Gadgetory

hey guys the Austin the Microsoft service line has been growing a lot lately with everything from a desktop all-in-one with the surface studio all the way down to the cheap and tiny surface go there's a lot to like one of my favorite devices has always been the service laptops so Microsoft sent over their brand new service laptop to to take a look at I got very excited until I took a little bit of a closer look the overall hardware hasn't changed too much this year which is certainly not a bad thing it's all made out of aluminum it does sort of give a little bit of a Macbook vibe at least until you open up the lid the keyboard and decklid are lined in Alcantara now this is pretty unique in the PC space as opposed to seeing aluminum here it is much more of a fabric material and it kind of gives you a little bit of a unique look it's typically found in things like high-end BMWs and Porsches and Audi's but how do you here our laptop is nice now sure it will wear and get a little bit dirty over time but as far as I'm concerned that's totally worth the trade-off of a nice soft typing experience you're also getting a terrific display so just like last year is a little bit of a weird panel with a 13.5 inch size and a 20 256 by 1504 yes I got the resolution right it's really unusual but one of the nice things they have here is that it not only is a touchscreen of course like a surface should be but importantly the screen doesn't really wobble when you touch it I mean it was a little bit it's much better than most other ultra books out there the actual panel itself is high-quality but what I really appreciate is the aspect ratio unlike most laptops which are sixteen by nine this is three by two which means that you get a lot more vertical screen real estate which is helpful for things like web browsing and you know productivity everyone loves productivity in their really expensive laptop right something else you can do of course though is watch video even though you do get a little bit of a letterbox you have a super crispy video like Jake's new can you survive the movies over on vsauce3 you'll find that there's a lot of crispness to watch that aspect ratio also pays off for the keyboard and trackpad so specifically the keyboard is terrific it's backlit it's got a really nice sort of feel and on top of that the trackpad is actually fairly large most of that is because the screen is taller which means there's just a little bit more space here one of the big new features this year is not a feature at all it's the brand-new matte black color can I just stop for a second and say that yes I love a good silver laptop it's classic it's great but this not black I mean I can feel márquez's heart just fluttering it's so so cool I mean I didn't expect out of all people Microsoft to make a murdered-out surface book it is so so cool or surface laptop leather it's all you know what is it new this year the port's which if you take a look consists of a single USB a a single mini DisplayPort a headphone jack and the magnetic service connector you know we don't see a USB C or oh I don't know a Thunderbolt 3 ports can you feel my frustration I kind of get it last year the surface laptop - did or the surface laptop one didn't have a thunderbolt port or at least didn't have a USB see but I mean you see that this is this is a $400 surface go guess what that port is do you see it little round not round to the the little circular shape of that oblong thank you you see a little oblong port that's USB see it supports power it supports data I know look it supports full DisplayPort just like this useless mini DisplayPort here so even the USB port apparently is USB 3 and that USB 3.1 I'll give them a little bit of credit because there is the service connector which can give you some of the functionality of USB see but I mean it's 2018 it's going to be 2019 soon this laptop is going to be around for a while and USB see it's absolutely the future it just it's crazy to me they didn't just include USB see here I mean it's on the $4 surface why can't they put it on the $1,300 surface laptop - one of the major upgrades for the surface laptop to this year are in specs so last year it was good but it only had these seventh gen dual-core processors this year however we have the full quad core Core i5 and core i7 options no no you won't be able to gain particularly well on the surface laptop - mostly because it doesn't have any kind of dedicated graphics as an option and you can't connect any external graphics but having the quad core design does make a big difference for things like being able to do a little bit more video editing and you do have all the surface accessories including the pen as well as the dial so this one should be a pretty solid Photoshop machine software wise this year it ships with Windows 10 home out of the box which would sound totally normal and not exciting at all until you remember that they last year's version of the surface laptop shipped with Windows 10 s which thankfully has kind of been pushed along to the wayside you've got a very nice clean build of Windows and of course you can install all the actually might want there are some nice features including windows precision drivers for the touchpad as well as an IR camera that does support when is hello speaking of that camera it is a 720p webcam it sounds pretty decent but most importantly it actually is a pretty high quality device unlike some other laptops that have webcams on the bottom of the display where this is the angle you get all the time battery life is solid now microsoft claims 14 and a half hours on a charge which is definitely a little bit ambitious but you should easily be able to last through day of light use for example at work or school something that's not going to be taxing at all that heavily the surface laptop - is expensive it starts at $1000 but that's only for 128 gigs of storage if you want bump up to a 256 gig SSD that's gonna cost you 300 more dollars the drive is decently fast but it's nowhere near as fast as the custom SSD inside the MacBook Pro which is actually a less expensive upgrade Apple charges you $200 on the MacBook Pro whereas they charge you $300 on the surface so you know when you're charging more than Apple for an upgrade you might want to reevaluate your decisions I really want to like the service laptop - it's got killer hardware I love the black look I really appreciate that it is much more powerful now but the issue is that it doesn't even have USB see much less Thunderbolt 3 especially considering this kind of price the service laptop - is a good laptop but it is not a great one