It is safe They say Microsoft’s Surface line has been rudderless in recent years. Instead of revolutionizing these Windows PCs with interesting new designs, radically faster processors, or intuitive features, the company has been refreshing Surface hardware with minor spec improvements year after year.
The recent push for Copilot+ PCs has been exciting, especially alongside the announcement of the new Surface Laptop 7th Edition and Surface Pro 11th Edition. Could artificial intelligence breathe new life into the Surface name? The Surface Laptop has a bigger, brighter display, thinner bezels, a higher refresh rate, a haptic touchpad, and an all-new Qualcomm processor. I’ve spent a few weeks with it, and while it’s a good laptop, the Surface Laptop 7th Edition isn’t the leap forward that Microsoft would like you to believe.
Timely touch-ups
With the new Surface Laptop, you can choose between a 13- or 15-inch version (much like Apple’s latest MacBook Air models). Microsoft sent me the smaller size, which is now slightly larger. The display still has a 3:2 aspect ratio, but the size has gone from 13.5 inches to 13.8 inches. With slimmer bezels, the machine is still just as portable.
The 2K resolution LCD is brighter, peaking at 600 nits (up from 400 nits on its predecessor), with a 120Hz refresh rate so everything on the screen looks sharper. You can turn on dynamic refresh rate, which adjusts between lower and higher refresh rates to conserve battery life.
Photography: Brenda Stolyar
Overall, the display is a nice upgrade. Movies and shows look sharp and vivid, even outdoors in bright daylight, though I do have to crank the brightness above 80 percent when I’m in the sun. I didn’t use it much, but the touchscreen was responsive every time I tapped it. I wish there was an option to add a nanotexture or matte finish (like on Apple’s iPad Pro), because the reflection on the screen can be distracting. My main complaint, though, is that Microsoft should really offer an OLED display option, especially if you opt for some of the higher-end configurations on this laptop. It does offer it for the Surface Pro 11th Edition, so why not here?
Microsoft has finally upgraded the webcam from 720p to 1080p, a bare minimum in 2024. You’ll also get access to Windows Studio Effects, which uses AI to enhance your appearance on video calls (more on that later). My image quality looked sharp in my meetings, but I did notice that it still struggled with lighting. Despite the abundance of natural light in my home office, the camera would sometimes cast a dark shadow before adjusting back to normal lighting conditions.
Another notable improvement is the new haptic touchpad. You can customize the feedback via settings based on how strongly you prefer the click to occur. If you don’t prefer any, you can disable it entirely. I kept the haptic feedback at the highest intensity during testing and clicking. anything It was very satisfying. I’m glad Microsoft finally added this feature.
