Microsoft's Surface Laptop 13 almost beat the MacBook Air. Here's what it missed
Table of Contents
Table of Contents A barely missed display edge The bad storage situation Limits itself to only the Snapdragon silicon Loses the surface design identity
Microsoft is turning a new chapter for the Surface hardware, one where it competes against the best of Apple across different form factors. The latest from the company is a MacBook Air-wannabe laptop (down to the looks) and a tablet that borrows from the iPad formula.
The new 13-inch Surface Laptop and the 12-inch Surface Pro tablet are curious additions to Microsoft's lineup. The most perplexing part? Microsoft again went with Qualcomm (and Windows on Arm) instead of picking Intel and AMD, both of which now offer silicon ready for Copilot+ machines.
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An exception can be made for the tablet, but the new Surface Laptop is gunning straight for the MacBook Air's crown. And it's got some substance, too. It's the thinnest and lightest Surface Laptop Microsoft has made to date, and it even eclipses Apple's competing laptop with a better port situation and asking price.
Yet, despite all the on-paper finesse, it falls barely short of emerging as the better option, despite having the price advantage on its side. I quite like the package, but I wish Microsoft had gone the extra mile and given its latest a definitive edge on a few crucial parameters.
A barely missed display edge
The MacBook Air's panel gets the job done without any major red flags. With some workarounds, you can even get past the controversial notch. But it's not the best out there, neither qualitatively nor quantitatively.
The likes of Asus offer an OLED panel for less, and you can find a panel with a higher refresh rate for a lower ask. Unfortunately, the new Surface Laptop failed to surpass its Apple rival at either metric by going for a 60Hz LCD screen.
It's pretty surprising to witness, because the 13.8-inch variant offers a faster 120Hz screen with a more resilient glass layer on top, HDR support, and automatic color management.
It's not a bad panel, if my own personal experience with the 15-inch Surface Laptop is anything to go by, but there's nothing standout either. If only the new 13-incher could go with a higher refresh rate, or OLED-type panel, it would've instantly scored a meaningful leg-up over the MacBook Air.
The bad storage situation
Apple continues to get flak for its stingy storage situation, and rightfully so. If you're paying a thousand dollars for a laptop, you deserve more than a paltry 256GB of storage. The status quo hasn't changed all the way into 2025 for Apple.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is not doing anything different either. I was hoping that the company would finally make a course correction with its next-gen hardware, but that didn't happen aboard the new 13-inch Surface Laptop.
Another issue is the storage type. If you pick the 256B model, you get an SSD storage, but the 512GB variant serves a UFS storage module. It's not user-replaceable and will require a visit to a service center, if the need arises.
I have learned the storage lesson the hard way, and would never make the mistake again. By picking a 256GB laptop, it is almost a certainty that within a year, or two, you will need an external storage drive.
Unless your work is heavily cloud-based, you shouldn't go below 512GB if you intend to use a laptop in the long run. That's a holy rule, more so in 2025 than ever, due to the space taken by AI modules required for local processing of tool such as Copilot or Apple Intelligence.
Limits itself to only the Snapdragon silicon
My experience with Copilot laptops — and Windows on Arm machines, in general — has been fairly smooth. But I fall in the lucky class of users where app compatibility is not an issue, and the raw emulation hit on performance doesn't take a toll on my workflow.
There are tangible benefits to picking up an Arm chip. They are definitely more efficient, and the core reason behind the stunning battery life of laptops. Their single-core performance even leaves the likes of Apple's M4 silicon behind on certain benchmarks.
But limiting users to the Arm experience is not the most thoughtful approach, especially for creative professionals who seek the full x86 ecosystem of apps. Moreover, Intel and AMD are now both making chips that meet the baseline NPU performance criteria for Copilot PCs, ultimately offering a wider diversity for users to pick from.
Games continue to be a prominent chink in the Windows-on-Arm armor, and so is the spotty situation with the availability of Arm64 drivers for peripherals such as printers. The status quo is not all doom and gloom, but it's not universally smooth either.
Loses the surface design identity
Microsoft may not have managed to send shockwaves in the laptop market with its portfolio, but the Surface hardware has always been in a league of its own. The signature wedge-shaped look with sharp angles and flat sides gave them an unmistakable visual identity.
The Alcantara keyboard is one of my favorite laptop design elements of all time. It looked stunning and felt fantastic to touch, though it was also a repairability nightmare. Microsoft has experimented with an all-metal approach, too, but without tweaking the fundamental looks.
In its quest to seemingly one-up the MacBook Air, Microsoft has unfortunately ditched its signature design and nearly aped its Apple rival. The 13-inch Surface Laptop goes for an industrial look that embraces curved sides on the base, an all-metal chassis, and some familiar colors, just like the MacBook Air.
The latest from Microsoft doesn't look bad. Far from it, actually. A fresh design is always a welcome change, but not when it goes back to a tried-and-tested formula on the very object you aim to surpass. The only positive takeaway is that the proprietary magnetic connector is gone in favor of USB-C and an extra USB-A port.
Hopefully, Microsoft will manage to rectify a few of the internal missteps and give the next-gen model a tangible leg-up over its Apple rival, assuming it's on the company's roadmap.
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