Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition - Why You Gotta Tease Me Like This?

For a global leader in technology, Microsoft makes some pretty head-scratching decisions sometimes.

You'd think a company this big and this powerful would know better than to use the consumer marketplace as a testing ground for its products, rather than getting them fine-tuned and polished before putting them on sale in the first place.

Examples?

Take the Windows Phone; actually, a very nice piece of hardware. (I'm talking the Nokia Lumias of the early 2010s) Great cameras. Advanced features like dark mode and wireless charging and yet, because there was an extremely limited selection of apps, nobody wanted one.

While we're on phones, how about the Surface Duo? We got two generations of a folding phablet in 2020 and 2021 but it turned out people seemed more interested in handsets with single folding screens, rather than two separate screens hinged together. Still no sign of a third edition.

And then there's the Microsoft Surface itself.

I've argued before that the idea of a tablet that functions like a laptop with a detachable keyboard was incredible back when it was launched in 2012... but it worked so badly it took 4 or 5 generations before most people were prepared to give it a second try.

How does Microsoft not understand the damage it does to its reputation every time it embarks on one of these rush-to-market experiments?

It seems they simply don't care because they've done it again.

The Surface Laptop 7th Edition might quite possibly be the best laptop I've ever used. Right out of the box it looks and feels incredible. These new CoPilot+ PCs come in 13.8-inch or 15-inch versions, with a choice of 10 or 12-core Snapdragon X processors, 512GB or 1TB of internal storage and 16GB or 32GB or RAM.

Depending on which configuration you go for, there's a choice of colours; Sapphire, Dune, Platinum or Black. I've been sent a 15-inch model with all the bells and whistles in black. That would set me back NZ$4,099.00 if I were to buy it from the NZ Microsoft Store.

A pretty penny by most people's standards but this is a pretty incredible device. The HDR touchscreen is up there with the best I've viewed. The bezels are thinner than previous generations so in effect, you get more screen real estate taking up less space.

The new Snapdragon X processors run cool and much more efficiently, meaning outstanding battery life. Microsoft claims 22 hours of continuous video playback. That's not realistic in everyday use of course but I've certainly found the Surface Laptop 7 to be one of the more power-efficient of any Windows devices I've used to date.

Microsoft also claims a startling 86% jump in speed compared to the Surface Laptop 5.

I have no idea how you'd measure that in real-life terms but I've used both computers and I have no reason to doubt the claim. This laptop is fast. Blazing fast.

So what's the problem?

Well, when I test a PC or laptop I use it as my primary computing device for the duration of the review period. That means logging into my email accounts, installing and syncing my preferred browser, downloading a few games to play and setting up Adobe Audition so I can do all my audio editing.

First step? No issues. Because my work runs Office 365, I use all those apps regularly and it was no effort signing in to start emailing and accessing all my Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. As you'd expect.

However, for less "native" apps things got real ropey, real fast.

As I said already, these Copilot+ PCs run on Snapdragon X processors - a new kind of processor and ARM architecture that many developers are still coming to grips with. My favourite browser right now is Arc (sorry Microsoft - it used to be Edge but that has become bloated and messy like so many before it). Arc is a faster, more streamlined option that syncs across devices of varying operating systems but there isn't an ARM64 version of it yet, so that was no longer an option for me.

More frustrating was Adobe Audition. There's literally no way to make it work on the Surface Laptop 7. Not yet, anyway. I don't get it; Acrobat works. Photoshop works. Premiere Pro doesn't work yet - although it's promised to soon. How can you expect someone to hand over four grand for a computer that won't run some of the most commonly used creativity tools on the market?

As for games... Well, this is where things get really interesting. My modus operandi when reviewing a Windows PC is to log into my Gamepass Ultimate account in the Xbox app and download a few games to put the processor, GPU, RAM and storage to the test. On this laptop, you don't even get the option to do a local install of your Gamepass Games - you can only play them via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

I say, "only" but the reality is, I actually enjoyed playing this way on this machine. I found all the games I tried loaded faster than a local-install would, they looked great and it made no difference I hadn't downloaded my own copy. Even a graphics-heavy behemoth like Forza seemed to work better via the cloud than with the last couple of computers I've played it on.

Which only adds to my frustration with this device. It obviously offers incredible power and performance. The touch display is superb. The sound quality is top-notch. The camera and mic features ensure excellent 1080p online video results and the latest Wi-Fi 7 connectivity is faster and more reliable than ever.

There are even enough ports - well, almost. 2 X USB-C and a USB-A. (I'd still like to see an HDMI as well - especially since the Surface Laptop 7 is capable of running up to 3 external displays.)

So why, why, why did Microsoft launch it without ensuring a full complement of compatible apps were all ready to go? 

And that's before you get to the titular Copilot+ abilities which, to be honest, currently come up a little short. Yes, there's a dedicated Copilot button but all this seems to do is open a new Copilot window so you can chat with the Microsoft AI - it doesn't seem to be intuitively integrated with whatever you happen to be doing at the time.

I asked Copilot to create a 1200-word review of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition. Although it was quite a good read, it got some facts wrong. It told me I could have a maximum 16GB of memory - odd, given the one I'm using right now has 32GB. It also claimed to be Wi-Fi 6 which, as I've just pointed out - is now a generation behind.

This kind of blurry, inaccurate generalisation has been typical of every AI I've interacted with to date so I don't fear the robot apocalypse just yet.

When Microsoft launched this new line of PCs, it also promised another exciting feature, Recall. This would allow users to "rewind" their computers to virtually any point in the past, an obvious boon to creatives like me who have great ideas and then forget them almost immediately. Unfortunately, as you may have heard, valid privacy concerns were raised around protecting sensitive information (and perhaps even images) and as a result, Microsoft has delayed the Recall rollout for the time being.

You see? All the potential in the world but who wants to buy a computer that will be incredible eventually? 

Make no mistake, I actually think this laptop is worth every cent of its NZ$4,099.00 price tag - it's so fast, it's so powerful, its battery lasts so long, its display is so spectacular, it sounds so wonderful and it looks and feels so, so good.

It just doesn't do about half the things I want it to right now. Oh, I know it will... but WHEN???

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition.