The Surface family has always been attractive products for technology fans. Microsoft tried to set a benchmark for premium Windows ultrabooks with the launch of the Surface Laptop last year, but after six years, the device still hasn’t found a place in this diverse market. Now the fifth generation of this laptop, the Surface Laptop 5, has entered the market to compete with the MacBook Air M2 and the beautiful ultrabooks on the market, but will it succeed? Stay with Digiato in the rest of this article.
Microsoft and Apple are two super companies in the world of technology. Apple with a market value of about 2.4 trillion dollars has been at the top of the table for a long time, and Microsoft has a market value of about 1.95 trillion dollars. Therefore, the two giants of the technology world are direct competitors of each other, but in terms of the performance of their hardware products, they are very different from each other. In 2022, Apple earned about 40 billion dollars from the sale of the Mac family, but Microsoft’s income from the entire Surface ecosystem reached about 7 billion dollars last year. This shows that the market is not happy with Surface products and Surface Laptop is one of the reasons for this situation.
Surface Laptop 5 has been released with the same repeated design of the previous four generations, and the only noticeable change is the use of the 12th generation Intel processor. In this way, we can expect that this device will be much stronger than the previous generation in terms of hardware. The basic price of Surface Laptop 5 with the 12th generation Intel Core i5 processor from the U series is around 1000 dollars in the world market, but in our country it is sold at an exorbitant price of 70 million tomans. We have the 8.512 GB model of this device for review, which costs around $1,300 in the global market.
Video review of Microsoft Surface Laptop 5
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List of technical specifications of Surface Laptop 5
- 13.5-inch PixelSense display with a resolution of 2256 x 1504 pixels and a 60 Hz refresh rate
- 12th generation Intel Core i5-1235U processor
- Integrated graphics processor Intel Iris Xe
- 512 GB internal memory of PCIe type
- 8 GB LPDDR5X RAM memory
- 47.7 watt hour battery
- 65 watt adapter
- Weight about 1.3 kg
- The price of the basic model is about 70 million tomans
Yasin Ryan’s store provided Surface Laptop 5 to Digiato for review. Yasin Ryan is one of the most reliable online stores that has been selling Microsoft and Surface family products for more than 9 years. To buy all kinds of Microsoft products, you can go to Yasin Rayan online store See.
Design and build quality
Surface Laptop 5 is still one of the most beautiful laptops on the market, but in this respect it is no different from previous generations. This laptop, with its all-metal body and minimal and attractive design, attracts everyone’s attention, and it is unlikely that anyone will have a problem with this design. The only thing that can question the beauty of this device in 2023 is the relatively thick border around the display. With all the beauty of the Surface Laptop 5, Microsoft could have changed the design of this device a little to be able to compete with other beautiful products on the market.
Surface Laptop 5 is available in 13.5 and 15 inch models and in four colors: black, silver, gray and rose gold. We had this device in silver color with Alcantara leather interior. This velvet cover has its own fans and is only available in this color. The other colors come with a metal interior and are a better choice in my opinion. Alcantara leather needs a lot of care and wears out after a few months.
The back panel of the Surface Laptop 5 only has the shiny and mirrored Microsoft logo. The display hinge is also very soft and smooth, but once fixed, it resists vibration well. The weight of Surface Laptop 5 is only 1.3 kg and you can easily carry this device with you all the time. However, note that more modern, more beautiful and lighter ultrabooks than this device are also present in the market.
Keyboard and touchpad
Surface Laptop 5 is equipped with a standard keyboard that brings a dual experience. The keys of the keyboard have a suitable distance and relatively large dimensions, and you can easily find them. So even from the very first moment you can type with this keyboard without mistakes. The surface of the keys has a slight depression so that the fingers can be placed on them well.
Surface Laptop 5 keyboard keys have very good feedback and you experience an interesting clicking sensation under your fingers. However, the movement distance of the keys is relatively small and this issue can be a bit annoying for long-term typing. Also, the surface under the keyboard is a little soft and sinks in with a little pressure. The white backlight of the keyboard is also very dim and can only be seen in a completely dark environment.
The touchpad of this laptop has relatively large dimensions and gives you a pleasant experience due to its polished and frictionless surface. This touchpad also supports multi-touch gestures and can completely replace the mouse for general use.
Communication ports
Windows laptops usually have a large number of communication ports with a high variety, but the Surface Laptop 5, like other premium ultrabooks, suffers from a lack of ports. You can see the list of ports used in this laptop below:
- One USB Type C port with Thunderbolt 4 support
- One USB 3.1 type A port
- Dedicated Microsoft Surface Connect port
- 3.5 mm headphone jack
Interestingly, support for Thunderbolt 4 technology comes to Surface Laptop for the first time, and the previous generation Surface Laptop 4 did not benefit from this feature. In terms of wireless communication, we also see support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. It is clear that the number of communication ports of this device is low even for general use and you have to turn to wireless peripherals. The installation of HDMI image output could have reduced the severity of the crisis a little.
Display
Surface Laptop 5 comes in two models with 13.5-inch and 15-inch screens, and we have the smaller model. This 13.5-inch display uses an IPS panel with PixelSense technology and a resolution of 2256 x 1504 pixels, which brings a density of about 201 pixels per inch. Therefore, in terms of image quality, we are facing one of the best screens in the world of Windows laptops.
This display depicts colors with good richness and appropriate contrast and has very high color accuracy. If you choose the sRGB color mode from the Windows display settings menu, you will get the most accurate colors, but if you like more vivid and saturated colors, the Enhanced mode will be a better choice. The maximum brightness of the device’s display reaches about 400 nits, which is sufficient for use in most environments, but in open and bright spaces, you will also see the reflection of the environment on the display due to the glossy coating of the display.
Of course, with all these interpretations, there are other ultrabooks with better displays on the market. For comparison, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro has been introduced with a 14-inch dynamic AMOLED display with 120 Hz and 3K resolution. Also, other ultrabooks with 4K screens and brightness above 500 nits can be seen in the market. Therefore, in terms of display, Surface Laptop 5 does not have the ability to compete with other products of the same category.
The Surface Laptop 5 touch screen also supports the Surface Pen, but you have to spend a significant amount of money to buy it. On the other hand, using a touch screen and design in this form factor is a very difficult task and it can even be said that it is not very useful.
Hardware performance
The Redmonds offer their latest Surface Laptop with two processors: one model with a Core i5-1235U processor and another with a Core i7-1255U, which are the latest Intel chips and have much more power than the previous generation. We had the model equipped with a Core i5 processor with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal memory in Digiato. Among the specifications of this processor, it can be mentioned that it has 10 physical cores (2 powerful cores and 8 low-consumption cores) with a maximum frequency of 4.4 GHz and integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics processor.
As you know, Intel’s 12th generation processors are much more powerful than the 11th generation, and the difference in models of the same class reaches more than 40%. Even the 12th generation Intel Core i5 processor shows much better performance compared to the previous generation Core i7 processor. However, the U series processors are designed for general use only and are not very efficient for professional tasks such as heavy video editing.
On the other hand, the processor used in Surface Laptop 5 is the same as the same processor in dozens of economic Windows laptops. So you can get the same level of hardware performance on a 25-30 million tomans laptop. The table below shows the performance comparison of Surface Laptop 5 and Acer Aspire 5 model 2022 in the R23 chest test.
| device name | Chest R23 single core |
Chest R23 multi-core |
| Surface Laptop 5 (Core i5-1235U / 8GB RAM) |
1588 | 7863 |
| Acer Aspire 5 (Core i5-1235U / 8GB RAM) |
1624 | 8306 |
As you can see, Acer Aspire 5 economic laptop with the same processor has better hardware performance. On the other hand, you can upgrade the RAM and internal memory capacity of most Windows laptops at a much lower cost, but choosing higher Surface Laptop 5 models will cost you a lot. To compare, the basic model of this laptop costs about $1,000, but the 8.512 GB model is $300 more expensive, and the price for the 512.16 GB model is $1,500.
Another strange decision by Microsoft in the new generation of Surface Laptop is to be limited to Intel processors, while for Surface Laptop 4 you had the option of choosing AMD processors.
The speakers used in the Surface Laptop 5 are also placed under the keyboard and do not have a specific sound output. This is why you cannot use the laptop to listen to music or podcasts by closing the screen. The overall quality of the speakers is very good in the volume range of 40-60%, but as the volume increases, the small frequencies are greatly amplified and the overall sound quality decreases noticeably. So don’t expect MacBook Pro sound from Surface Laptop 5.
Battery and charging
The energy required by the new Surface Laptop is supplied by a 47.7 watt-hour battery, which is no different from the previous generation and is less compared to competitors. For example, the MSI Summit E13 laptop with smaller dimensions uses a 65 watt-hour battery. However, due to receiving the Intel Evo certificate, you can count on good charging of this laptop.
According to the tests conducted in Digiato, the Surface Laptop 5 was able to finish the PCMark battery test with a result of about 9 hours, which is considered a very good figure. According to the result of this test and the experience of using this device, you can use this device for at least a full day without needing a charger.
Conclusion
Surface Laptop 5 is made for general use such as browsing the web, watching videos, office work, editing photos, programming and editing simple videos, and with its minimal design and high build quality, it meets the needs of general users. However, when we talk about the base price of 70 million tomans, the situation changes.
If we look at Surface Laptop 5 from the perspective of hardware efficiency and overall performance, this beautiful device is no different from economical and cheap products in the market. For example, you can buy Acer Aspire 5 or Lenovo IdeaPad 3 or the new Asus Vivobook with 12th generation Intel processors and get the same level of performance. Upgrading the capacity of RAM memory and internal memory of these products is much cheaper.
If we look at Surface Laptop 5 from the point of view of beauty and uniqueness, Microsoft’s new ultrabook has no appearance difference from previous generations. So you can buy a Surface Laptop 4 or even a Surface Laptop 3 for much less and be sure that no one but you will notice the difference. Even the MacBook Air M2 is much cheaper, but it is a special device to have on your desk.
Finally, it can be said that Microsoft’s hardware products, especially Surface Laptop 5, cannot reach the position of Apple’s hardware products and MacBooks. Apple offers a unique combination of hardware and software to buyers of its products that cannot be found anywhere else, but you have many options in the Windows ecosystem and Intel processors, which in many cases provide a better experience than the Surface Laptop 5 at a much lower cost. provided to you.
