Surface Laptop 4 Review (13" & 15") - Don't Make a Mistake!

Hey Chaps! Quick correction - you can charge via USB C (like most laptops), but it's not as fast as Surface Charger 👍

Hell yes! M1 Air vs Surface vs Xps would be a good one- but compare according to the price- and so get the models for all 3 at around 1000$.

Thank you so much for this video, I commented on your last surface video asking for it and you came through!

Thanks for the even-handed review. It seems that a lot of reviewers have become biased against Intel due to Intel's lackluster progress in recent years. But it does seem that Tiger Lake is a bigger leap forward for them than usual. While they certainly have their work cut out for them, I think the reports of Intel's impending death are overblown.

I loved the macbook air but hated that it had no touch screen because I always use laptops with touch screens! Ended up returning it! Now checking out light touch screen options with good battery life!

Yes, Macbook Air, XPS 13 and Surface 4 would be an excellent comparison! Feel like the Surface is going to get left behind though ...

Thanks for this... I'm considering buying a new laptop and I've been comparing the editing capabilities (and ease of learning curves) for shorter videos - 15-20 minutes in length... I definitely want touchscreen/stylus options... Sounds like the 13.5 inch could handle all of that...

I like the surface charger. I've tripped over and the mag connector saved my laptop too many times to count. I just wish MS would allow alcantara (sp??) option on the more powerful 13.5 models.

I would get an XPS. I've been using a 2016 model for five years now and it still runs fantastically. Dell's support, at least here in Switzerland was fantastic the single time I needed it.

Great review as always! I've seen some complaints of keyboard deck flex on the Alcantara version. Do you see issues on your unit? Do you have any thoughts on the Surface vs. the new X1 Carbon Gen 9 as well if you've had a chance to check one of those out?

Would you recommend the Intel chipset for video editing and other creative work? You showed the render time, but how is the editing experience itself? Is a dedicated GPU still necessary?

I love that we are finally starting to see more taller aspect ratio Windows laptops! Long overdue.

Keep it up! You answered to all my questions. Thanks!

Just got surface laptop 4 after using xps 13 , and i just love this surface. You can feel the charm of brand when you use Microsoft rather than Dell..!

I went for the Laptop 4 over the 2021 XPS as I really like the 3:2 screen ratio. The XPS is a beautiful machine, but I've had one previously and always felt like I was hunched over it. The screen looks tiny by comparison in your video!
No complaints so far - the screen & audio are excellent, battery life is fantastic (i7 13" version). The keyboard and trackpad, as you say, are excellent. I've also got it paired with the Surface Mouse, which is perfect for travelling with. I went for the aluminium chassis and it's a stunner (once you've wiped your fingerprints off for the 324th time that day!)
Thanks for the great review!

The wallpapers in both the laptops are awesome 👌

Great content like always,can't wait for your next video😄😍🙂🙂🙂🙂

Always great detail. Gadget reviews 5 star ⭐️

Hey Tom, thanks for another great video. Question if possible - some people have reported significant keyboard flex with the alcantara model in comparison to the metal. Do you notice much difference if any? Cheers!

Had issue on surface 3 with docking. No power button on dock extension. Also it crashed when adding two external monitors, OK with one. Would love to see performance when docked and connected to two external monitors. I noticed if you use all USB ports on docking station it started to freeze. Great review. 15' for me

Keep it up Chaps! Love your contents:-)

Great video, really helped me to choose! Thanks to you :)

Big chunky bezels? 🤯 *Looking at my Lenovo Thinkpad.*

Would really enjoy a XPS 13 , Macbook Air and Surface 4 comparison!!

I’m thinking of replacing my 2015 XPS 13 but can’t decide if I should go with SL4 or a new XPS 13

As an update, I upgraded to Windows 11 on my Laptop 4 and it upgraded pretty flawless. Still very solid, no issues, no bugs and it has kept me very happy. I really like the 15" laptop which has a more solid keyboard than the 13" screen.

Yes! Been waiting for this video, keep it up

Great Comparisons, especially with the XPS Option. Waiting for the Review of the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 [When you get it] 👍🙏🙏🙏

Hey tom, I'd like to tell that u're reviews are certainly going to the great limits as an F1 car, so keep pushing🙂
But coming to the topic, I had this question, Is the AMD Ryzen 7 version enough to edit videos on this laptop?
And which one to take between AMD and Intel?

Pls give comparison video between the 3 laptops i.e surface, apple, dell

We have 5 MS Surface devices in our home - we're very happy with the ongoing use of the Surface connector as it means we can all use the same power adaptors and, most importantly, our older and bloody expensive MS docking stations. They can add USB-C in future, as long as they retain the Surface connectors 🙂

Would it make sense to go with the I7 model over the I5 if I plan to keep this particular laptop for 4 years (or more), I pretty much work from home but I would like a portable device to do some light content creation stuff like audacity and possibly photoshop

Great video. Here in Guangzhou China. Both MacBooks and Surface devices are commonly seen in the office and Starbucks. And a lot of people are using HP, DELL, Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, Acer, Asus which combine makes the larger majority.These brands offer more affordable devices. I've been using an i7 version Surface Laptop 3 for more than a year and an M1 MacBook Air for about 5 months. (I sometimes charge my Surface Laptop with the adapter of MacBook. But Surface adapter is twice faster.) I think Windows 10 offers the best value on Surface devices (I also used Surface Pro 3 and Surface Laptop 1 as my only computer. And Surface Go). And the fan-less M1 MacBook gives me great pleasure with insane long battery life. But now Microsoft is claiming 17 hours battery life on Surface Laptop 3 with Intel and AMD CPUs, that is amazing. Huge and most important progress for user like me who use the laptop for daily office work, I think. We can be free of power adapters. Battery life doesn't bother any more when having long-hour meetings.

I love your videos, really reviews! Could you please recommend me the smallest most powerful multicore for virtualization and also less noisy and best cooling system and 3:2 16:10 productivity ratio laptop with best screen quality please?

great video i like the wallpapers too🙂

Based on this review, a 13" brand comparison between the new Surface 13", Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Air 13" with similar specs would be very interesting indeed

Thank you so much! I've been waiting for your review :)
Awesome, in-depth review as always!
Just curious if video editing in premiere pro was smooth for both the ryzen and intel versions? (for playbacks and such)

I found this a very honest and helpful review!

2:25 perhaps a reminder to not pigeonhole products?
Good job with the review as always, Tom!
I do tend to lean towards 2-in-1s these days, so the XPS having that option looks more compelling, but the base spec Surface Laptop sounds like a pretty good allrounder for average users.

I'm considering Surface 4 vs the LG Gram. I want something light. I agree about the charging. I think modern tech should be converging to having one charger for all your devices. I tried the Macbook Air M1 and regret it. MacOS has terrible window management and Word for Mac has many limitations.

The AMD performs moderately when on the battery as MS has power throttled it to get that good battery life. There are no clever M1 four efficiency cores, it is simply killing the performance. A bit of a trick and really this should be noted by reviewers as influencers suggesting it is MS magic! I can get 10h SoT with the original Surface Laptop if I power those settings down, so not really excited by the battery life.
In fact, looking at my Surface Laptop it looks exactly like the new one and still performs an ultrabook workflow without any issues. Not sure why I would buy the newer version and I suspect those with older Surface Laptops are asking the same question? Mine has stood up well, including the Alcantara, so as for QC on the original it is impressive (the Laptop 3 did have screen issues). I certainly prefer a multiple of ultrabooks over this in 2021 and find it hard to be as enthusiastic as the YT creator gang! For instance, I have seen the same spec Dell XPS 13 (i5/8gb) for £450 less! Then again, the Surface line is very niche with low quarterly revenue compared to the big sellers, so probably caters for the affiliated buying community (SME).

Hi there,
I have had a run of surface laptops over the years from Pro 3 to the Surface Laptop 2.
I went in for an upgrade and picked up the 15 inch I7 with 16gb ram.... ($2850 AUD) after a day I had returned it and moved back to the Surface laptop 2. It was noisy (fans) running at a 50% memory usage on day 1.
Chatted to Microsoft about it and they said they were new and some bugs were being detected on the Intel model. I don’t use anything overly advanced, I have this plugged into a surface dock 2.
Now I’m considering the Spectre x360 or XPS13..... but for now the Laptop 2 is working very well. I guess it’s not time to upgrade just yet.

Only Alcantara on the Ryzen 13 inch killed it for me. I would've loved to have the ice blue 13 inch with a Ryzen processor, Alcantara starts to yellow from the oils in your hands.

Man I was about to buy the AMD. Thank you! Great review. Subscring

That sharp part would obviously dull out after a while. I've had multiple Surfaces with that keyboard and I like it a lot!

Hey, any idea how colour accurate the panel is? I'm tossing up whether to get one when I must leave the comfort of my WFH setup for meetings etc. Need for graphic design and the new line looks fairly good compared to the rivals, especially in price.

I wish the XPS 13 had an AMD option. Intel may be more favorable for business, or for someone whose work flow demands Thunderbolt, but I just want a thin and light that preferably has 2-in-1 functionality. Hopefully DELL can get out of its lockstep with intel and start putting AMD on its flagships to keep better pace with the M1 macs. All that the DELL XPS line now has going for it now is the thin bezel looks, the 2-in-1 convertible options and Thunderbolt. I’m actually surprised the M1 Macs have retained Thunderbolt despite the jump to their proprietary chipset. It almost makes you wonder was any of the Surface products still don’t include it in 2021.

Thank you for the video. Definitely helped me not spend too much money.

Between the XPS, Gram, Galaxy Book, Thinkpad, Razer Book, Matebook, Zenbook or HP Envy/Spectre it's hard to argue for the Surface. Most are thinner or lighter, most have more modern designs, most have more ports and some have more power with the Zenbook and Envy having dedicated graphics and the Matebook 14 having H series Ryzen chips.

But if u were to choose surface laptop 4 or Dell xps 13 which one will u go for

Well, I already got the M1 base Air, solid laptop, all of the three are great

The turn-off for me would be the charging cable and the lack of ports. And if I did go with a Surface 4, I would get 16 GB RAM which obviously would hike up the price. I'm done with HP; I'm thinking about Lenovo Yoga i9 or other 2-1's by Lenovo. Don't know. I don't like the idea of any of the laptops being soldered. I'd like to know more about that and how many years these laptops will last until you have to yet spend an arm and a leg to buy another one. Great review. Thank you.

Interesting in my opinion that you have chosen 8 Gb as best deal. I would appreciate to see a comparison between MacBook Air M1 to Surface 4 both entry level. I never own MacBook but now it is first time I’m considering due to M1 chip

The Microsoft charger has saved me on my surface pro many times. I understand that you can also use the USC-C port to charge and it supports up to 45 watts. Of course that means you don't have a USB-C port for other things. But if you lose your charger or want to add a little juice in a car USB-C charger while on the road, you can.

Coming from an Surface Pro 4 user, which would you recommend me to switch, the Surface Pro 7 or Surface Laptop 4?

Great review!

Well done on hitting the million mark

What do you recommend to someone (me) that has both Apple ( an old MacBook for personnal photos, films and music) and MS (Dell Inspiron 15) with MS Office for work and would like to purchase one laptop and copy all files into one laptop. I also have an IPhone. I do love Apple products. What would be the easiest transfer protocol?

The oldies like the bigger screen, thanks for the review

You could do the storage repair on the laptop 3. Also you can charge through the USB c port.

Alcantara is awesome. Have been using it for the past one year. Only issue is keeping it clean. I struggle with it a lot.

XPS is still the best looking laptop. Hopefully we'll see Dell release XPS 15/17 with a high end AMD processor this year

Just bought myself a black 15". I wish it had something like that "magic keyboard" the MacBook has, that looks so cool and is so usefull. But other than that im really happy with my purchase.
Oh, and the screen being very reflective is a little bit annoying but only rarely.

These are some really nice wallpapers, where did you get them?

To users of the Surface 4: What is the typical operating fan noise level of your Microsoft Surface 4? Is it at least as quiet as the x64 MacBook Pro that have good cooling with their metal magnesium cases?
For those that don't have: the x86 MacBook Pros only really get super loud when doing huge CPU loads like heavy rendering, 3D gaming, or some runaway bad Javascript coding on web pages. Other than that, most of the time the MacBook Pro's are near silent running. The M1 MacBooks will be even quieter but I just want to compare with the x64 CPUs for now.
A loud laptop which is literally right in front of me is now a huge turn off and I can't stand it anymore. I've sworn off Apple products but their M1 ARM based laptops might actually having me switch my main laptop to MacBook Pro which I only ever use for work.

Yes can we get a comparison to them 3 laptops I would like to know if windows have got anything that can compete with the M1 chip from apple👍

Hi!
I was deciding by Mac book air and pro….sales folks are trying to convince me to go with the surface tablet. I’d be interested in your take on air VS pro, and either of them against surface. Please and thank you! :)

Good sir, you've earned my subscription to your channel :)

Thanks for a great review. Tom. I know someone's already mentioned this but I'd be interested to know whether the Surface 4 can handle two external monitors with independent displays (via a Dock or similar, obviously). This is sort of a deal-breaker for me.

I see the 13" helpful if your traveling with it a lot. However if your computer stays home usually, the 15" is much nicer. if your watching videos, or just generally reading on it the bigger size is it for me. I don't like that they only allow 2 colors with the 15" however and I don't like the black color which so many other companies like Dell have, The Silver is much better which is not metallic. Still I wish they had the cool blue ice color that the 13" has.

I use the surface 4 13.5" on construction sites. Trying to find a protective case but can't see to have much luck finding one...

I like the keyboard feel of the alcantara rather than the metal or I would get the black, but what would you say is the best color to get ?

Is that the Garmin Vivoactive 3 at 6:08? Would love to see a "Which Smartwatch to Choose" video that includes the latest Garmin offerings. Most tech reviewers seem to exclude Garmin and focus only on the Apple Watch & WearOS watches!

Very good video. I learned a good deal.

Impressed that the XPS looks definitely next gen compared to Mac Air and Surface 4

Of the 3 (Surface Laptop, XPS, MacBook Air), mac easily top my list, the M1 performance seems too good to be true for the price but it's really legit tho haha plus ARM is truly the future of computing. But forget those 2 Windows ultrabooks, I'm actually way more excited with the newly launched Galaxy Book Pro lineup, imo these are the most compelling alternative from Windows side against MacBook M1. Hopefully you'll fully review them very soon Tom 🤭

I really like the Surface products and the Surface Laptop is a great option. That being said, Microsoft will not make massive changes to the line, as it is not in their best interest. If you look at who really buys these, it is not really the general consumer. Microsoft sells most of these devices to companies. Companies want a known entity that they can simply slot in, one that does not change drastically from one version to another. Especially big companies have an IT roll out and maintenance procedure, and they would rather not change it if they don't have to. For example, they love the Surface Connect port. They have already kitted themselves out for it, so if Microsoft were to remove it and instead put more USB-C/Thunderbolt ports in, they may anger their biggest clients.

For the H264 encoding test, I suspect that you had Intel Quick Sync enabled on the Intel (which is essentially GPU accelerated encoding), and used x264 (CPU encoding) on the Ryzen. Quick Sync is faster, but produces worse results.
Otherwise there's no way that a 4c8t i5 would be faster than an 8c16t Ryzen 7 at x264.

How well does Adobe programs work on the SP4? Mainly for graphic design?

Hi i have a question, can you recommend a few laptops which are good for graphic designers?
Or if you have a video can you share the link.
Thanks

It is really sad to see no major updates on the surfuce laptop 4 in terms of design. Also I would like to see a 4k screen like in the dell xps.

Would the Lenovo x1 gen 9 vs laptops surface 4 be possible ? :)

yes pls! Macbook Air vs Microsoft Surface Pro vs Dell XPS 13 video!

Kinda hard to decide... The new ones look nice, but the Surface Laptop Go still looks more appealing. Too bad they did not release a new one.

Great reviews. I’m looking to replace my desktop and wonder if i need a new laptop with docking (for existing accessories, external hard drive etc ) or if i can manage with my current iPad air 4th Gen. help.

I got myself a MacBook Air M1. I use MS RDS a lot and the only thing is that Teams on RDS can't access microphone, which means I can't use Teams properly on phonically, video conferencing and screen sharing properly. So if they sort that out then no need to consider getting an alternative windows 10 laptop.

Bough a Surface 3 a long time ago. The screen is so ridiculuosly reflective I spent a lifetime avoiding lights; even at night, I could see my mug on it whenever there was a black bacground, even while watching movies. Your video shows exactly the same, as it always has been with the Surfaces.
I´ll never ever buy them again, until they have proper screens. Even less know, when high quality matte screens are coming back.
P.S. The lack of Thunderbolt, equally appaling.

Please do a comparison between surface and dell xps. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 I need a new windows laptop and can't decide between dell and Microsoft. I think MacBook isn't necessary to compare because it is still untouchable in my opinion.

congrats for the 1 million subs

Is there any powerbanks you'd recommend for the 15inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 4?

@2:33 not a pigeon actually. It is dove that makes that sound.

Playing Bad Batch for the speaker test. Great choice.

Can you increase the brightness of the keyboard back light? Or is just the same? Because its not that visible with lights on

which one do you think is the better laptop for programming ?

Hope you do a review of the Surface Laptop Studio.

Surface, MacBook, and XPS are the three laptops I am looking at. I do not do any gaming but I am using Photoshop more and more and my current Acer is not up to it. I believe I need 16GB RAM, and whilst I keep the RAW files on a separate drive, I still probably need 1 TB to store my JPEGS. I use an iPad a lot but not sure about moving to the back system completely. I know it’s a pretty broad question but would appreciate any thoughts on these three as a photographer’s tools. Thanks for the original insight.

What is the best screen size for engineering as an engineering student: 13.5 inch or 15 inch, and are there any effects of 13.5 inch on my work as an engineer?

Hey, really love your videos however, i do think that the lack of background music and the lack pauses in between, make your 12mins video FEEL a bit too long. i think adding these two might bring some positive effect.
Nevertheless, really appreciate these HQ videos! 👍

If this was 10% less than the M1 Air I'd happily buy it because I love the keyboard, but you can get the Air for $900 right now so... it's really no contest. If you don't need windows for your workflow of course.

Between a Dell XPS 13’ and Surface 4 13.3’ which one is better of dealing with multi screening such as have 1 or 2 extended external screens via USB-C. Considering both i7 processors. Would I need to consider a more powerful graphics card inside ?