Microsoft has officially launched the Surface Laptop 4,
successor to Surface Laptop 3, which was announced in 2020.
The brand-new Surface product isn’t quite the exciting new
laptop we were all hoping for. It comes with the same old
design and last-gen AMD processors, despite the fact there is a
collaboration between AMD and Microsoft.
On paper, Surface Laptop 4 feels a bit underwhelming but it’s a
lot cheaper and better than the Surface Laptop 3. For example,
the 13.5-inch variant with 512GB of SSD storage now starts at
$1,699 instead of $1,999. Likewise, the 15-inch variant with
512GB SSD storage is now priced at $1,799 instead of $2,099.
Surface Laptop 4 specs
Surface Laptop 4 is Microsoft’s second flagship laptop that’s
rocking the AMD Ryzen “Surface Edition CPU”. Unfortunately,
Microsoft is not using Ryzen 5000 hardware that was announced
at CES 2021. Instead, Microsoft is offering two options – AMD
Ryzen 5-4680U and Ryzen 7 4980U.
The processor is based on AMD’s Zen 2-based chips and Microsoft
is calling it “AMD Ryzen Surface Edition processors.
On paper, Intel offerings are better, but we’re expecting the
performance between the two models to be similar. For
comparison, the Surface Laptop comes with Intel Tiger Lake CPUs
– i5-1145G7 and i7-1185G7 CPUs.
It also comes with Intel Xe graphics and boasts up to 19-hours
of battery life from a single charge. With Xe graphics,
Surface Laptop 4 will be able to run games at 1080p resolution
and those games will also render better on screen. You can also
play graphics-intensive games like Overwatch in better
quality.
Surface Laptop 4 hardware features
Surface Laptop 4 comes with a USB-C port and it’s apparently
not Thunderbolt 3 compatible.
The screen of the brand-new Surface Laptop retains Microsoft’s
signature 3:2 aspect and it comes with 2,496 x 1,664
resolution. It also supports 201 PPI, which is enough good for
normal uses, and even gaming if you don’t mind seeing black
bars.
The laptop weighs just 1.54KG and it feels very light for its
size. In fact, it’s about half a pound lighter and slightly
thinner when compared to the 15-inch MacBook Pro.
It’s worth noting that Surface Laptop 4 is not the only device
launching this year. As per reports,
Surface Pro 8 is also in the works and it could be
announced in October or November at a Surface event.
