The Surface Laptop Studio is a laptop that Microsoft has designed specifically for the creative professional. It is powerful and stylish, but it sacrifices some of the features and capabilities of other laptops in order to be more powerful. This may not be the best option for everyone, but if you are looking for a laptop that offers a unique PC experience, then the Surface Laptop Studio is a good choice.
Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review: Design
The Surface Laptop Studio’s screen hinge, which enables it to be used as both a tablet and a clamshell laptop (although a very heavy one), is its most striking feature. The Laptop Studio weighs 1.7 kg at launch, which is far too much to operate as a conventional on-the-go tablet like the iPad or Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8. However, based on our use of the device, the tablet mode is still helpful for those who want to sketch and draw at a desk.
The Surface has a hinge that allows it to be in a number of positions, which makes it easier to use the touchscreen for drawing.
The Microsoft Slim Pen works fantastically with the Surface Laptop Studio. By magnetically attaching it beneath the device’s front lip, the stylus may be wirelessly charged (with up to 15 hours of average use). The Bluetooth connection to the laptop is effortless. Microsoft’s claim that the stylus feels like a pen on paper is unconvincing, but it still works well on touchscreens because it has 4096 pressure levels that let you adjust the thickness of each stroke by pressing more firmly. Additionally, the pen comes with a digital eraser that makes it simple to remove typos. ..
It’s sad that Microsoft isn’t including the Slim Pen with the Laptop Studio considering how crucial an item it is. In actuality, we are unsure of why anyone would choose to purchase this laptop without a stylus, as competing producers, like Acer with the ConceptD Ezel, already include a pen in the package. The Surface Laptop Studio has an elegant and well-made feel thanks to its all-metal construction, which should come as no surprise given that it is a Microsoft product. The MacBook Pro 2021 is another example of a laptop aimed at creators that is only offered in one color, the basic Platinum.
The design of the MacBook Pro is not great. It only has two USB-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Surface Connect port. Additionally, the MacBook Pro does not have any other ports that are useful. The Acer ConceptD 3 has four USB-C ports, an HDMI connector, and three USB-A ports.
Keyboard and touch pad
The Surface Laptop has a keyboard that is different in color from the base unit, but the excellent mechanism remains the same. Typing is a very comfortable experience, and long texts can be typed without difficulty thanks to the adequate key travel and precise keystrokes. The three-stage white illumination is helpful in low light.
The Surface Pen 2 supports haptic feedback, but we lacked the pen to test it out.
Display
However, the Surface Laptop Studio’s biggest selling point may be its design. It’s a sleek and modern design that is sure to turn heads. Plus, it comes with a one-year warranty.
We found the 3:2 ratio display to be easier to complete our day’s work on, and we found the 14.4-inch screen size to be ideal for our everyday work. However, we must admit that we usually like something a little bigger."
The Surface Laptop Studio’s display is perfect for work and media consumption, and its 82% Adobe RGB delivers vibrant color output when altering photographs. Additionally, it has some fairly large bezels, but we didn’t mind them because we never unintentionally opened an app on the Surface Laptop Studio’s touchscreen when switching between tablet and laptop mode. Additionally, the display feels fairly sturdy and isn’t at all flimsy or thin, which is a great feeling.
Audio
The Surface Laptop Studio has a subwoofer and tweeters, which may be why music and sound effects sound crystal clear coming from it. The subwoofer projects sound through the side of the device, while the tweeters project upward through the keyboard. The Surface Laptop Studio offers louder, fuller audio with better bass than we anticipated from a laptop, similar to Microsoft’s own Surface Laptop 4. The bass on songs like Massive Attack’s “Angel” or Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” feels almost physical, and the volume can sometimes be almost agonizingly high. ..
Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review: Graphics
The integrated Iris Xe Graphics G7 will largely handle light workloads, like the playing of high-resolution films. While you require extra performance, such as when gaming, the dedicated GeForce RTX 3050 Ti with 4 GB GDDR6-VRAM is instantly engaged by Nvidia’s Optimus technology. It is the variant with a maximum core clock of 1455 MHz and a TGP of 50W. The benchmark results are slightly below the average for this GPU in our database because there are faster versions of the RTX 3050 Ti (up to 80W TGP). However, the RTX 3050 Ti provides noticeably more performance when compared to the outdated GTX 1650 Max-Q of the Surface Book 3. ..
Performance
The Surface Laptop Studio is equipped with an Intel Core i5 or i7 11th-generation processor and 16GB or 32GB of RAM. However, as the Laptop Studio didn’t arrive in the UK until October 2021, while it did in the USA, the CPU options are now a touch out of date due to the introduction of Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs. As a result, performance outcomes are meagre. Despite not having an H-Series chip, which is made for high-performance laptops, the Huawei MateBook X Pro can achieve comparable CPU performance. The performance gap between the Surface Laptop Studio and the MacBook Pro (with an M1 Pro chip) is astronomical. ..
The Laptop Studio is a powerful laptop that can handle high-intensity workloads, but it doesn’t have the best graphics options. To purchase a discrete GPU, you must spend at least £1899, and even then, you are only able to choose from the RTX 3050 Ti.
The Surface Laptop Studio is a terrible graphics option for devices aimed at content creators. It is completely outclassed by the MacBook Pro in terms of graphics power. This means that the Surface Laptop Studio is only really worthwhile for those who want to doodle and sketch on the touchscreen display and aren’t too fussed about a high-end graphics performance to edit animations, photos, and videos at breakneck speeds; for those tasks, a MacBook Pro is preferable.
The SSD is incredibly fast, ensuring swift loading and saving of data stored on the physical drive as well as short boot-up times.
Battery life
Microsoft has said that the Surface Laptop Studio’s battery can last up to 18 hours on a single charge.
The battery life is still remarkable even though we weren’t able to reach such heights during testing. We were able to record for 15 hours and 22 minutes in our 720p video loop test on a single charge. A full working day is still easily attainable even with the brightness set to 120 nits, which is not necessarily representative of real-world usage. ..
If your battery is low, a software-based battery saver mode may be helpful, but charging rates are also reliable. We achieved 20% battery in 15 minutes after turning the device on using the charger that came with it (Microsoft doesn’t provide a wattage). This was 37% after 30 minutes, and a full charge would take about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Not bad at all, but the fastest speeds require the exclusive Surface Connect port. It fastens magnetically but is easily dislodged by any sizable movement. We wish Microsoft would fully support charging over USB-C. ..
Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review: Heat
The Surface Laptop Studio is one of the most comfortable laptops we’ve ever used. It’s never gotten warm even when we were playing taxing 3D games. Our lab testing confirmed our observations, showing that the laptop never got hotter than 89 degrees Fahrenheit when we put it to work for 15 minutes before running a heat gun over it.
Configuration options
The Surface Laptop Studio is not a cheap device. A model with an Intel Core i5 processor, Iris Xe integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD starts at £1,449/US$1,599.99. But from there prices soar sharply. You can spend even more for twice the storage, but the Intel Core i7/RTX 3050 Ti configuration we tested (16GB RAM/1TB SSD) costs £2,479/US$2,699 instead. ..
Conclusion
The Surface Laptop Studio is the sleekest and most powerful hybrid laptop in the line to date. It displays a novel hinge design that ought to be attractive to photographers and designers. It has an exceptional degree of versatility, thanks to its computer’s excellent display, intelligent cooling system, robust stylus support, and more performance-driven processors than those found in other Surface laptops. With increasingly expensive upgrades and a rather modest performance ceiling for what is marketed as to some, at least a pro-grade workstation, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio becomes more challenging to adore.
