Surface Laptop review: Microsoft's best MacBook Air competitor yet | Hacker News Reader

Surface Laptop review: Microsoft's best MacBook Air competitor yet

theverge.com

14 pointsneogodless18 comments

In consistently surprised that bezels are still a topic of conversation. Dell has been literally years ahead of everyone else in this regard, with everyone else still playing catchup. Excellent screens quality and bezels that just get out of the way. Even now the best offerings I see feel like compromises. Perhaps a dream laptop might exist which is a combination of every manufacturers strengths in one.

Last I checked, the XPS 13 inch was still a serious risk of burning your lap if used as an actual laptop.

I like the powerful ARM chip, I like that the specs go very high, and that the RAM speed is maxxed out.

I like that it uses 120HZ and Gorilla Glass 5 for the screen.

I like that it offers the latest Wifi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4

On the downside, it looks like a mac, which I don't consider to be a positive.

Don't like that there is no USB-C charging port on the right side.

Expensive.

> Expensive

It starts at $1k, which seems like a pretty reasonable price for a good machine.

Sounds like a great Linux machine

If it's anything like the previous Surface machines, the BIOS will not have the option to turn Secure Boot off. That makes it much harder to get Linux on there, too hard for most people.

“Great Linux machine” was my first thought, too. But if we can install our favorite OS, then this machine isn’t worth anything to me.

You mean the other arm surface devices? Linux boots a and runs quite well on the x86 ones?

Looks like someone has Linux booting on the 11 already:

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/issues/1476

Nice to see it didn't go the Macbook way of losing main ports over "sleekness". It still has less ports than I would prefer though (there's only one USB-A port and no HDMI ports), but not bad considering its size.

It's pretty amazing how almost any computer will work with 16GB of memory and a fast SSD. So I'm not surprised that they are getting higher points.

the reason why we’re running mac’s is the software not the hardware though, and microsoft’s software is going downhill while macOS is on the up and up.

If I had to run Linux as my main desktop again, for some reason, and it were an option, I would legit pay real money to have access to Apple’s various 1st party programs and tools on it. They’re so, so good.

The reason I am not using a mac is the OS. If there was a fully working Linux for it the hardware is fantastic. I can only hope snapdragon x will get proper and official support cause many of the laptops with it I've seen tick most of the boxes in my wishlist.

> while macOS is on the up and up

Ehh I wouldn't go that far. I still vastly prefer it to Windows or desktop Linux, but I am growing very tired of the change-for-the-sake-of-change redesigns that are typically worse than what came before it. Half-baked changes that take years to be cleaned up, if they ever do. Though, that seems to be common across all software these days.

It also requires a lot of little utilities for stuff that should really be built into the system (window management until Sequoia arrives, making third-party mice usable).

The hardware is better than it's ever been though.

The earlier ones had glowing reviews but when I finally got to try one (expecting it to be good!) around IIRC the third generation, it was awful.

This time, I’ll believe it when I feel it.

What did you find awful about the Surface Laptop (3rd generation)?

I believe this one is considered the "7th Edition".

Bad ui responsiveness, inaccurate and janky touch controls, slow to launch programs. Miserable to use, felt more like a (relatively solid) competitor to netbook-class devices than serious laptops, or iPads.

[edit] oh and mediocre battery life as I recall.

Not sure about the SP3, but my SP4 (which, btw, had no problems running Linux) was afflicted by the so called "flickergate", and I didn't manage to replace it. Since then, I sworn off any Microsoft hardware. Their software and OS, I had sworn these off years before, which makes these devices even less appealing...

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