Review on Microsoft Surface Laptop Touch Screen Ryzen by Joseph Rasmussen

The 15-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 is definitely a great laptop and a highly reliable alternative to other premium Windows-based laptops and the MacBook Pro. My current workhorse is the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, so let's compare them here, though there's certainly a price difference. 1.) The aluminum body is amazing. It's incredibly minimalist. If you think Apple is minimalist with its MacBook range, Microsoft is taking it to the next level. A solid black mass (in the case of this reviewer) and icy to the touch. 2.) Really light weight at 3.4 pounds compared to the MacBook Pro 16's 4.3 pounds. 2496 x 1664 (201 ppi), although not as good as the MacBook Pro 16 (3072 x 1920, 226 ppi) - looks still looks like it should. Colors aren't as vivid as the MacBook Pro, they only cover 75% of DCI-P3 compared to the MacBook Pro's 99%, and the difference is really obvious. The display is certainly good, but it's far from a flagship in 2021. Add in a rather mediocre maximum screen brightness (380 cd/m²) and that's not very good. A 16-inch MacBook Pro has around 500 cd/m2 and the difference to me is amazing. Bear in mind that this is a touchscreen, but I'm still not sure if a touchscreen on a non-convertible laptop is of measurable benefit for most users. The auto-brightness adjustment is more "spiky" than a smooth increase or decrease in brightness, and I simply disabled the feature as I found it very annoying. On Surface, you can "click" anywhere with the MacBook trackpad 4.) The port selection here is very, very poor USB Type-C, headphone jack, and Surface's own charging port (which really seems incredibly pointless, especially in 2021. ) There aren't any Thunderbolt ports here, which is a huge omission, you can charge via USB Type-C, so you only have to use the Surface's proprietary connector if you want to. Plus, setting up the Surface Laptop 4 is easy. Turn it on, go through the initial setup and you'll be done pretty quickly. Bloatware is kept to a minimum and I've only uninstalled Microsoft 365 and a few other third-party apps. 5.) The keyboard is good. It's not the best keyboard, a bit spongier than the slower-rebound MacBook Pro 16, but still one of the 'good' keyboards out there - tactile enough. It has physical F-keys, which I would love to have on a MacBook Pro 16. I think the TouchBar is one of the worst things to happen to a MacBook (accidental touches are the worst!), so I'm hoping Apple returns to physical keys on its flagship system in the coming year. There are rumors that they will. 6.) Ergonomics are decent, although actually opening the laptop is a little tricky, as there's no notch where you have to flip up the screen - a minor faux pas. The bezels are a bit oversized for 2021, but far from offensive. 7.) The sound quality is not bad, but far from the bass that the MacBook Pro 16 is capable of, music can of course be heard here, but headphones would be preferable. 8.) Battery life and thermal performance are fantastic, destroying a general-use MacBook Pro that's just a portable toaster. The laptop runs surprisingly cool with this AMD setup. However, when the fans get involved, they whistle, which can be a bit confusing. Battery life is excellent, easily giving me 8-11 hours of normal internet use, which is 40% more than my MacBook Pro, which does exactly the same thing at comparable brightness. 9.) An SSD is nothing special. Yes, while any SSD is faster than a regular SSD, it's on the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to NVMe performance. Overall, I really like the Surface Laptop 4, but it's not hard to see where Microsoft can make some big improvements and solidify the Surface lineup as Windows 10 systems you can buy. 4 out of 5. Decent alternative to high-end laptops, but not quite at the top yet.