Gadgetory

when we reviewed the surface laptop a year ago we ended up giving it a pretty tepid sorta recommendation but since then alex who writes most of our laptop reviews started using it as his daily driver and then just never stopped so what is it that gives the surface laptop that kind of staying power why is it that Alex who can use any laptop he wants would keep coming back to it and why does Alex put double spaces after periods in his writing memory Express is the go-to place for your electronic needs and services in Canada and they're opening a new store in Victoria BC they're hiring for all positions so check them out at the link in the video description when your job description is literally writer a good keyboard is crucial and I think it's fair to say that the surface laptop has one of the best if not the best keyboard on the market there's something about the way the keys go down that just feels great it's crazy how much tactile feedback they've been able to get into such a contact device and the Alcantara wrist rest makes typing just that a little bit more comfortable now we actually expressed concerns about its long-term durability but I'm actually very pleased to say that this unit thank you which has been subjected to some pretty harsh conditions over the last year hasn't yet shown any signs of wear below the keyboard though is the first missed opportunity of the surface laptop to the touchpad is frosted glass topped it's responsive it's accurate overall it's great but even as only a very occasional MacBook Pro user it is really hard to go back to a small touchpad and I'd like to see it expanded next time around one thing that did get fixed this time though is performance now for our purposes the seventh gen dual-core processor from last time hasn't been a huge issue I mean we all have desktops whenever we need more horsepower but if this was your only computer or even if you wanted to do some light photo editing on the road you'd probably be frustrated that similarly thin devices have been available for months with quad core processors not anymore Microsoft bumped the surface laptop to to a quad-core 8th gen processor and while they were at it they also can to the entry-level 4 gig model to prevent anyone buying such an otherwise premium device from having a pretty bad time running Windows 10 the entry-level unit is now a totally different machine from last years and it makes it much easier for us to recommend it with confidence while we're talking about great things that are great the screen is great for things like surfing the web and writing in word the 3x2 aspect ratio lets you see that much more of your work and when you combine that with excellent accurate color deep blacks and the top-of-the-line touch capabilities that we've come to expect from Microsoft service lineup well it's really hard to come up with complaints for the screen that is unless your favorite online content creator just made the switch to an 18 by 9 aspect ratio for their videos leaving you with even more massive black bars than you otherwise would have had above the screen in what is obviously the correct place you'll find the webcam which again is about as good as they come and implements Windows hello facial recognition perfectly but timelines has blasdell to even open I'm already signed in and even though we've had other windows hello I our laptops here they have the camera below them and stuff so it normally takes longer to register the face with that said we still maintain that being the best webcam on a laptop is kind of like beating all the kids at the local elementary school at Foursquare like there's still a lot of room for the entire industry to do better in this category though I'm not sure I can say the same about the build quality Microsoft puts a lot of work into the design of its devices and it shows chassis flex is all but imperceptible the speakers are great considering their size and the battery life is good enough to last through most of if not quite all of the day and it looks great doing it matte black baby that is a welcome addition to the lineup so okay sounds good then right let's all run out and buy surface laptop twos they didn't change much but if ain't broke don't fix it yeah well actually they're not well there was one thing that was broke the one thing but nearly everyone that reviewed the surface laptop complained about was the craptastic aisle and I mean I get it it's thin it's light so having a whack ton of ports on it isn't the easiest thing to do but this isn't acceptable in 2018 yeah Microsoft you do get a couple of points for the taipei port it's nice to be able to use a two-factor authentication key or a mouse without immediately reaching for a dog cool but then you immediately take all those points crumple them up in a ball turn light them on fire and throw them off of a cliff because why did you include a mini display port port who even cares about this it has its purposes but if you've got to use a dongle anyway where's the USB type-c port I mean sure you got your magnetic surface Kinect docking port over here which lets you add a bunch more connectors and stuff but you know Microsoft you know what other port lets people dock their laptop and charge it at the same time Thunderbolt 3 you've created a thin enlight here that has the potential to be basically perfect and the high price that you command for it would be so much easier to swallow if there were at least a single Thunderbolt 3 port on the side then I could attach it to an inexpensive dongle for as many ports as I want I could attach it to an eg PU turning this thing into a legitimately decent gaming machine I could use a super-fast external SSD as it is now though the surface laptop - pretty much just makes my job harder with Thunderbolt if someone asked me hey Linus I want a thin and light laptop what should I get my answer would be simple if you're cheap get a gram if you have a bit of extra cash and you like to look fancy get a surface laptop without it though well the Dell XPS 13 and the Razer Blade stealth come back into consideration so at the end of the day alex is gonna keep using the surface laptop because the screen and the keyboard are second to none also I think secretly has kind of a Microsoft part on but once again we can only give it a tepid recommendation rather than like an all-out enthusiastic like just throwing your wallets at it immediately one ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first if you ever do have an issue and you call them you don't speak to a robot you get put through directly to a person and it doesn't cost extra in fact with ting you pay only for what you use with the average ting bill coming in at just 23 bucks a month per device if you're stuck in a contract and switch to ting bill over 25% of your cancellation fee up to $75 and they've got lower mobile data rates than ever with data just $10 per gig beyond the second gig to find out how much you'd save on ting head to Linus 2018 ting comm and try out their savings calculator you just enter your last couple bills and find out how much you'd save on ting then when you decide to sign up use our link again that's Linus 2018 ting comm and you'll get 25 bucks in service credit or towards a new device so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts kind of like this one but not quite and our community forum which you should totally join ten points if you can find the spots where I screwed up based on the sand in the hourglass where were the cuts in this video