Microsoft’s latest Surface Laptop has new chips, new connections and costs the same as last year, but it has a five-year-old design that makes it look dated.
The Surface Laptop 5 starts at £999 ($999/A$1,699) for the 13.5-inch version, replacing the 18-month-old Laptop 4 as Microsoft’s idea of what a standard Windows 11 laptop should be. It sits above Microsoft’s entry-level Surface Laptop Go 2, which costs £529.
Aside from the new color option (as pictured), little has changed physically from the Laptop 4 or its predecessors. The sleek aluminum body, excellent keyboard and trackpad are as good as they’ve ever been.
But while the wedge shape and flat lid still look sleek, the large bezels lose space around the screen, keyboard and trackpad, looking decidedly dated compared to more modern rivals.
The keyboard is still one of the best on a laptop, but others have caught up or surpassed it. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
The screen is still clear and good-looking – great for working at home or in the office – but it only has a maximum brightness of 400 nits (compared to 500 nits on the competition) and isn’t as smooth as the Surface Pro 9 tablet, among others. It’s a similar story for the 720p webcam, which is still good but hasn’t caught up with the competition, which usually runs at 1080p.
Inside the machine, Microsoft has whittled down its chip options from last year to just Intel’s latest 12th generation Core i5 and i7 processors. He says the new chips offer up to 50% speed increases for some tasks. But they also bring with them a Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 port for the first time on a Surface Laptop. This offers a much faster and more capable connection to docking stations and other peripherals.
Laptop 5 is good in terms of power. It won’t win any awards, but it’s fast enough for general use, handling light and medium tasks with aplomb, including complex manipulation of large images in Affinity Photo 2. It runs without audible fan noise if it’s not playing games or doing other intensive activities tasks too, which is welcome.
The battery lasted about the same as its predecessor, for around eight hours of work with relatively light use on the Core i7 as tested, and probably around an hour more for the Core i5. That’s still well behind the 16 hours offered by the best-in-class.
The laptop has USB-A, Thunderbolt 4/USB 4, a headphone jack and a Surface Connect port, fully charging in just under two hours with the included 65W power adapter. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Specifications
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Screen: 13.5 inch LCD 2256 x 1504 (201 PPI)
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Processor: Intel Core i5-1235U or i7-1255U (12th generation)
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RAM: 8 or 16GB
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Storage: 256 or 512GB
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Operating system: Windows 11 Home
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Camera: 720P front, Windows Hello
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Connectivity: wifi 6 (ax), Bluetooth 5.1, USB-A, USB4/Thunderbolt 4, headphones, Surface Connect
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Dimensions: 308 x 223 x 14.5 mm
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Weight: 1.272 or 1.297g
sustainability
The laptop is usually repairable with a service manual that will be provided by the end of the year. The SSD is removable and upgradeable as long as several spare parts are available. The out-of-warranty service charge for a Microsoft repair is £523.26, while a battery replacement costs £366.30.
The laptop does not contain recycled materials. Microsoft operates recycling schemes for old machines. It also publishes a company-wide sustainability report and a breakdown of each product’s environmental impact.
Windows 11
The Laptop 5 runs Windows 11, which, apart from a trial version of Microsoft Office, is free of bloatware and unwanted programs. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
Windows 11 is slowly becoming a modern, easy-to-use system. There are still some rough things, especially in the more advanced menus, but overall it works very well and without errors on the Laptop 5.
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The webcam supports Microsoft’s excellent Windows Hello facial recognition for logging into the laptop, which wakes and goes to sleep almost instantly the moment you open or close the lid.
Price
The 13.5-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 starts at £999 ($999/A$1,699) with an Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The 15-inch version starts at £1,299 ($1,299/A$2,149) with a Core i7 chip.
In comparison, the Surface Laptop Go 2 starts at £529, the Surface Pro 9 starts at £1,099, the Dell XPS 13 starts at £949 and the Apple MacBook Air M2 starts at £1,249.
Judgment
The Surface Laptop 5 continues to offer a smoother Windows 11 experience than most competitors, wrapped in an exceptionally well-made package.
The keyboard is great, the trackpad is good, and it has enough power for a regular consumer laptop while running completely silent most of the time – something that can’t be said for much of the competition.
But Microsoft’s once cutting-edge design is starting to show its age five years later, while some parts of the machine could do with an upgrade. It lags far behind the best in battery life, has a limited selection of ports and a fairly low-resolution webcam.
Still, it offers one of the most seamless Windows 11 experiences you can get. That’s reasonable value for a premium laptop at its entry-level price, though it’s quickly beaten by the competition when you start opting for models with more storage or faster chips.
Pros: good keyboard and trackpad, USB-A and Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 port, good screen, Windows Hello, decent power, quiet operation, no pre-installed bloatware.
Cons: no SD card reader, only one USB-C port, battery life far from class leader, only 720p webcam, design starting to look dated, expensive.
Sage version of the Laptop 5 varies between green and earth gray color depending on the light. Photo: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian
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