Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review

Our Verdict

Microsoft's Surface Laptop 4 offers strong operation, impressive audio, a comfy keyboard and good battery life in a sleek (if slightly dated) design

For

Light, slim design
Very comfy keyboard
Not bad speakers
Proficient bombardment life

Against

Needs more ports
Thick bezels are an eyesore
Needs a better webcam

Tom's Guide Verdict

Microsoft'due south Surface Laptop 4 offers stiff performance, impressive audio, a comfy keyboard and skillful battery life in a sleek (if slightly dated) design

Pros

+
Light, slim blueprint
+
Very comfy keyboard
+
Great speakers
+
Good battery life

Cons

-
Needs more than ports
-
Thick bezels are an eyesore
-
Needs a meliorate webcam

Microsoft's new Surface Laptop 4 is more evolution than revolution, packing improved components into the same slim, lightweight chassis the Surface Laptop product line is known for. Microsoft hasn't tried to sell it as anything else, instead promising that this latest Surface Laptop lasts longer and packs more than power under the hood than its predecessors.

Later on spending many hours with this laptop, it'southward clear those promises are truthful, though our examination results get out plenty of room to quibble with Microsoft's marketing. Just information technology's been nearly ii years since the 2022 launch of the Surface Laptop three, and in that time, competing manufacturers like Dell and Apple accept pushed the limits of how slim, beautiful and powerful an ultraportable can exist.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (xiii.5-inch, Intel): Specs

CPU: 11th-Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 (Core i5 as well available)
RAM: 16GB (8GB, 32GB also available)
Display: thirteen.5-inch touch-screen, 2256 x 1504 (201 PPI)
Storage: 512GB SSD (256GB, 1TB likewise available)
Ports: 1x USB-C, 1x USB-A, Surface Connect port, headphone jack
Battery life: ten:46 (tested, web surfing) | Up to 17 hours (Microsoft's claim)
Wireless: Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth v.0
Dimensions: 12.1 x 8.viii 10 0.57 inches
Weight: two.79 pounds
Cost: $1,699 as configured, $999 (13.5-inch) | $1,299 (fifteen-inch) starting

Then while the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 is unquestionably the best Surface Laptop however, the question of whether it's the all-time laptop for yous is a piddling trickier to respond. Read on for our total Surface Laptop 4 review, which should (hopefully) help yous solve that question.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Price and release date

Starts at $999 for 13-inch, $1,299 for 15-inch
Our unit with Core i7/16GB/512GB is $1,699

Bachelor as of Apr 15 2022 in the US and Apr 27 in the UK, a new Surface Laptop 4 ordered from Microsoft volition price you at to the lowest degree $899 for the 13.5-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch. Those entry-level models transport with AMD Ryzen 5/7 4000-serial chips, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

If yous need more power you can configure the Surface Laptop iv with beefier innards, potentially paying as much as $two,299 and $2,399 (respectively) for the two models if you kit them out with the tiptop-tier components. Unlike its predecessors, both sizes of the Surface Laptop 4 tin can exist configured with your choice of an Intel 11th Gen Core i5/i7 CPU or an AMD Ryzen 5/7 4000-series processor, though the 15-inch model is limited to the higher-end Core i7/Ryzen vii chips.

Our thirteen.5-inch Surface Laptop 4 review unit arrived decked in Microsoft'due south new (to the Surface Laptop) Ice Blueish colour scheme with a Cadre i7 CPU, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, a configuration which retails for $1,699.

Microsoft Surface Laptop iv review: Blueprint

New Ice Blue color is a prissy impact without existence also bold
Bezels are notwithstanding on the thick side
Alcantara deck is comfy for the wrists

The latest Surface Laptop hews close to the minimalist design of its predecessors, which is both welcome and a little underwhelming; I would have liked to run into Microsoft attempt a more radical alter with the Surface Laptop'due south design, but for at present, you'll have to look inside to see what'south new.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review — (Paradigm credit: Futurity)

That said, I've e'er loved the slick, clean lines of the Surface devices, and the new Surface Laptop 4 offers more than of the same. In terms of dimensions, it's identical to the Surface Laptop 3, weighing in at two.viii pounds and measuring just 12.i ten 8.viii x 0.half dozen inches. That makes the Surface Laptop iv not quite equally pocket-sized equally the M1 MacBook Air (12 x 8.4 10 0.6 inches, 2.8 pounds) or the Dell XPS thirteen (11.7 x 8.2 ten 0.5 inches, 2.9 pounds), but it's enough slim enough to slide into a backpack or briefcase and promptly forget well-nigh.

It'south a picayune harder to forget about the thick bezels surrounding the Surface Laptop 4's 3:2 brandish. They but aren't very attractive, and when I wasn't focusing on specific tasks I defenseless myself staring at the blackness bars around the screen, wishing they were smaller then I could accept a flake more than screen space to play with.

When I wasn't focusing on specific tasks I caught myself staring at the black confined effectually the screen, wishing they were smaller and so I could have a flake more screen space to play with.

The Dell XPS thirteen's incredibly slim bezels make it like shooting fish in a barrel to come across how much of a difference this kind of engineering work makes, and information technology would be prissy to see Microsoft practise the same for its flagship laptop. That said, it is nice how sturdy the screen feels nether your fingers, and I felt zero qualms about briskly tapping and swiping my style through Windows without worrying I'd accidentally knock the screen dorsum.

This is the showtime time Microsoft has offered a Surface Laptop in the Ice Blue colour scheme previously seen on Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, and in person, it's a very prissy, understated shade of pale metallic blueish. It's and then subtle that I would have been hard-pressed to tell you it was blueish unless nosotros set information technology down alongside a bunch of other gray and silver laptops, at which betoken the Surface Laptop 4 conspicuously stands out from the oversupply. I besides appreciate the relative subtlety of the reflective Microsoft logo on the lid; it's center-communicable but less garish than a lot of the manufacturer logos emblazoned on contemporary laptops.

The Alcantara lining the keyboard of the Ice Blue and Platinum 13.5-inch models is a nice touch that makes resting your wrists on the deck of the laptop experience a bit more comfortable. It's a pocket-sized divergence, simply one that I noticed every fourth dimension I switched back to typing on an all-metal laptop. The feel of fabric beneath my wrists was just nicer, though the idea of trying to get a stain out of it heightened my already significant fright of eating or drinking while working.

Microsoft Surface Laptop four review: Ports

USB-A, USB-C and headphone jack
Sorry, no Thunderbolt four

The port selection on Microsoft'south Surface Laptop 4 is pretty simple, for better and for worse. The right side sports a Surface Connector for charging purposes, while on the left you'll find a USB-A port, a USB-C port, and a headphone jack.

Information technology'southward squeamish to see a archetype USB-A on a modern machine like this, and combining information technology with a USB-C gives this laptop a squeamish bit of flexibility when it comes to external devices. Only this USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt 4, which is a bummer for anyone investing in heavy-duty external accessories like GPUs or high-capacity drives. And while a role of me likes a slim, elementary chassis without a lot of funky holes in it, I also really honey it when a laptop manufacturer works a little SD card reader or a stylus cubby into the sides of their device.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Display

3:2 aspect ratio good for productivity
Could be brighter and more reflective than nosotros'd like

The 13.v-inch, 2256 x 1504-pixel screen of the Surface Laptop 4 has its charms, specially if you're doing a lot of reading, editing, or annihilation that benefits from having the extra vertical space afforded by its iii:2 display ratio.

Merely when I switched out of productivity fashion and started streaming some TV and movies on the laptop, I was a petty disappointed by how wearisome and washed-out some scenes looked. Sometimes bright colors were vibrant enough to pop off the screen, every bit was the case with the bright orange explosions of Bad Boys ii or Stormfront's vivid purple lightning discharges in The Boys. But in dark scenes or settings with lots of muted blues and greens the colors seemed to fade and blend into each other, making information technology difficult to pick out detail.

I too noticed my reflection a lot more than ofttimes than I'm used to when working on a laptop, fifty-fifty with the screen's effulgence cranked all the mode upwards. In the absenteeism of difficult testing information, I'1000 leery of telling you that the Surface Laptop 4'southward screen is definitely more reflective than virtually, but information technology sure seems that way. This didn't cause any problems for me (other than stoking that unique course of self-loathing invoked by catching sight of yourself staring slack-jawed at a screen) but it's worth noting if y'all plan to regularly apply the device under bright lights or direct sunlight.

Under testing with our colorimeter, the Surface Laptop iv's screen produced 108.3% of the sRGB spectrum, which is a fleck improve than the 104.five% its 15-inch predecessor produced in the same exam. That'due south right in line with the cheaper Thinkpad 14s Yoga (at 108%) and improve than competition like the Dell XPS xiii (97.ix%), though it notwithstanding can't match the screens on the M1 MacBook Air (114.3%) and MacBook Pro (110.vi%).

The screen gets reasonably bright, hitting an average of 348.six nits of brightness when tested with our light gun. That's decent, ahead of the Lenovo Thinkpad 14s Yoga (313 nits) simply merely a bit behind both the Intel and AMD variants of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 (which achieved 366 and 380 nits, respectively), and way behind the Dell XPS xiii (469 nits).

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Keyboard and touchpad

Plenty of travel for comfy typing
Smooth and accurate touchpad, and there's a touchscreen, too

Typing on the Microsoft Surface Laptop four feels more comfy than most laptops I've worked on, thanks in big part to the nicely-sized keys and the Alcantara fabric around the keyboard. The keys experience satisfying to type on, with 1.3mm of travel and a nice click to them which helped me avert bottoming out while typing speedily.

The 4.5 10 3-inch glass touchpad beneath the keys is also quite nice to use, feeling comfortably close to the keyboard while still affording my big impaired sausage fingers plenty of room to move. Both it and the laptop'due south touchscreen felt very responsive to the impact, and I had no trouble using gesture commands on either surface.

Microsoft Surface Laptop iv review: Audio

Loud and clean sound from a meaty laptop
Dolby Atmos support adds depth

The big talking point around the Surface Laptop four's speakers is the addition of Dolby Atmos engineering, which Microsoft claims helps the laptop evangelize richer, more spatially accurate audio by pumping it out from beneath the keyboard and bouncing it off the screen.

I'grand no audiophile, simply even I can tell you that the speakers on the Surface Laptop 4 make music and movies sound very squeamish. Bass-heavy tracks like Massive Attack's "Angel" still have a kick to them, and while watching the trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong I caught myself glancing down to make sure the laptop wasn't actually vibrating in time with the bass drops.

But the Surface Laptop four's speakers really smooth with more than well-balanced tracks, and when I threw on Muddy Waters' "Folk Vocalizer" I was delighted by how clearly the vocals rang out across the room without losing any of their warmth. When I walked down the hall or into an bordering room I could still hear Waters' cute voice perfectly, and if I didn't already know I'd never have guessed the music was beingness piped out of someone'due south laptop.

Microsoft Surface Laptop four review: Performance

11th-gen Intel Core i7 and 16GB of RAM combine for solid operation
Benchmarks scores trail backside Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Air and Pro
Graphics good enough for 30 fps on less demanding games

Unless your job involves playing Cyberpunk 2077 with the settings cranked upwardly, Microsoft'south Surface Laptop 4 tin can handle pretty much anything you lot'd throw at it in the course of an average workday. Our review unit of measurement's 16GB of RAM and 11th Gen Intel i7 CPU gave it plenty pep to handily tackle equally many basic tasks as I could subject it to, including twenty+ tabs spread across 4 Chrome windows arrayed in such a mode that I could picket two 4K YouTube videos, a Twitch stream, and keep an eye on my Spotify playlist while writing this review.

The Surface Laptop 4 we reviewed put up a decent score of 4,829 in our Geekbench five performance test, which is proficient but not great when stacked up confronting similarly-priced competitors like the Dell XPS xiii (which earned 5,254 in the aforementioned test) or fifty-fifty cheaper Windows notebooks like Lenovo's convertible ThinkBook 14s Yoga (4,885).

The Surface Laptop 4 has enough pep that I could take two 20+ Chrome tabs open, watch two 4K YouTube videos, a Twitch stream and keep an eye on my Spotify playlist while writing this review.

Our review unit of measurement'southward 512GB SSD performed well enough when we tasked it with duplicating 25GB of multimedia files, transferring them at a decent clip of 562.73 MBps. That's faster than the 508.nine MBps that the 15-inch Intel-powered Surface Laptop iii delivered in our testing last year, just still slower than contemporary competitors like the Dell XPS thirteen (806 MBps) or the Thinkbook 14s Yoga (886.35 MBps).

If you're looking to practice some video editing, the Surface Laptop four is up to the task (peculiarly when kitted out with 16GB of RAM) merely far from the fastest laptop on the block. In our Handbrake video editing test our review unit took about 17 minutes to catechumen a 4K video to 1080p, which is faster than the 17 minutes eighteen seconds it took the 15-inch Intel-equipped Surface Laptop 3 to do the same examination last year. It's also a flake meliorate than the Dell XPS 13 (which took about 18 minutes), though of class, it falls far curt of the sub-10-minute marks delivered by Apple tree's M1-equipped MacBook Air (which took 9 minutes and 15 seconds) and MacBook Pro (7 minutes 44 seconds) models.

As far as games go, our testing suggests you should calibrate your expectations to the level of a nice work laptop: you should be able to play many games at acceptable frame rates, especially if they're older or less graphically demanding, only don't expect to enjoy running any game with minimum required specs that include a discrete GPU.

In our performance tests our Surface Laptop 4 review unit delivered an average of 30.46 frames per 2d playing Sid Meier's Civilization Vi: Gathering Storm at 1080p, though that dropped downwards to a 27.nine fps average when we boosted the resolution up to the native 1504p.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Webcam

Decent images for 720p webcam but 1080p would be better
Fast Windows Hullo face logins

In that location's not much to say about the 720p webcam built into the top of the Surface Laptop 4'due south screen, save that I wish it was a lilliputian more than exciting. A bump up to 1080p would have been a welcome modify (especially amidst our current pandemic-provoked preponderance of Zoom meetings) that really helped set this latest Surface Laptop apart from its predecessors, all of which take sported 720p webcams to a higher place the display.

That said, the Surface Laptop 4's webcam is completely adequate for all your video chatting needs, and the image quality is decent if you're looking to have some laptop selfies.

As far as the much-touted Windows Hi biometric authentication goes, logging in via your confront seems speedier than ever. I had some trouble getting the photographic camera array to recognize me while setting the laptop up for facial recognition (perhaps information technology's my fault for leaving my spectacles on) only once I got it squared away, the Windows Howdy login proved so speedy that if I was allowed to blink during the process, I'd take missed information technology.

Microsoft Surface Laptop four review: Battery life

The Surface Laptop 4 lasted nearly 11 hours on our web surfing examination
That's very practiced, but we didn't get anywhere near Microsoft'south 17-hour claim

Battery life is 1 of the large selling points for this latest Surface Laptop, and with adept reason; its predecessors take impressed us with their elegant designs and beautiful screens, but they've oftentimes fallen short of the competition when it comes to how long they last on a unmarried charge.

This time around Microsoft claims the AMD-equipped 13.5 Surface Laptop iv can last upwards to nineteen hours on a charge, while the Intel variant we reviewed is advertised as lasting upward to 17 hours.

Beloved reader, we wanted to believe. The Surface Laptop four is a cute machine, and it truly does terminal quite a while on a unmarried charge; I was able to unplug and get through a nine-60 minutes workday of intermittent writing and editing while listening to music, watching videos, and never once worrying that the battery would give out on me.

But every bit good as information technology is, the Surface Laptop 4's battery life doesn't quite live up to the hype. In our lab tests -- which are based on active, continuous web browsing -- the Intel-based 13.5-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop iv lasted a little less than 11 hours (10:46:23, to exist specific).

That's a nice improvement over the 9 hours 32 minutes the Intel-based Surface Laptop 3 lasted in our tests, but it still falls short of the competition. The latest Dell XPS 13 was able to last longer (xi:07) in our tests than the Surface Laptop 4 with a like hardware configuration, for case, and of grade, if you're willing to walk on the macOS side the MacBook Air M1 delivered an unbeatable 14 hours and 41 minutes in our battery tests.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Heat

Wait absurd temperatures unless y'all're gaming
The Surface Laptop 4 was quiet for the most function

In the course of this review, our Surface Laptop iv review unit rarely got noticeably warm, no matter how many tabs I had open or how many videos I tried to stream. The merely fourth dimension it got hot enough to cause discomfort was when I tried to play graphically demanding games like IO Interactive's Hitman 2; on medium to depression settings the 2022 game pushed the laptop difficult, and equally information technology stuttered between 15 to forty frames per second the fans kicked in and I felt the bottom of the laptop go noticeably warm in my lap.

In our heat tests (which involve streaming 15 minutes of Hard disk video) our heat gun found the underside striking an average temperature of 90 degrees, topping out at 92.5 about the center (roughly straight downwardly from where the F5 key sits). The deck of the laptop proved much cooler, measuring simply lxxx degrees on the touchpad.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 review: Verdict

The Surface Laptop 4 improves on the Surface Laptop three in many ways, offer Windows fans a bloatware-gratis ultraportable with premium components packed inside a beautiful, lightweight chassis.

While I'd have liked to see Microsoft attempt some more meaning changes to the Surface Laptop formula, the excellent speakers, improved battery life, and nether-the-hood upgrades make the Surface Laptop 4 one of the all-time Windows laptops y'all can buy — and a serious contender for a spot among the best laptops on the market.

We already have a laundry list of changes we'd like to meet in a sequel (thinner bezels, a ameliorate webcam, Thunderbolt 4 support and more than ports in general), but the Surface Laptop 4's tall screen, comfy keyboard and svelte, sturdy design make information technology a corking choice for anyone looking to get work done effectually the house or out at the coffee store.

Alex Wawro is a lifelong tech and games enthusiast with more than a decade of experience covering both for outlets like Game Developer, Black Hat, and PC World mag. He currently serves as a senior editor at Tom's Guide covering all things computing, from laptops and desktops to keyboards and mice.