Gadgetory

hey how's it going Dave 2d here and these are surface laptops this is a four gig model and then this is an 8 gig model I've done a couple videos about these guys already so this will just be kind of like a mini review but I want to spend some time talking about the viability of the 4 gig model so in case you don't know surface laptop has amazing build quality this is the new leader in build quality for 13-inch Windows laptops it's better than the XPS 13 better than the Razer Blade stealth better than the HP Spectre and better than the lenovo x1 I mean those are all really well-made but these are a step up it's not so much that the materials are better they're still aluminum it's one of the fact that they're just really precisely machined and like everything about it is so finely tuned the hand feels is bang-on but you are paying a premium for it it's an expensive device and I think a big part of that cost goes to the fact that they're as well-built as they are the screens are really good it's not my favorite screen and there's too much wobble to use it regularly for pen input but visually it's really nice and it gets bright the webcam and mic are pretty good this is what it looks like and this is what it sounds like the SSD speeds are slower than I was hoping so the drives in here get faster as the capacity increases but it's 128 and 256 gig models they're not very impressive the speakers are pretty good they're hidden underneath the keyboard but they projects upwards so positioning is nice they sound good not amazing certainly not as good as a MacBook Pro or the HP Spectre line but they're better than the XS 13 and the razor blade stuff the keyboards are really nice to type on so the Alcantara fabric is I mean it's soft its inviting it's comfortable to use and we still don't know about its long-term durability but it's a very nice keyboard to type on and I think most people will get used to it really quickly same thing goes for the trackpad good size great texture but if I was looking for something to complain about I would say that the click is a little loud but in general the inputs on this thing are great now battery life was one of the headlining features of this laptop and it's excellent it's a 45 watt hour battery which isn't actually that large for a laptop of this size ultrabooks sometimes have 60 watt hour batteries there's one smaller but I can comfortably get eight hours on this thing doing normal tasks with the screen at around 250 nits thermal performance is good it runs quietly and the fans don't come on often even if you're watching videos but when they do it's they need to expect for a device like this all right so the thing I want to focus on in this video is the performance of the base model and for students this thing's $900 for regular people it's a thousand and all the great hardware stuff that I've mentioned previously exists on the base model but the thing is this thing has four gigs of RAM this has eight gigs of ram and this is significantly more expensive so it's kind of like a tough decision for people to choose between the two when the main thing that they're concerned about is the difference in RAM now just to get this out of the way gaming performance on the base model isn't great it's an HD 620 really light games or in this case with overwatch really low settings will let you get passable frame rates but don't get a base or a mid tier surface laptop to play games in regards to regular performance I did the free upgrade to Windows 10 Pro right away I mean I think for 99% of you guys you won't want to stay with Windows 10 s and performance on the 4 gig machine is actually not bad I can comfortably have 4 or 5 chrome tabs open with Netflix streaming Microsoft Word and Excel open it's still manageable if you use software at school like MATLAB or something not crazy intensive it's the same thing memory gets tight but for the most part the user experienced stays fluid now if you use any kind of imaging software or if you're doing even moderate content creation you're going to be more RAM but if your work flow is more productivity focused you'll be fine with 4 gigs even if you're a software developer unless you're working with like 3d graphics or like a really heavy IDE you'll be ok with 4 and the core i5 will give you pretty decent compiling times so to answer the big question yes I do think that 4 gigs of ram is enough for some people especially productivity and media consumption is your jam but it kills me that Microsoft couldn't just had 8 gigs of RAM to this because in order to get 8 gigs of ram right now you have to buy the more premium version with more storage and not everyone needs that storage so yeah that's kind of a bummer whether or not it's worth it on the whole like the surface laptop I mean you're getting a really nice-looking laptop with great build quality if that's what you're looking for this is a good option ok hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it something you loved it see you guys next time