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Microsoft has redesigned its Surface Laptop from the ground up to compete with it the latest MacBook Air, powered by Apple’s custom M3 chipset already started in March. According to Microsoft, the new Surface Laptop offers improved performance at a lower price.
During the announcement, Microsoft executives compared the new Surface Laptop – one of many new Copilot+ PCs that unlock exclusive features in Windows 11 – directly to the MacBook Air. Yusuf Mehdi, chief marketing officer, said that the Surface Laptop offers a 58% speed increase with sustained multi-threaded performance compared to the 15-inch MacBook Air.
Battery life has also been improved, with Microsoft’s executive vice president saying the 15-inch Surface laptop is capable of lasting 22 hours of video playback or 15 hours of web surfing between charges. That’s 20% more battery life than the M3-equipped MacBook Air with the same 15-inch screen size, Yusuf Mehdi added.
The updated Surface Laptop is available with either a 13.8- or 15-inch screen. These new laptops can be configured with up to 1TB SSD storage and 32GB RAM. Microsoft offers a choice of four colors: Platinum, Black, Dune and Sapphire
MICROSOFT PRESS OFFICE
“You will have the most powerful PC ever,” Yusuf Mehdi said The Verge during a meeting of the new devices held at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters in Seattle. “It will outperform any device on the market, including a MacBook Air with an M3 processor, in terms of sustained performance by over 50%.”
Of course, we’ll have to look at these supercharged new Surface laptops ourselves to verify Microsoft’s numbers, but it’s an encouraging sign that Windows 11 PCs have them Finally has caught up with the computing power and efficiency of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models since switching from Intel chips in 2020.
Like Apple, which now relies exclusively on its own bespoke M-series processors based on the ARM architecture that has been widely used in smartphone and tablet chipsets for a decade, Microsoft has also turned to industry heavyweight Intel to enable these dramatic gains in performance and efficiency.
The Surface Laptop is powered by the Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Plus system-on-a-chip from Qualcomm – a brand synonymous with performance on Android smartphones the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 UltraAnd OnePlus 12.
This chipset has a dedicated NPU, the Neural Processing Unit, which is designed to handle all AI tasks on the device. In fact, it can perform 45 trillion operations per second.
Recall is the main feature of this range of Copilot+ PCs, allowing you to scroll back through everything that happened on your Windows 11 computer and jump back in time with one click. Everything is searchable because the AI has searched the images and text on the device MICROSOFT PRESS OFFICE
Microsoft will unlock a number of new AI features in Windows 11, including Recall, Cocreator in Paint, and Real-time Translation, provided you have the right hardware.
Devices that meet these criteria are called Copilot+ PCs.
Surface Laptop is one of the first devices to ship with these powerful new AI tools. But it’s not just about speed, battery life and software optimizations – the team at Microsoft took the opportunity to update the hardware too.
The new Surface Laptop features a larger 13.8-inch display without significantly increasing the overall size of the notebook. To this end, Microsoft has shortened the bezels around the screen.
“Our new 13.8-inch display offers a larger viewing area than a traditional 14-inch laptop in a more compact design,” wrote Pete Kyriacou, corporate vice president, Microsoft Devices in a blog post about the new design.
The touchscreen display features a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR technology, Dolby Vision IQ and Adaptive Color, which automatically adjusts the white balance to suit your surroundings.
Compared to a previous model, the Surface Laptop 5, the updated notebook offers an 86% increase in performance, according to Microsoft. For the first time, it can also power three external 4K monitors.
As mentioned above, the Surface Laptop comes with the longest battery life any Surface device ever shipped by Microsoft – up to 22 hours on the 15-inch Surface laptop and up to 20 hours on the 13.8-inch Surface laptop. If it Finally If you have time to charge the battery, you can charge it using the magnetic Surface Connector included in the box. Surface Laptop supports 65W fast charging.
Microsoft has equipped its laptop with lightning-fast Wi-Fi 7, but you’ll need to upgrade to a new Wi-Fi router to take advantage of the improved stability and speed of this new standard.
Elsewhere, there’s a 1080p HD Surface Studio camera that supports AI-powered Windows Studio effects like auto-framing, portrait blur, creative filters and voice focus – all right on the device, so you don’t have to worry about internet speeds Your appearance will be affected during a video call. Microsoft says it is working on “AI-enhanced sound” with its new Omnisonic speakers, which are Dolby Atmos certified.
The chassis is made from at least 67.2% recycled material, including 100% recycled aluminum alloy. Microsoft is offering the Surface Laptop in four new colors: Platinum, Black, Dune and Sapphire.
Prices Start from £1,049 for the 13.8-inch version of the Surface Laptop, Maximum £2,049 for a model with a 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM and the more powerful Snapdragon X Elite chipset.
If you prefer to go for the 15-inch Surface Laptop model Prices start at £1,349 And The maximum price is £2,149 for the same specifications as the 13.8-inch flagship model.
Certain Surface Laptop configurations are already marked as “Sold Out” in the Microsoft Storealthough delivery of the first Copilot+ PCs is not planned before June 18, 2024 which pre-order will be among the first to receive the brand new laptop models.
For comparison: The latest generation of the MacBook Air – equipped with a specially developed M3 system-on-a-chip and either 13.6 or 15 inch screen size – starts at £1,099 for 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD storage and a 13.6-inch display. The 15-inch model starts at £1,299.