engineers to perfect x86-64 emulation.The M1 also employs a few unique tricks for making x86-64 emulation perform better.
gund8912 - Monday, October 11, 2021 - link
Like what softwares/programs ?ildoge - Monday, November 1, 2021 - link
you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.ildoge - Monday, November 1, 2021 - link
To discount this product is only fair (esp. given the price point), just like discounting pre-m1 `macbooks` was fair game before this.Also, there isn't anything extra that surface book is offering apart from touch screen / pen input.
Oliveira_Salazar - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Another silly review with no 999$ MBAir and/or M1 comparison at all, and silly irrelevant battery life testing instead of doing all the testing on battery power and add something for performance when plugged in.timecop1818 - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
Completely fucking irrelevant, what can you even DO on a M1 trashbook? Fucking nothing. Just scroll facebook/instagram. You can do that on a $200 chromebook.gund8912 - Monday, October 11, 2021 - link
I know, it can't run MS Office, Adobe programs, cant edit pictures, videos, can't run mail, cant even use terminal to use unix commands.tipoo - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Did the odd cooling setup lead to it getting uncomfortably hot under your palms under stress?MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
I do wonder about the design. I can see the hard edges creating pressure points on the lap and possibly resulting in restricted ventilation.Brett Howse - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Warm, but never uncomfortable.nico_mach - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
That is such a strange design I thought it was a typo? Why would you vent it out at the user, who might be in warm room, too?Zizy - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Did MS actually state this device replaces Book or that the Book is going the way of dodo? I see this repeated very often but I remember only MS claiming "this is the most powerful Surface". So, yeah, it is their premium "ordinary" laptop ... but this doesn't mean there won't be Book 4 later with similar or even higher performance. (though at 16 months since last update it does seem abandoned)nico_mach - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
I don't think you'll get a clear statement from MS. That said, they indicated that this is the successor, so I wouldn't count on another Book release.And, yes, that is all they said, there is no definitive 'The Book is dead' statement anywhere.
Daeros - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Just curious as to why no comparisons were made to other ‘H’ sku offerings from Intel and AMD, or the Apple M1.It seems like a no-brainer that a CPU with >2x thermal dissipation and external GPU is faster than the ~15w platforms in this review.
Brett Howse - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Hi Daeros. I've not been sampled the Apple M1 in a laptop so it is not in our database.Most of the "H" series we've tested are bigger gaming systems with much larger GPUs. This is called an H35 but really it's more of a U-series with some headroom.
That being said, feel free to compare the Laptop Studio against any other device we've tested in our online Bench database here:
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2890
ingwe - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
So perhaps a stupid question: based on what I see from the battery life and charge time page, charging only happens through the Surface Connect port and not through Thunderbolt at all? Correct? If so, that is annoying as it means a normal Thunderbolt dock is next to worthless with this.Brett Howse - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
The charger that comes with it is the normal Surface one but that doesn't mean you can't charge over the other ports.rogantastic - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
I picked up my Surface Laptop Studio yesterday and confirmed you can charge with any standard PD charger over Type C on both ports, this is a requirement to be called "Thunderbolt" if less than 120 watts I believe (I could be wrong on the wattage number). I have a 65 Watt PD charger and it works GREAT.ikjadoon - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
Excellent battery life for a 56 WHr 35W GPU + ~35W dGPU; these idles states are working well.And great to see, from the surface, a quite decent SSD (as I don't think SK Hynix makes QLC or DRAMless SSDs, do they?).
But, *quite* disappointed to see not a single type-A port and a silly, selfish omission. Following Apple's worse trends: "$1600 MSRP system with a dGPU and not a single USB type-A port."
//
The oddities are those browser benchmarks.
Either Windows 11, Edge, or some system timers are either beyond amazing or beyond borked. That 192 Speedometer 2.0 score for an i7-11370H (4.8 GHz Turbo) is 34% faster than AnandTech's CPU Bench all-time record of 143 by the i9-11900K (5.3 GHz Turbo).
Also would've liked an M1 comparison at least for battery life or CPU performance, though the main seller here is the hinged touchscreen.
ikjadoon - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
* 35W CPU* Apple's worst
SirDragonClaw - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
No one needs a old usb type-a port these days. Leaving it on would be foolish.alanh - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
I find it curious that you talk about the new "unique hinge design" and then neglect to include any detailed pics of the hinge on the "Design" page.Valantar - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
Finally someone mentioned this! I've been waiting for some in-depth pictures of this laptop, and after reading something like five reviews I haven't seen _a single_ close-up shot of the hinge. Wtf? There's even a whole page here dedicated to the design, yet the only photos are of the front?Brett Howse - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
There is a photo on the last page showing the fabric covered hinge.Valantar - Monday, October 11, 2021 - link
Saying that "shows the hinge" is pretty generous. It's a photo of nearly the whole laptop showing what it looks like with the display folded back. Definitely not sufficient to gain any real insight into what this assembly looks like irl.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
Looks nice, is expensive. Among the things I don't get: why no larger battery? It's not an ultraportable, and not meant as such, is it? If this could be had with a 90 or 95 Wh battery, it would last a lot longer when not plugged in, and that might be worth the extra weight for someET - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
Some people already commented on the comparisons to other laptops. I noticed that there were no comparisons to Ryzen 5000 laptops. In particular, the Acer Swift X will be an interesting comparison, as it's a ultraportable with a 3050 Ti. Would be nice if you could get one for review.Findecanor - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
"... already great keyboards in previous Surface devices."I strongly disagree. Slick types of plastic. Bumpy space bars. Miniscule key travel. Keys too wide. And the arrow keys are still in a large-half-large configuration and not a proper inverse-T like what even Apple has reverted to.
MakaanPL - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
What about Dolby Vision?While it's great that sRGB is accurate, games and movies could benefit from dynamic HDR. Are any VOD services compatible?
vladx - Saturday, October 9, 2021 - link
Dolby Vision requires a DCI-P3 display for any meaningful quality differences.vladx - Saturday, October 9, 2021 - link
And also the screen's brightness is too low for HDR.blppt - Wednesday, October 13, 2021 - link
Any IPS display is going to suck for HDR. By their very nature they can't do deep blacks.Prestissimo - Sunday, October 10, 2021 - link
Dolby Vision fails to work on $3000 HDR10 certified TVs due to the lack of brightness and colors.No laptop in existence can display "True HDR10" so more demanding DV isn't going to work obviously, it's just a marketing buzzword.
If you want to watch Blu-Ray content that supports DV, you'll want to buy either a $10K+ Micro-LED TV, or a $20K+ Reference-Grade Monitor.
RedPhilly62 - Wednesday, October 6, 2021 - link
I'm getting a strong feeling of déjà vu. Back in 2012-2013 several laptop makers had a similar hinge design at the start of the Windows 8 era. Back then the hinge design that Microsoft is using could not survive constant use and other issues which is why almost all 2 in 1 designs are like the Lenovo Yoga series. After 9 years maybe Microsoft has overcome the issues that plagued that earlier hinge design.shanugadgetsbuying - Wednesday, October 13, 2021 - link
Your articles are perfectly . I enjoyed it reading .gadgetsbuying.com