Microsoft’s new laptop is a great Windows machine for everyday tasks, but its AI features leave much to be desired.
Great performance for everyday tasks. Bigger and brighter display. Thinner bezels. Haptic touchpad. 1080p webcam. Up to 120-Hz refresh rate. Good battery life. Support for up to three 4K monitors.has been directionless over the past few years. Rather than revolutionizing these Windows PCs with new and interesting designs, radically faster processors, or intuitive features, the company has been refreshing Surface hardware with minor spec bumps year over year..
Another noteworthy upgrade is the new haptic touchpad. You can customize the feedback via settings depending on how intense you prefer the clickiness. If you prefer none at all, you can turn it off completely. I kept the haptic feedback at the highest intensity while testing, and clickingMoving on to port selection, the Surface Laptop comes equipped with two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports , a USB-A port, a 3.5-mm headphone jack, and a Surface Connect port to recharge it.
Microsoft swapped Intel for Qualcomm, which means the entire CPU architecture is different—instead of x86, it's ARM. Developers have to optimize their apps to run natively on ARM, something we saw when Apple made the transition from Intel's x86 processors to its custom ARM Apple silicon with thethat allows Intel-optimized apps to run on ARM-based laptops if a native ARM version isn't available. Popular apps and services should be fine, but some third-party apps may run into issues.
With Windows Studio Effects, a majority of the features, like background blur effects and Creative Filters, worked well. Eye Contact, however, did not. The feature is supposed to make it seem like you're making direct eye contact on a video call even if you're staring at the screen instead of the camera. When I had it turned on in a meeting, one of my editors pointed out that it wasn't working and instead made my pupils look weird.CoCreator was a bit wonky as well.
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