It’s not even close - and that’s a far cheaper laptop. It’s sad to say, but the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 pales in comparison to the M1 MacBook Air. I benchmarked the Surface Laptop 4 in PugetBench for Premiere Pro, which tests everything from 4K playback to video encoding. It’s certainly not - there will always be tasks the Surface Laptop 4 isn’t fit for, such as video editing. But because of its size, a lot of potential buyers might get fooled into thinking this is a serious workstation. Outside of the Surface Book line, this is true of all of the Surface products. Less thickness means less room for airflow.
Those extra cores add a lot of performance potential to the Surface Laptop 4, especially in the 15-inch model, which needs all the power Microsoft and AMD can squeeze into it.īased on my testing, the thinness of the Surface Laptop 4 still holds it back. The smaller size is limited to the six-core Ryzen 5, while the 15-inch model exclusively offers the eight-core Ryzen 7. First, it makes Ryzen processors available in both the 13.5-inch and 15-inch sizes. The Surface Laptop 4 does two important things to fix this problem.
Microsoft’s first embrace of AMD didn’t go over all that well.
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It made it very hard to compete with rivals like the XPS 15 or MacBook Pro 16-inch. Performance was disappointing, especially in the context of a large 15-inch laptop. AMD’s Ryzen processors debuted in the Surface Laptop 3, but they were a year behind with Ryzen 3000 chips. It now comes with a wide selection of Intel and AMD processors. The new components are what makes the Surface Laptop 4 what it is. The docking capabilities of the Surface Connect port are great, though it’s all proprietary. Microsoft continues to ignore the existence of Thunderbolt 4, which means the USB-C port isn’t as fast as it is on other laptops. Ports include a USB-C 3.1, USB-A, a headphone jack, and the magnetized Surface Connect. The bezels are larger than I’d like, but in the 15-inch form factor, they’re less egregious. The Surface Laptop 4 is one of the few 15-inch laptops that offer a 3:2 screen - and it’s glorious. I also like what the ultrathin design does to emphasize the screen. It’s a superbly manufactured device worthy of the Surface brand. The lid is rigid, the hinge opens with one finger, and there isn’t too much screen wobble either. You won’t find the bend or flex that’s common in laptops this thin. The tiny stature of the chassis makes its build quality that much more impressive. That makes the Surface Laptop 4 the slimmest 15-inch laptop you can buy. It’s still an accomplishment, though - the similarly configured LG Gram 16, for example, is still a larger 0.66 inches thick. Because the Surface Laptop 4 doesn’t support discrete graphics or 45-watt processors, Microsoft’s able to go razor-thin. Of course, those laptops have larger chassis to support the extra performance you can configure. That’s especially true if you’re used to thicker laptops in this category such as the Dell XPS 15 (0.71 inches thick) or MacBook Pro 16-inch (0.64 inches thick).
That thinness is really noticeable in the palm rests, which are barely raised off the table. It’s still as remarkably thin as ever at just 0.58 inches for the 15-inch model. All of those things are still intact with the Surface Laptop 4, which leaves the chassis relatively unchanged. There are many things to adore about the design of the Surface Laptop - even in 2021. Jump to: Design | Performance | Battery Life | Display and Speakers | Keyboard and Touchpad | Our Take Design The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
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