On the Surface, laptop might be a Go
The Microsoft Surface Laptop Go is small, light, stylish and affordable, but is it the laptop for you?
The Microsoft Surface Laptop Go is small, light, stylish and affordable, but is it the laptop for you?
It is the entry level model of the Surface laptop range first rolled out in 2017. It’s Microsoft’s most portable laptop yet and is pitted against Google Chromebooks. You can use a small, affordable laptop and still have the trappings of Windows without resorting to Google’s cut-down Chrome operating system.
The Surface Laptop Go weighs 1.11kg and has a 12.4-inch touch-sensitive display, but it is not a two-in-one. The screen and keyboard can’t be separated. The screen has a 3:2 aspect ratio, which makes it more suited to productivity applications.
What it does offer is a full-sized keyboard and sizeable trackpad. It has a smooth aluminium top surface and comes in blue, sandstone and platinum.
It is built for lightweight use. It is easy to carry and documents are simple to create in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, loaded from the Microsoft Store, with thousands of other apps in the store.
Apps downloaded from third-party sites can’t be used with Windows 10 S, the version on this device. In other aspects, Windows 10 S is the same as regular Windows 10. By running this version, Microsoft is offering some guarantee about the laptop’s performance and security.
If you don’t like this restriction, you can switch out of S mode and use regular Windows 10, but you can’t switch back.
It’s pleasant enough to use. The keyboard has well spaced plastic keys so you can type with reasonable accuracy.
You can log in with fingerprint recognition. The power key at top right doubles as a fingerprint sensor.
The laptop comes with a 10th-generation Intel Core i5-1035G1 processor and has Intel UHD graphics. The performance is basic. I ran the Cinebench R23 benchmark and it returned scores of 316 and 2360 for single and multicore operation, which is nothing to write home about.
It is designed for thrifty operations without pretensions of being any sort of power house. You don’t get lots of ports but the offering will be sufficient for many: both a USB-A and USB-C port on the left side, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
There’s a port on the right hand side for plugging in a Microsoft charger with a small brick. But I found you can plug in a USB-C cable linked to a 60 watt charger and charge it quickly. The laptop was 80pc charged in an hour.
I was hoping the laptop would deliver extraordinary battery life. In January we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Book S, which delivered more than 16 hours on a single charge. However, this laptop ran for seven hours, playing video at 1080p resolution at 50 per cent brightness.
The Surface Laptop Go has a 720p front-facing camera that delivers a reasonable quality selfie for video calls. The speakers are positioned on the top side just below the screen base and deliver a punch. Sound was reasonably loud and not distorted.
Pricing starts at $999 for a Core i5 model with 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage; you can pay up to $1549 for more memory, storage or a better processor.
You can buy a decent Chromebook for much less than this. Pay more and you get a laptop with some power. However, if you don’t need the power and want need a quality portable Windows system at an affordable price, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go is an option.
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