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Microsoft has redesigned its Surface Laptop from the ground up to take on the competition the latest MacBook Air, powered by Apple’s specially designed M3 chipset launched in March. According to Microsoft it is the new Surface laptop offers improved performance for a cheaper price tag.
During the announcement, Microsoft executives compared the new Surface Laptop – one of many new Copilot+ PCs that unlock exclusive features within Windows 11 — directly to the MacBook Air. Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi said the Surface Laptop offers a 58% speed improvement over the 15-inch MacBook Air for sustained multithread performance.
Battery life has also improved; the Microsoft Executive Vice President claims the 15-inch Surface Laptop can deliver 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 a 13.8 or 15-inch screen. These new laptops can be configured with up to 1TB of SSD storage and 32GB of RAM. Microsoft offers a choice of four colors: Platinum, Black, Dune and Sapphire
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“You get the most powerful PC ever,” Yusuf Mehdi told The Verge during a briefing for the new devices, held at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters in Seattle. “It will outperform any other device in sustained performance by more than 50%, including a MacBook Air with an M3 processor.”
Of course, we’ll have to take a look at these supercharged new Surface laptops for ourselves to check Microsoft’s numbers, but it’s an encouraging sign that Windows 11 PCs Finally We’ve caught up in the processing power and efficiency of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models since switching from Intel chips in 2020.
Like Apple, which now relies solely on its own custom-designed M-series processors based on the ARM architecture widely used in smartphone and tablet chipsets over the past decade, Microsoft has turned away from the heavyweight Intel in the industry to enable these dramatic power gains. and efficiency.
Surface Laptop is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24UltraAnd OnePlus 12.
This chipset features a dedicated NPU, 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 machine and jump back in time with one click. Everything is searchable because AI has searched the images and text on the device MICROSOFT PRESS OFFICE
Microsoft will unlock a slew 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 will be branded 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 adjustments; the team within Microsoft has taken the opportunity to also renew the hardware.
The new Surface Laptop features a larger 13.8-inch display without significantly expanding the notebook’s overall footprint. To do this, Microsoft 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,” said Pete Kyriacou, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Devices in a blog post about the new design.
The touchscreen display has a refresh rate of 120 Hz, HDR technology, Dolby Vision IQ and Adaptive Color that automatically adjusts the white balance to match your environment.
Compared to an earlier model, Surface Laptop 5, Microsoft says the updated notebook offers an 86% performance increase. It can also power three external 4K monitors for the first time.
As mentioned above, the Surface Laptop is equipped with the longest battery life of each 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. When it Finally When it’s time to top up the battery, you can charge it with the magnetic Surface Connector, included in the box. Surface Laptop supports 65W fast charging.
Microsoft has equipped its laptop with blazing-fast Wi-Fi 7, although you’ll need to upgrade to a new Wi-Fi router to take advantage of the improved stability and speed this new standard offers.
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 handled on the device, so you don’t have to worry about internet speed affecting your appearance during a video call. Microsoft says it has been working on “AI-enhanced sound” with its new omnisonic speakers that are Dolby Atmos certified.
The housing is made with a minimum of 67.2% recycled material, including 100% recycled aluminum alloy. Microsoft offers the Surface Laptop in four new colors: Platinum, Black, Dune and Sapphire.
Prices start from £1,049 for the 13.8-inch variant of the Surface Laptop, with a maximum of £2,049 for a model with a 1TB SSD, 32GB of RAM and the beefier Snapdragon X Elite chipset.
If you prefer to receive the 15-inch Surface Laptop model prices start from £1,349 And tops out at £2,149 for the same specs as the flagship 13.8-inch model.
Certain configurations of the Surface Laptop are already marked as “Out of Stock” in the Microsoft Storedespite the fact that the first Copilot+ PCs are not expected until June 18, 2024 who pre-orders will be among the first to receive the all-new laptop models.
For comparison: the latest generation MacBook Air – equipped with a specially designed M3 system-on-a-chip and a choice of a screen size of 13.6 or 15 inches – starts from £1,099 for 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of SSD storage and a 13.6-inch screen. The 15 inch model starts from £1,299.