Despite its slim, lightweight chassis, the Surface Laptop 4 packs many improvements that make it the fourth generation of Surface Laptops. Microsoft doesn’t try to position this Surface Laptop as anything else; instead, it promises longer battery life and more power under the hood.
While we have plenty of reasons to quibble with Microsoft’s marketing, we found these promises true after spending many hours with this laptop. The Surface Laptop 3 was released nearly two years ago, but in those two years, companies like Dell and Apple have developed ultraportable that are more thin, beautiful, and powerful.
It’s hard to know whether the Surface Laptop 4 will be the best laptop for you, even though it’s undoubtedly the best Surface Laptop so far. You can find out more about the Microsoft surface laptop 4 review, which we hope will answer your question.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Design
- The new Ice Blue color is a nice addition without being overpowering
- The bezels are still quite thick
- Comfortable wristbands made from Alcantara
It is welcome and a little underwhelming that Microsoft is sticking to a minimalistic design with the Surface Laptop. I would have appreciated a more radical redesign, but for now, you have to see what’s new on the inside.
While that’s true, I’ve always been a fan of Surface devices because of their sleek, clean lines, and the Surface Laptop 4 offers a similar experience. Dimensionally, the Surface Laptop 3 weighs 2.8 pounds and measures 12.1 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches, making it identical to the Surface Laptop 3. Although it’s significantly smaller than a MacBook Air (12 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches, 2.8 pounds) or a Dell XPS 13 (11.7 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches, 2.9 pounds), the Surface Laptop 4 still fits easily into a backpack or bag.
A 3:2 display on the Surface Laptop 4 is surrounded by thick bezels that are hard to ignore. There are just a lot of black bars around the screen, and I found myself staring at them when I wasn’t focused on specific tasks and wishing they were smaller.
Review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Ports
- USB-A, USB-C, headphone jacks
- There is no Thunderbolt 4 port
On the Surface Laptop 4, Microsoft offers a limited selection of ports, for better or worse. In addition to the Surface Connector, there are three USB-A ports, a USB-C port, and a headphone jack on the left.
This laptop looks great with a classic USB-A port and provides a lot of external device flexibility when combined with a USB-C port.
For anyone looking to invest in heavy-duty external accessories like GPUs and hard drives, this USB-C port doesn’t support Thunderbolt 4. In addition to liking slim, simple chassis without weird holes, I particularly enjoy laptops with SD card readers or stylus cubbies.
Review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Display
- Good aspect ratio for productivity (3:2)
- It could be a little brighter and more reflective
If you’re reading, editing, or doing anything else that benefits from extra vertical space, the Surface Laptop 4’s 13.5-inch, 2256 x 1504-pixel screen will be perfect.
Some scenes’ dull and washed-out appearance disappointed me when I switched from productivity mode to streaming TV and movies on the laptop. In The Boys, Stormfront’s purple lightning discharges in Bad Boys 2 or Bad Boys 2’s orange explosions pop off the screen due to their vibrant colors. However, dark scenes or settings have muted blues and greens; the colors tend to blend and blend, making details difficult to distinguish.
Keyboard and touchpad review of Microsoft Surface Laptop 4
- Comfortable typing with plenty of travel
- Touchscreen and smooth, accurate touchpad
Thanks to the nicely-sized keys and the Alcantara material around the keyboard, I find typing on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 more comfortable than most laptops I’ve used. While typing quickly, I could avoid bottoming out with the keys’ 1.3mm travel and click.
Review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Audio
- Compact laptop with loud and clean sound
- Dolby Atmos support enhances the immersive experience
Following Microsoft, Surface Laptop 4 speakers are equipped with Dolby Atmos technology, which delivers rich, spatially accurate sound by bouncing it off the screen and pumping it through the keyboard.
Review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Performance
- Performance is solid thanks to Intel’s 11th-generation Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM
- This laptop trails behind Dell’s XPS 13 and MacBook’s Air and Pro in benchmark scores
- Good graphics for less demanding games with 30 frames per second
On an average workday, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 4 can handle almost anything you throw at it – unless you’re playing Cyberpunk 2077 on high settings. A 16GB of RAM and an Intel i7 CPU on our review unit allowed it to handle various basic tasks easily. My review was written while I viewed two YouTube videos in 4K, followed a Twitch stream, and listened to a Spotify playlist across four Chrome windows.
We tested the Surface Laptop 4 on Geekbench 5. We scored 4,829, which is good but not great compared to cheaper Windows notebooks like Lenovo’s convertible ThinkBook 14s Yoga (4,885) or similar-priced competitors such as the Dell XPS 13 (which scored 5,254 in the same test).
When we duplicated 25GB of multimedia files on our review unit, the 512GB SSD transferred the data to 562.73 MBps. We tested the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 last year, and it delivered 508.9 MBps, faster than the Surface Laptop 3, which is Intel-powered. However, that’s still slower than competing models like the Dell XPS 13 (806 MBps) or Think book 14s Yoga (886.35 MBps).
Review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Webcam
- An average webcam image with 720p, but a 1080p camera would be better
- Face-based Windows Hello logins that are fast
Honestly, I wish the Surface Laptop 4’s 720p webcam was more exciting, but there’s not much to say about it. The addition of a 1080p webcam would have been a welcome change (especially amidst our current pandemic-inspired preponderance of Zoom meetings). At that time, the Surface Laptop would not have been the same as previous models, which featured 720p webcams.
Battery life of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4
- After 11 hours of web surfing, the Surface Laptop 4 remained running.
- We got a lot closer to Microsoft’s claims, but we didn’t quite reach them
One of the main reasons for the superior battery life of this latest Surface Laptop is its elegant design and beautiful screen. However, its predecessors didn’t always last as long as their competition on a single charge.
AMD-equipped Surface Laptop 4s can last up to 19 hours, while Intel Surface Laptop 4s are advertised as lasting up to 17 hours.
The Surface Laptop 4 lasts quite a while on a single charge, and it is a beautiful machine. My 9-hour workday was interrupted by intermittent writing and editing while I listened to music, watched videos, and never once worried about the battery running out.
Battery life on the Surface Laptop 4 is good, but not great. A Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 with Intel’s 13.5-inch Intel processor lasted over 11 hours in our lab tests (10:46:23, to be specific).
Review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Heat
- Temperatures should be cool unless you are playing video games
- For the most part, the Surface Laptop 4 was quiet
We rarely noticed any heat buildup through the duration of this review, regardless of how many tabs were open or how many videos we streamed.
IO Interactive’s Hitman 2 made me uncomfortable when I played it in medium or low settings. I noticed that my frame rate fluctuated between 15 and 40 frames per second on medium to low settings; the laptop was getting noticeably hot as the game pushed the computer hard.
As a result of our heat testing (which involves streaming 15 minutes of HD video), our heat gun found that the underside reached an average temperature of 90 degrees, with the highest point reaching 92.5 degrees near the middle (roughly directly below the F5 key). The laptop’s deck was much cooler, with just 80 degrees measured on the touchpad.
Review of Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: Verdict
It offers Windows fans a beautiful, lightweight ultraportable with premium components packed inside a bloatware-free chassis that improves on the Surface Laptop 3.
The Surface Laptop formula could have been improved more significantly by Microsoft. Still, the Surface Laptop 4 is one of the most impressive laptops available in UAE, thanks to its excellent speakers, improved battery life, and improvements under the hood.
