The Snapdragon X Elite has finally arrived and with it, so have Windows laptops that can compete with MacBooks in areas they have lagged far behind in. After spending a day with Microsoft's latest Surface Laptop, I'm excited for this new future.
I've been a Windows user all my life. For the most part, macOS never really piqued my interest. And, every time I used it, I disliked it more and more. It was truly death by a thousand cuts. But there was one thing I couldn't ignore. Apple did an absolutely perfect job with some of the most important parts of a laptop, namely battery life. The switch to Apple Silicon made MacBooks more attractive than ever, to the point that I finally gave up trying to stick with Windows and bought a MacBook Air out of sheer frustration.
But then came the Snapdragon X Elite.
Qualcomm announced its new Windows chipset last year. Big Promises. This was against years of promises of Windows on Arm that fell incredibly flat. Poor app support, disappointing performance, and rough emulation led to experiences that weren't worth anyone's time. But the Snapdragon X Elite looked promising from day one, and continued to be attractive right up until the hardware was announced.
That's why I was so excited to try out the Microsoft Surface Laptop and ditch my MacBook Air after a few months of use. And, after just one day, I'm already very happy.
Starting with the physical hardware, the latest Surface Laptop is a fantastic machine. The aluminum body is quite thin and looks great in the “platinum” finish I bought – blue is obviously the best choice, but I'm still going to put a skin on it. The keyboard, haptic touchpad, and screen are all excellent. The keys have a lot of travel, Microsoft's first haptic touchpad is easily as good as the one on the MacBook Air I was using before, and the screen is bright. The 13.8-inch size also feels perfect for travel, which was my main focus, and I've always been a fan of having lots of ports.
But there are obviously two main things we all want to know about. Battery life and performance.
Since I've only been using this machine for a little over a day, I can only draw a few conclusions on both. But after a full day of work, I'm impressed on both counts. From 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM, almost the entire time I was actively using the laptop, the battery dropped from 100% to 24%. This is great, since I wasn't just watching videos, I was also working with dozens of Chrome tabs, WordPress, and Photoshop throughout the day.
And thus, the performance was very good throughout the match.
I didn't experience a single slowdown in anything I did throughout the day. Photoshop performed great, which wasn't a huge surprise, since it's a native Arm app. Almost all the apps I run are native, including Chrome and Slack. I only found Beeper, Lightroom Classic, and Steam that aren't native yet. Both Steam and Beeper ran in the background throughout the day. Performance on emulated apps, as can be predicted, isn't as good as native apps, but that's not a big deal. Lightroom Classic was my biggest fear here, but it worked without any hassle. I was able to edit and export photos easily and I never even realized I was using an emulated app.
I'm very happy with the Surface Laptop so far. It's the machine I've been waiting years for. I'll be using it more in the coming weeks and preparing a full review, but in the meantime, what else do you want to know? Leave a comment below with what you'd like me to test or any questions you have and I'll see what I can do.
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