Microsoft’s Surface team has produced some amazing designs over the years, taking to focusing on convertible devices to highlight the adaptability of Windows. That being said, over the last several years the design team has been largely held in check, as Microsoft has opted to focus on further refining their convertible designs. Thankfully, for 2021 the team is back to innovation as well as refinement with their latest device, the Surface Laptop Studio. With its dynamic woven hinge, the Laptop Studio is a true convertible device, as well as the spiritual successor to the now-defunct Surface Book.

The Surface Laptop Studio’s unique feature is most certainly the tiltable display. And while the idea of being able to tilt the display on a laptop is not unique, Microsoft’s dynamic woven hinge is. The hinge mechanism provides the ability to convert the laptop into three modes, which Microsoft is calling Laptop, Stage, and Studio modes. The genius of the design though is that Microsoft’s hinge provides these modes without a significant amount of bulk, so unlike most convertible devices, the extra functionality does not come at the cost of compromising the laptop experience. The Surface Laptop Studio is first and foremost a laptop computer, and not conceding that capability to add the extra functionality is a big win.

As a successor to the Surface Book, performance is also a key in the Surface Laptop Studio. To that end, it is equipped with Intel’s H35-series 11th Gen Core processors – a higher powered version of Intel’s quad-core “Tiger Lake” CPUs, along with their Iris Xe integrated graphics. And with the Core i7 model Microsoft goes one step further by adding a discrete GPU; either NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti for consumer models, or if you opt for a commercial model, the professional-focused RTX A2000. For memory, the base model comes with 16 GB of LPDDR4x with a 32 GB option on the i7. On the storage front Microsoft offers from 256 GB to 2 TB of PCIe 3.0 solid state storage, which is also user replaceable.

All of this drives the new 14.4-inch PixelSense Flow display. The exciting news here is that the Surface Laptop Studio features a 120 Hz display to improve the laptop's smoothness and responsiveness. At a 2400x1600 resolution, the panel is not quite as high density as the outgoing Surface Book, but still offers a respectable 201 pixels per inch.

Surface Laptop Studio As tested: Core i7 / RTX 3050 Ti / 32 GB / 1TB / $2699.99
Component	Core i5	Core i7
CPU	Core i5-11300H 4 core 8 Thread 3.1-4.4 GHz 35W TDP	Core i7-11370H 4 core 8 Thread 3.3-4.8 GHz 35W TDP
GPU	Intel Iris Xe 1.3 GHz 80 Execution Units	Intel Iris Xe 1.35 GHz 96 Execution Units NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti/RTX A2000 4GB GDDR6 128-bit 2560 CUDA Cores 80 Tensor Cores 20 Ray Tracing Cores 32 ROPS
RAM	16 GB LPDDR4x	16GB / 32GB LPDDR4x
Storage	256GB / 512GB PCIe	512GB / 1TB / 2TB PCIe
Display	14.4-inch PixelSense Flow LCD 2400x1600 (201 PPI) 120 Hz variable refresh 3:2 aspect ratio Dolby Vision Support
Networking	Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 Bluetooth 5.1
I/O	2 x Thunderbolt 4 Surface Connect Headset jack
Camera	1080p webcam Windows Hello 2.0 IR
Battery	56 Wh 65W AC Adapter (5W for USB-A charging)	56 Wh 102W AC Adapter (7W for USB-A charging)
Dimensions	323 x 229 x 17.8 mm 12.7 x 9.0 x 0.7 inches
Weight	1.74 kg / 3.83 lbs	1.82 kg / 4.00 lbs
Starting Price (USD)	$1,599.99	$2,099.99

The Surface team has been slow to adopt USB-C on their products, and when they did finally acquiesce to the demand, they chose not to enable Thunderbolt in their past products. Thankfully, for the Surface Laptop Studio, they have finally changed their stance. The Surface Laptop Studio now features two Thunderbolt 4 ports for expansion, as well as the now-traditional Surface Connect port for charging and docking. This finally brings Surface up to modern times, although there will likely be some that are disappointed to see USB Type-A ports dropped entirely. With the design of Surface Laptop Studio, there just is not room for the larger port. What would have been nice to see is the included Type-A charging port built into the charger also allow data, but that is not the case. Still, if there is one thing Surface has been called out on in the past it was their port selection, so it is nice to see the most modern options here on the new design.

It should come as no surprise to see Wi-Fi 6 support, powered by the Intel AX200 adapter. Although it is a bit of a surprise to not see the newer AX210 with Wi-Fi 6E support, since it is the latest model.

Microsoft calls the Surface Laptop Studio the successor to the Surface Book, which was their previous performance notebook. With an optional GPU and 35-Watt Intel processors, the Surface Laptop Studio is the most powerful Surface portable they have built. Let’s take a look at the design and see how it compares to its predecessors.

Design

I was a big fan of the Surface Book. The idea of having a detachable display – which means the main parts of the computer were behind the display – was unique in the high-end PC space. Utilizing the keyboard base for extra battery and a GPU meant that the Surface Book was not just a tablet with an attachable keyboard. It was a powerful notebook, with a great design.

That design, unfortunately, had some compromises to contend with. As a notebook, the Surface Book did not have the same balance as a traditional laptop computer; thanks to the main components of the laptop being located behind the display, the convertible laptop was top-heavy. Microsoft was able to counter this with a unique hinge design which would roll out when opening the device, which extended the base and made the laptop less prone to tipping backwards. Also, having the dGPU in the base gave it much more room for cooling, which improved GPU performance, but since you cannot just disconnect an active GPU from a program without crashing it, it caused some usability quirks with the detach mechanism.

So far as interesting and unique as the Surface Book was, it was clear that there were some challenges with the design that could not be overcome.

Enter the Surface Laptop Studio, which takes the idea of a powerful convertible notebook, and addresses the usability issues to make it a much more fluid experience. Thanks to the dynamic woven hinge, Surface Laptop Studio gets the convenience and usability of a convertible design, but without the traditional drawbacks. Microsoft is not the first to have a display be able to be tilted and folded into a tablet-like experience, but their new hinge is the most elegant solution yet and eliminates almost all the drawbacks of a convertible.

Taking a closer look at the display there are some subtle-yet-wonderful design touches. Microsoft has gone with a radius design on all the exterior corners, and that same radius is matched on the LCD itself. This is a nice touch and fits in well with the new UI aesthetic of Windows 11. The display bezels are not small by the standards of today, but they are dramatically smaller than the outgoing Surface Book. I also like that Microsoft chose to keep the bezels consistent on all sides, rather than tiny on the sides are large on the top and bottom to accommodate the webcam.

In regards to the webcam, probably no laptop component has become as necessary with the prolific rise of video conferencing, and Microsoft has outfitted the Surface Laptop Studio with a 1080p webcam which also supports Windows Hello 2.0 IR. Windows Hello 2.0 is what you would expect, with faster recognition and quicker unlocks, and is apparently better at recognizing you even with some of your face obscured by sunglasses or facial hair. In my limited experience with the Surface Laptop Studio, the Windows Hello worked flawlessly in all tested conditions and regardless of lighting.

Microsoft has created the chassis of the Surface Laptop Studio with a unique step design. The base is slightly smaller than the keyboard deck and features cooling holes on both sides. The fan design puts the fans at the front, which draws cool air on from the back and expels the hot air out the front sides. The step design also provides the perfect spot to store the new Surface Slim Pen 2, which can be magnetically docked on the sides or the front, which also charges the pen. It is a smart design.

Speaking of smart touches, the first time you tile the display forward, the Laptop Studio automatically launches a short video explaining how to utilize the device, and it ends with a demo of where to dock the pen. Once you dock a pen (assuming you buy one) it will then move to pairing it automatically. It is a well thought out experience which will make first time users more easily get the most out of the design.

The new Surface Slim Pen 2 has also been improved in terms of latency and responsiveness. A newly designed digitizer offers higher sensitivity, meaning even less contact is needed before the pen starts to register. The pen still offers an eraser on the opposite end, as well as a haptic button. The carpenter’s pencil shape works well in the hand for writing, although I am curious to see how artists feel about the new design compared to the outgoing Surface Pen. It also does not appear that you can change the tip anymore either. But the fact that it does dock to the device will likely sway most people to its design. The new pen is also compatible on older devices, although not with the same levels of latency. The new Slim Pen 2 when used with the Surface Laptop Studio offers latency down to 12 ms, compared to 25 ms on the older Slim Pen (1).

Microsoft has upped their game in the experience department again with a new keyboard design which they are saying is the best they have ever put on a notebook. After using it, it is hard to argue, The Surface Book offered a fantastic keyboard as well, but the mechanical clicking action of the new Laptop Studio is definitely a step above. Also, they have made the key caps themselves a darker color than the body, unlike the Surface Book’s monochrome look, and that dramatically improves the contrast of the keys when using the white backlighting. The key caps are slightly dished, which lets you get a better perch on them with your fingertips.

Also new is the first ever haptic touchpad on a Surface device. In years past, Microsoft has provided some of the best touchpads for PC laptops, and with the Surface Laptop Studio they have widened the gap further. The trackpad is smooth and responsive, and the haptic feedback does a wonderful simulation of the old-school click without having to have a moving trackpad. It of course supports multi-finger gestures as well, and both the trackpad and haptic feedback are adjustable in the settings.

Microsoft has held onto USB Type-A for so long that it is almost surprising to see it completely removed on the new Surface Laptop Studio, but the inclusion of two Thunderbolt 4 ports should ease the pain. The best part about Thunderbolt 4 is not that you have a very high speed I/O interface, but that Intel has done the right thing and ensured that Thunderbolt 4 supports all options on Type-C. There is no question of does this port support display or charging or whatever. It does it all and will open up a much better docking experience than the USB-based docking of Microsoft docks.

Overall, the design of the Surface Laptop Studio is fantastic. The build quality is fantastic, and the design touches such as the radiused corners also being on the LCD are a great touch. Microsoft has improved their keyboard and trackpad as well, and it was already one of the best in the PC industry. The Surface Laptop Studio packs all the performance of the Surface Book and more and does it while also eliminating some of the pain points on the Book’s unique design, and while coming in smaller, and lighter. It is hard to see how this is not a win on all sides.

System Performance

Powering the Surface Laptop Studio is Intel’s 11th generation Tiger Lake processors, and more specifically, Microsoft has opted for the new H35 platform. For those unfamiliar, Intel has taken what was traditionally their “U-Series” of 15-watt processors and created the higher powered H35 platform. This means you only get up to four CPU cores instead of eight as on the 45-Watt H-Series chips, but you also get up to the full 96 Execution Unit Intel Xe graphics, all with a 35-Watt TDP.

In the case of the Surface Laptop Studio, the base model comes with the Core i5-11300H featuring four cores and eight threads with a maximum boost frequency of 4.4 Ghz. The Core i5 model is not offered with discrete graphics, so the Intel Iris Xe is what is on tap. The higher-end Laptop Studio models are outfitted with the Core i7-11370H, again with four cores and eight threads, and a maximum boost frequency of 4.8 GHz. The Core i7 models will be paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop graphics, offering a significant performance boost over the integrated Intel graphics.

On the memory front, the minimum memory is 16 GB of LPDDR4x and on some models you can opt for 32 GB. Microsoft has had a tendency in the past to offer devices with less memory than is necessary, so it is great to see their new flagship product starting at 16 GB. Storage is 256 GB to 2 TB of PCIe 3.0 solid state storage, which is attached to the chipset.

Microsoft calls this their most powerful Surface device ever created. Let’s put that to the test and see how the new Laptop Studio stacks up to the competition.

PCMark 10

UL reached out to the press to let them know that Windows 11 enabled Virtualization-Based Security by default on a clean install of Windows 11 and that they expect that to impact the scores in a negative way. But even with that disadvantage, the Surface Laptop Studio outscores all of the other devices except in the Essentials test, where it is decidedly mid-pack.

Cinebench R20

Intel’s H35 platform that is featured in the Surface Laptop Studio offers four cores and eight threads of the latest Willow Cove cores, and Intel’s single-threaded performance is second to none. But, with AMD offering up to eight cores and 16 threads in the same thermal envelope, Tiger Lake H35 falls short of Ryzen in multithreading.

Handbrake

If you are transcoding, it is more than likely you are leveraging the very popular Handbrake tool. With it, you can transcode with the CPU, which gives the best quality, or you can leverage the video encode blocks in the GPU. We test both, and since the Laptop Studio comes with an NVIDIA RTX GPU, that means NVENC. On the software side, the H35 platform outperforms the MSI Prestige which also offers Tiger Lake but falls short of the higher-core Ryzen products. On the hardware side though, the RTX 3050 Ti is way ahead.

Compression

7-Zip offers a built-in benchmark to see how your system handles file compression and decompression. Intel’s core count disadvantage holds it back here again compared to Ryzen.

Web Performance

Web performance comes down to the browser as much as the processor, so to standardize, we leverage Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser for all tests.

Well, this is an anomaly. Edge on Windows 11 scores an abysmal 79 in WebXPRT 3. It was so low that I re-ran the test using Chrome where it scored a much more respectable 221. As both Edge and Chrome are based on the same Chromium underpinnings these days, that is a bit strange. I’ve reached out to Microsoft to see if they can explain this one.

Luckily, Speedometer 2.0 was not impacted, and the latest Windows 11 build for Edge coupled with the Core i7-113700H puts the Surface Laptop Studio at the top.

Storage Performance

With Tiger Lake's 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes tied up driving the dGPU, Microsoft has instead hung their SSD off of the PCIe lanes coming from the PCH. This in turn means that Microsoft's storage options are limited to PCIe 3.0, though given the relatively high power of current PCIe 4.0 SSDs, that might not be such a bad thing right now.

As always, storage is a bit of a commodity, so you never know what SSD you are going to get. Our review unit shipped with a SK Hynix 1 TB option. Choices are between 256 GB and 2 TB, so there is a good range of capacities from Microsoft, and like most Surface devices over the last couple of years, Microsoft makes the drive user replaceable after experimenting with soldered BGA SSDs for a couple of years.

For a PCIe 3.0 drive, the performance of this unit was very good. It is outmatched by the latest PCIe 4.0 drives, but performance is still excellent.

Graphics Performance

As the successor to the Surface Book, the Surface Laptop Studio builds on that heritage by continuing to offer a reasonably powerful GPU in a small form factor laptop. Although not a gaming laptop by any stretch, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop graphics is a stout GPU for a notebook of this size. Microsoft also continues the tradition of the Surface Book by also offering a model without the dGPU, which they have found has been popular in certain segments such as education where the dGPU is not needed.

Microsoft provided the Core i7 model for review, which comes with the discrete GPU option, so that will be the focus of this review.

The NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti was announced earlier this year and features 2560 CUDA cores. The 128-bit memory bus clearly puts it at a disadvantage compared to the RTX 3060/3070/3080, but the lowered TDP means that it fits into smaller and lighter devices, such as the Surface Laptop Studio. Built on the 8 nm Samsung process, this Ampere-based GPU brings all the latest RTX features to the Surface Laptop Studio with 80 tensor cores and 20 ray tracing cores and is the first time Microsoft has fitted an RTX GPU into one of their devices since the Surface Book 3 was outfitted with the GTX 1660 Ti.

To see how the Surface Laptop Studio performs in graphical tests it was run through our laptop gaming suite. Please note that we have recently updated the suite with several new games, so until we test more devices there are limited results on those new titles.

As usual, we will start with some synthetic tests, then move on to gaming results.

3DMark

We are migrating the laptop suite over to the latest Time Spy test, so for now the Surface Laptop Studio is the only device tested. Fire Strike is the most demanding of the older test suite, and here the Surface Book with its GTX 1660 Ti slightly outperforms the Surface Laptop Studio, but on Sky Diver and Cloud Gate the tables are turned significantly.

GFXBench

GFXBench 5.0 includes DirectX 12 tests for Aztec Ruins, and as a multi-platform test it is quite a light workload for any laptop with a discrete GPU. Again, the Surface Book 3 slightly outperforms here.

Tomb Raider

In our first gaming benchmark the Surface Laptop Studio does surpass the Surface Book 3, although not by a wide margin on the 1920x1080 resolution.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Much like Tomb Raider, performance is nearly identical between the Surface Book 3 and the Surface Laptop Studio. The GTX 1660 Ti is still able to hang with Ampere.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Again the Surface Book and Laptop Studio trade blows, although the Surface Book is ahead in the higher resolution by a wide margin.

Strange Brigade

Strange Brigade has a wide range of playable settings, allowing it to be played on integrated GPUs right up to the biggest GPUs around. The Surface Laptop Studio and Surface Book are again in a dead heat.

Shadow of War

Again we can see that the beefier GPU in the Surface Book 3, despite being a generation older, can still outperform Ampere. The GTX 1660 Ti offers more memory bandwidth and more ROPS than the RTX 3050 Ti, so it is not a huge surprise. Add in the higher TDP offered in the Surface Book and it makes sense why it can stretch ahead on the more demanding workloads.

Far Cry 5

Far Cry is a very CPU bound game, and as such the Surface Laptop Studio is able to stretch ahead here in the value settings, and keep pace in the 1920x1080 benchmark.

New Games to the Suite

 

For 2021 the gaming suite is being revamped, but as we only have scores from the Surface Laptop Studio, they will be presented here without any comparisons.

GPU Performance Conclusion

Microsoft calls the Surface Laptop Studio their most powerful Surface yet, and you can argue that is true of the system as a whole. On the GPU side though, the outgoing Surface Book 3 offered a more powerful GPU which offered more memory bandwidth, more ROPs, and more physical memory. It was of course able to do that because of the unique nature of the device, where the GPU got its own thermal zone in the laptop base. At best, the Surface Laptop Studio is just about as capable on the GPU front, although of course with the added benefit of the RTX architecture for Tensor and Ray Tracing abilities.

The RTX 3050 Ti is still a capable upgrade over integrated graphics, but certainly is not in the same league as the larger GPUs, especially at the power limits enforced on it in this design.

Display Analysis

If the Surface Laptop Studio is the successor to the Surface Book, it has a lot to live up to in the display department. Microsoft is dubbing their new display the PixelSense Flow display, and that is because it now offers a 120 Hz refresh rate. Advantage Laptop Studio. The 120 Hz option can be disabled to save power, but even if left in the default 120 Hz mode, the laptop will automatically lower the refresh rate when it can to limit the power usage. I have been fortunate enough to use a lot of high refresh rate displays over the years, and the additional smoothness in all tasks is very welcome.

One area where the 14.4-inch Laptop Studio falls a bit short compared to the Surface Book is pixel density. The 2400x1600 3:2 aspect ratio display comes in at 201 pixels per inch, compared to 260 pixels per inch on the Surface Book 3. Though slightly less sharp, it is still a high-PPI display, and the lower resolution should help out on battery life significantly.

Microsoft continues to offer only sRGB gamut coverage, where some of their competition offer the wider Adobe RGB or P3 color gamuts. That may seem like a disadvantage for the Surface Laptop Studio, but with the state of Windows, even with the latest Windows 11 operating system, it really works best with sRGB. To facilitate those that prefer a bit more punch to the colors, Microsoft continues to offer choices between sRGB and Vivid modes, the latter offering more saturated colors. For our testing, we stuck it in the most accurate sRGB mode.

To test the display characteristics, we leverage Portrait Displays’ Calman software suite with a custom workflow. For brightness and contrast measurements the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter is used, and for color accuracy testing the X-Rite i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer gets the call.

Brightness and Contrast

At 486 nits, the Surface Laptop Studio is not quite out brightest device tested, but it isn’t far off. The dynamic range of the display is also very impressive, with it achieving under 2 nits of brightness at its minimum setting. Contrast is also very good, although not quite as strong as some of the original Surface Book results which would be over 1800:1.

Grayscale

Portrait Displays Calman

Microsoft is probably the only PC manufacturer to individually calibrate every display on every PC they sell, and the results are always impressive. Although the reds are slightly elevated, at no point in the grayscale test does the error level go above 3.0. Gamma takes a bit of a jump near 100% brightness, but the overall gamma is right on the 2.2 expected.

Gamut

Portrait Displays Calman

As already stated, Microsoft continues to target the sRGB gamut, but thanks to their individually calibrated panels, they target it nearly perfectly.

Saturation

Portrait Displays Calman

Where the gamut test focuses on the primary and secondary colors at 100% brightness, the saturation sweep tests the primary and secondary colors at 4-bit steps from 0% to 100%. The results are once again, nearly perfect.

Gretag Macbeth

Portrait Displays Calman

Where the previous tests focus on just the primary and secondary color axis, the Gretag Macbeth colorchecker extends the testing to colors all over the gamut, including the important skin tones. Again, like most Surface devices, the color accuracy is fantastic.

Colorchecker

Portrait Displays Calman

To give a graphical interpretation of the previous charts, the colorchecker test shows the targeted color on the bottom and what the display output on the top half of the swatch. Although there is some very slight deviations, the results are nearly perfect and would be undetectable to the human eye.

Display Conclusion

Although the Surface Laptop Studio does lose out on some display sharpness over the outgoing Surface Book, it more than makes up for that by offering a 120 Hz display which makes the entire experience more fluid. Like all Surface devices, the display is incredibly accurate for the sRGB gamut, and even if you use it in the vivid mode, which oversaturates the colors slightly, the accuracy in that mode is likely more accurate than almost any other PC on the market. Microsoft has nailed the calibration ever since they made a focus on display accuracy back in 2015, and it shows here again.

Battery Life

There are multiple ways to achieve great battery life. Looking back at the Surface Book, Microsoft crammed in a lot of battery capacity – 85 Wh – in the tablet and base. But ultimately, efficiency matters as well. The Surface Laptop Studio has just a 56 Wh battery, which is tiny in comparison. So, keeping up the their battery life comes down to efficiency.

To see how the Surface Laptop Studio performs, it was run through our laptop battery suite. As always, the display is set to 200 nits brightness to make it an even playing field, and for clarity, the Surface Laptop Studio was left in its default 120 Hz display mode.

Web Battery

Our web workload is fairly demanding, but the Surface Laptop Studio performed very well achieving just over 11.5 hours of runtime. Likely thanks to the slightly lower resolution display, it managed to achieve longer runtime than the outgoing Surface Book 3, despite having a much smaller battery.

Looking at the normalized results, which remove the battery size from the equation, and the Surface Laptop Studio really shines. Despite the higher-powered CPU and dGPU, it is still one of the most efficient devices around.

PCMark 10 Modern Office Battery

PCMark’s Modern Office battery test utilizes their office benchmarks, and runs them in ten minute loops. If the device completes the test sooner, it is allowed to idle for a longer portion of the ten minute loop. Again, despite the smaller battery capacity, the new Surface Laptop Studio outperforms its predecessor, the Surface Book 3. Again, an impressive result

Movie Playback

Media playback is always a common use case for notebooks, and it is generally one of the least demanding activities since the media decode is offloaded to the video decoder in the GPU, which in this case will be the Intel integrated graphics.

Intel’s integrated GPU continues to be very impressively efficient with video decode, and the Surface Laptop Studio achieved over 13 hours in this test.

Our tesseract result divides the movie runtime by the length of The Avengers, which lets you know how many times you could play back the movie before needing to get the AC adapter.

Unless you have the worlds longest flight, being able to watch The Avengers five times in a row should likely be plenty for most people.

Charge Time

The Surface Laptop Studio’s 56 Wh battery is charged via the Surface Connect port on the right side of the device, which as always, offers a magnetic connection. If you opt for the model without the NVIDIA GPU, the AC Adapter is a 65-Watt unit with a 5-Watt Type-A charging port integrated. The Core i7 model, with the NVIDIA GPU, bumps that up to a 102-Watt output, with 7-Watts dedicated to the Type-A port. I’ve mentioned this already, but how great would it be if the Type-A port was also connected to the device, and I am a bit surprised Microsoft has never done this. Now that there are no Type-A ports, it would at least allow a Type-A device to be connected in a pinch.

The review unit is the Core i7 model, and therefore comes with the larger AC Adapter. Thankfully, unlike the Surface Book 2, there was never a moment where the CPU and GPU combined would draw more than the adapter could output. Microsoft apparently learned their lesson.

Microsoft claims 80% of the battery can be recovered in one hour, so let’s see how they fare.

In our log of the charge rate, they did indeed hit almost exactly 80% in one hour; technically coming in a minute before to be precise. A full charge takes just about two hours, as the laptop throttles the charge rate to protect the battery.

Microsoft also offers some Smart Charging options in the Surface app, which allows you to lower the charge limit to increase the longevity of the battery. This is greatly appreciated but would be even better if it was just included in Windows itself.

Wireless Networking

Wireless networking used to be the Achilles heel of Surface devices, with Microsoft utilizing some very bad network adapters. Thankfully, they have come around, and are now offering Intel wireless solutions on pretty much all of their new devices. In the case of the Surface Laptop Studio, that is the Intel Wireless AX200 which is Wi-Fi 6 capable. Surprisingly they did not opt for the AX210 with Wi-Fi 6E support, but realistically the adoption of 6 GHz Wi-Fi must be still almost zero.

Wireless performance, as expected with the industry-leading Intel networking card, is fantastic. Never once was there a hiccup with the wireless, and the speeds are impressive if you have a Wi-Fi 6 capable router.

Audio

In a first for the Surface team, the Surface Laptop Studio incorporates woofers as well as tweeters to broaden the audio response. The woofers radiate out through the sides of the device, while the tweeters fire up through the keyboard. This works very well in most situations, since the tweeters are facing you, but if you fold the display down it does attenuate the signal somewhat.

The new speaker setup sounds very good, and the woofers clearly help out on the low-end of the spectrum. The speakers also get incredibly loud with 90 dB(A) measured an inch over the trackpad. That makes sense, as Microsoft claims six watts of power to each side’s woofer/tweeter combo which is a lot for a notebook computer.

Thermals

In a somewhat unusual move, the cooling system in the Surface Laptop Studio draws cool air in at the back and exhausts it out the sides at the front of the device, which is where the two cooling fans are located. This somewhat odd design can make the palm rest area warm to the touch under sustained load, while the keyboard area stays cool. This is pretty much the opposite of most devices which exhaust the hot air out the back. That doesn’t mean this is a poor design, as we will see in a moment, but is an interesting design decision.

The Intel Core i7-11370H in the review unit is rated for a TDP of 35 Watts, whereas the GPU from NVIDIA is rated between 35 Watts and 80 Watts. Considering the AC adapter is only rated for 95 Watts to the laptop (remember 7 Watts are for the Type-A charging port integrated into it) we can estimate the GPU is going to be on the lower end of the TDP scale from NVIDIA.

To see how the device performs, first it was put through a CPU stress test using AIDA64’s built in utility and monitoring.

The 35-Watt processor peaked at about 50 Watts, and then moved to a sustained 40 Watts power draw with the laptop set in its best performance setting. Unsurprisingly with just the CPU loaded, there was no thermal throttling, and although the CPU peaked at 100°C in its initial 50-Watt burst, it fell to a steady 80°C for the remainder of the stress test.

To get a feel for how the Surface Laptop Studio deals with a more sustained load, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was run for an extended period.

Like the CPU, the GPU also got a bit of extra boost at the start and was able to draw about 50 Watts at the beginning of the test before settling down to just under 40 Watts for the sustained portion. The GPU temperature averaged only 65°C during the test, which is quite low, so the cooling system is doing a good job. Maximum SPL from the fans was 50 dB(A) measured one inch over the trackpad. It isn’t silent under load, but it never gets overly loud either. At idle, the system is completely silent.

With the 95-Watt AC adapter output, it is no surprise to see that Microsoft was very conservative on the GPU power limits. NVIDIA allows the manufacturer to set the TDP along a range of 35 Watts to 80 Watts, and Microsoft was much closer to the low end of the range at 40 Watts sustained.

Software

The Surface Laptop Studio is one of the first devices to ship with Windows 11 and the actual design of the device is mirrored by the OS. The rounded corners of the laptop are very much in-line with the rounded corners throughout Windows 11, and it is very impressive to see Microsoft tie the two together.

As a Microsoft device, there is also no third-party utilities of any kind. There is no trialware for antivirus, although there are some third-party application stubs available to install. The main application for Surface is aptly called Surface, and lets you configure the system.

In the Surface App you can set the battery Smart Charging up as well as access the Help and Warranty if needed. Unlike most device applications that we see today from other manufactures, Microsoft does not need to include any sort of system update utilities since they already have a solution you may have heard of called Windows Update, which is where all Surface updates, including firmware updates, are delivered.

The Surface app also lets you configure the Surface Slim Pen 2, as well as other Surface accessories.

For Windows 11, the app has been updated, and although it does not offer a lot of functionality, it does do its job well and looks wonderful.

Final Words

As a self-professed fan of the Surface Book series of notebooks, it is a bit sad to see that device family depart. They were completely unique in the laptop world, with a style all their own. But there is no doubt that the Surface Book had some quirks and usability issues that created some user friction, and which Microsoft has aimed to solve with the Surface Laptop Studio.

The good news is that Microsoft has indeed delivered a worthy successor to the Surface Book. The new design with its dynamic woven hinge provides almost all of the same functionality as the Surface Book did without any of the clumsiness of having to detach the display to change modes. The Surface Laptop Studio allows you to seamlessly transition from Laptop to Stage to Studio mode, all with a single hand. The design also gets the benefit of the stability of a traditional clamshell laptop, with the weight on the bottom, and does so with barely any extra bulk from the display hinge itself. The display is only marginally thicker than a comparable notebook. It really is a great solution.

The rounded corners of the Laptop Studio, which flow into the display, are a great design touch as well. It is a bit sad to see the magnesium-alloy used on previous Surface devices be supplanted with aluminum, but Microsoft nailed the texture of the aluminum making it feel the same as the Surface Book. Despite being quicker than the Surface Book 3, it is also significantly smaller, and slightly lighter as well.

The new 14.4-inch PixelSense Flow display is wonderful to use. The 120 Hz refresh makes everything incredibly smooth, but thanks to the automatic refresh rate control, it can lower the refresh to save power when the faster response is not needed. It does lose a bit of pixel density compared to the outgoing Surface Book, but the added response time makes up for it. And, as usual, the display is incredibly accurate in its color reproduction.

The new keyboard and haptic touchpad also take the Laptop Studio to that next level. The key feel is superb, improving on the already great keyboards in previous Surface devices. The new trackpad is large, but not too large, and the adjustable haptic feedback works seamlessly.

Pen input is also well-executed with the new Surface Slim Pen 2, which can dock to the underside of the step, and charge right off the laptop. The Studio mode makes for a great writing surface and is a wonderful pairing with the pen support.

The Surface Laptop Studio has everything going for it. The design is striking. The functionality is fantastic. The performance is excellent. Even the battery life is superb. Can there even be a downside? Yes of course there is, and it is the price.

The Surface Book was a very expensive computer, so it should be no surprise that the replacement is also very expensive. Starting at $1599.99 USD for the Core i5 / 16 GB / 256 GB model and topping out at $3099.00 for a Core i7 / RTX / 32 GB / 2 TB model, the Surface Laptop Studio is most definitely expensive. Whether or not it is worth it is always a personal or business decision. Microsoft has delivered a worthy successor to the Surface Book which integrates wonderfully with Windows 11. Do you need it? Likely not. Do you want it? Likely yes.