Artist Review: Surface Laptop (7th gen) 2024

Review unit on loan from Microsoft Singapore

This review is written from the artist and graphic designer perpsective.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th gen) was released in June 2024. Prices for the 13.8-inch and 15-inch laptops start from USD 999 and 1299 for the models with 16GB RAM and 256GB storage.

In Singapore, prices are as follows:

• 13.8-inch model, Snapdragon X Plus (10 core), 16GB RAM and 256GB storage: SGD 1599
• 15-inch, Snapdragon X Elite (12 core), 16GB RAM, 512GB storage: SGD 2348

Prices are comparable to the 13-inch Apple M3 Macbook Air, except you get 16GB instead of 8GB RAM with the Surface Laptop.

The biggest changes with this new model compared to the previous models are the drop of pen support for the touchscreen, the move to all metal build instead of alcantara, and the move from Intel to Arm processors.

Video review

Bottom line

The Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th gen) is a great non-gaming laptop. It has fast and smooth performance, solid build quality, a vibrant and bright display, good sounding audio, and finally good battery life.

The most important thing to know is due to the change of processor architecture, there will be incompatible apps before developers update them to run on Arm processors. If you need to use specific apps for work, it's best to research whether the app has been updated to run on Arm processors. You do not want to buy a laptop only to find out it cannot run the app you need to use.

I'll cover this in depth further down.

Specifications

Here are the specifications for the review unit I have:

• Processor: Snapdragon(R) X 12-core X1E80100 @ 3.40 GHz
• NPU: Qualcomm® Hexagon™ with 45 trillion operations per second
• Graphics: Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU
• RAM: 16GB (up to 32GB)
• Storage: 512GB (up to 1TB)
• Touchscreen: 13.8” PixelSense Flow™ Display
• Resolution: 2304 x 1536 (201 PPI)
• Aspect ratio: 3:2
• Contrast ratio 1400:1
• Dynamic refresh rate up to 120Hz
• Ports: 2x USB-C 4.0, 1x USB-A 3.1, 3.5mm audio jack, Surface connector
• Connection: Wifi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Audio: Dolby Atmos speakers
• Camera: 1080P with Windows Hello
• OS: Windows 11 Home
• Dimension: 11.85 inch (301 mm) x 8.67 inch (220 mm) x 0.69 inch (17.5 mm)
• Weight: 2.96 lbs (1.34 kg), 15-inch weighs 1.66kg

Design

The Surface Laptop 7 is a beautiful laptop with solid build quality. Colour options available at Sapphire, Dune (above), Platinum and Black.

The metal body is definitely durable and the weight of 1.34kg is reasonable.

Bottom sides have wedge design that makes it easy for you to lift the laptop.

Ports on the left are 3.5mm audio jack, USB 3.1 type A and two USB 4 type C.

On the other side there's the Surface Connect port which can be used for charging with the included charger. This is a proprietary port that can also work with the Surface Dock which has more ports. I wish Microsoft would just do away with the Surface Connect and add another USB-C port which is way more useful.

The keyboard is great. Keys have good travel and feedback. Typing experience is satisfying. Touchpad is big and accurate.

The speakers are actually beneath the keys and when your hands are above typing, audio quality is affected.

One thing I don't like is there's no right Ctrl key and instead you get the Microsoft CoPilot shortcut key. A right Ctrl key is just more useful. If this is my own laptop, I will install a key mapping software to swap the keys.

Display

Visuals are sharp on this 13.8-inch display with 2304 x 1536 resolution. There's dynamic refresh rate up to 120Hz. The 3:2 aspect ratio is wonderful as it provides more vertical working space compared to 16:10 and 16:9 displays given the same width.

I measured colour support for 100% sRGB, 83% NTSC, 85% AdobeRGB, 96% P3 and 550 nits maximum brightness. The display is colour accurate enough but print designers should note that this is not a 100% AdobeRGB display.

Auto-brightness works well and the brightness is high enough for use in bright environment as long as it's not under direct sunlight.

The touchscreen display no longer has pen support and the loss is not a big deal to me. One downside to the display is the glossy surface is too reflective.

13.8-inch display is still big enough for graphic design work, and you can always connect the laptop to an external display. If you're using the laptop mostly at home and not bringing it out often, the 15-inch display would be a better choice. If you need portability, then 13.8-inch is recommended.

Performance

The Snapdragon X Elite processor is amazing. Overall performance is fast and smooth with minimal heat, and most importantly the energy usage is so low that with general usage, you can get 14-16 hours of battery life easily.

App compatibility

For artists and graphic designers, there are several potential deal breakers.

The Adobe apps available for installation from Adobe Creative Cloud are

• Photoshop
• Lightroom
• Camera Raw
• Acrobat
• Premiere Pro
• Fresco
• Media Encoder

Adobe Illustrator and Lightroom Classic are not available yet at the time of review. Adobe Premiere Pro is the 2023 version and there are many bugs. Not really an issue since the Surface Laptop isn't a laptop advertised for editing videos.

If you edit photos, see this article that compares Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic.

The Huion driver I've tested has issues, e.g. pen would pause after a while. I don't have Wacom or XPpen tablets to test so I can't say how widespread the problem is. Sketchbook Pro, Clip Studio Paint, Concepts have this problem. Affinity apps, Krita, Medibang Paint worked fine without the Huion pen problem.

If you are an artist or graphic designer, you have to research whether the apps you need can actually work. Unfortunately, I can't test all the drawing or graphic design apps out there for this review.

To check whether the apps are ARM or X86, you can look under the Details tab of Task Manager.

Blender renders are done with CPU instead of GPU and hence is slower. If you do 3D work, get a laptop with a dedicated graphics card.

Conclusion

The Surface Laptop 7 is a well made non-gaming laptop with a beautiful display, solid build quality and wonderful battery life. Overall performance is fast and smooth, and even non-ARM apps that run on emulation runs fast.

For graphic designers and artists, please research to see if the apps you use are available and can run properly on the ARM architecture. Also research the drivers you may need to use. E.g. driver for pen tablets, pen displays, colour calibrators, scanners.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Solid build quality
+ Beautiful display
+ Auto-brightness works quite well
+ Fast and smooth overall performance
+ No heat, no fan noise
+ Battery life 16 hours
+ Most graphic design and drawing apps that run on emulation runs well
- Hands typing will affect audio quality
- Some Adobe apps are not available for installation
- Reflective display
- No latch on display for opening
- HDR is not true HDR
- Huion driver has occasional pauses
- Surface Connect port is less useful compared to another USB-C port