People can hate Apple all they want, but you have to appreciate how effortlessly and smoothly Apple handled the transition from x86 to ARM with the M1 chips - even with 8GB RAM the M1 devices performed amazingly well. And let's not forget the battery efficiency and how fast developers adopted the transition (Rosetta 2 was great as well). All this was achieved 4 years ago! Wild stuff!
And that too at the prices they were launched. Had Windows OEM had similar devices they would charge double. If Apple is greedy, the rest are even worse
It's really crazy, people don't understand how wide a gap Apple has on the ARM transition. I really wanted these ARM/Copilot laptops to be good, it helps move developers to this architecture (good for everyone) but I'm not convinced they've made any real progress beyond M1 MacBook Air as an all-round everday laptop. I guess we'll have to wait
I also do both MacOS and Win 11. I had the Surface Laptop 3, and can't fault it. Got the Surface Laptop 5 not all that long ago, and now see the Surface Laptop 7. Must have missed the 6? Anyhoo, am really interested in the specs of the model 7. Wondering if it might be better to wait for the second iteration of this new platform?...Randy
Most apps will be updated soon (within 3/4 months) but you have to decide on what works when you’re deciding to buy or not. MS and Qualcomm are hitting hard and heavy with this and that’s why most OEMs are releasing so many products, so I expect the same effect as Apple’s M products. Nevertheless, if you use lots of 3rd party gadgets or not so well known apps, don’t expect miracles and I would go for AMD. I’ll avoid Intel and Asus.
Six was the latest and greatest for about nine months and only sold to businesses. I guess Microsoft knew we'd be more interested in this 7 than the 6. I really liked my Surface laptop 4 and still have it, so I'm not too worried about not being able to game on the 7 because I can game on that. I do like that this one gets 20 hours of battery life, though, so I can take it anywhere without worrying about plugging it in.
First time seeing your channel And what a beautiful production. Cooler's and tones and everything has harmony and it's beautiful. Every shot is soft and color matched Well down man. Well done.
Wouldn't it be unfair to compare this to the m3 air simply on the principle that most of what's useful to you in terms of apps aren't yet available on there/aren't optimised well enough
First direct mention of blender I saw here, very appreciated! Looks like you have been able to run cycles? Could you make a video note about blender specifically? Perhaps with external GPU? Thanks!
Personally, I'm glad they have a non-OLED option. Just not in the market for OLED on a laptop. I would much rather prefer a higher-end mini LED screen over OLED I also wish they had added a USBC port on the other side. Always nice to have a port on both sides. Really hope devs get onboard and hope Microsoft proactively goes out to all the top devs and help them. I use a Mac M1 max and a Dell XPS x86 and seriously, over x86 on laptops Id buy one just to add to the overall sales numbers that will hopefully give devs a kick up the behind.
honestly completely agree with you.. not all oleds are the same but this would definitely benefit from either a usb type a or type c on the other side along with the connect port
Looks like an excellent premium Chromebook. With Google forsaking premium ChromeOS devices, these will be great alternatives. The so-so GPU means gaming is not a selling factor and the relative poor performance per watt for intensive workflows gives it no advantage over cheaper current AMD/Intel machines, ignoring the upcoming cycle of M4, AMD and Intel. My take, as I think AI is marketing spiel at the moment, is wait 2-3 months for the next-gen rivals and then decide whether the Snapdragon chips are worth the incompatibility issues.
@@bradavon nothing wrong with being a chromebook. And Ultrabooks are just one step up from Chromebooks anyway. The lack of a good GPU seriously inhibits the effectiveness of x-elite devices to be more than upcoming AMD and Intel ultrabooks. Rumours is AMD iGPU will be 2X faster at the same wattage as x-elite.
Really liked the detailed info - Just a small request - are the channels reuploading videos to get more clicks ? and changing subject - How is this related to growing pains in subject ? Have seen this trend in many channels
thanks but if you can't figure out what's going on with your battery after a week of use then you might want to get your money back and try something else....
Your experience has been a lot different than mine, but then you are using those high-powered applications. I'm getting 20 hours or more battery life on the exact same model you have. Battery life decreases by 1% every 15 minutes or so while using the computer.
I have to correct one comment you made. Working with Adobe LightRoom ARM version there are some issues. One of them being AI Denoise runs 20X slower then current Intel / Mac Silicon version also there are some missing RAW files support on the ARM version. For now I am sending back my new Surface Laptop 7 until Adobe releases new version of the ARM based LR
Hi Kyle, many of these new Arm/Snapdragon chip based laptops are all being compared to the Apple Air…..no one so far has done any comparisons to the Macbook M3 Pro’s? Any chance you can arrange a Mac M3 pro comparison? Great review by the way, Thank you!
Im getting my SL7 x elite 13.8 on Saturday feel free to ask questions im just a student who wants long batterylife for studying and no compact windows laptop ever did that for me let see how this one goes.
I am not a pc nerd and starting to get into it but I am already annoyed by all the details that are not self explanatory. What the hell does copilot even mean. How would I know what the difference to the laptop 5 is??
Zenbook 14 with the 155H is way better than this and way less cost. ARM has a ceiling for x86 applications, so unless recompiled just for ARM, the ceiling is pretty low.
Live caption is in all windows 11 builds, and runs on old non-AI intel CPU's. It's not demanding at all and shouldnt be included in the copilot feature set when its years old by now.
4 hours of battery life is exactly what I expected from a new arm based surface. My m1 MacBook pro also had 4hours of actual usage battery life, the same as my phones( arm chips). The advantage of arm chips are the connectivity when you are away from your laptop. In fact, they are good in sleep mode, consuming much less battery and they are still connected to internet. They are not battery champions if you are gaming or surfing internet.
I feel like many devices nowadays have similar problems or gives similar feeling when using. Bloatware, forced "features", constant updates all with very high prices. I am looking for a new device for work and I don't even know what to get now. Cause all I'm seeing are ARM devices which doesn't seems to have many good reviews.
No USB and HDMI ports, less and unexpandable RAM and ROM, Fan based low performance, and less battery capacity in Snapdragon processor-based laptops but they have whopping prices, it sucks.
This processor isnt really flagship, it cost way less to manufacture than m3-m4 or even strix/hawk point from amd. The only reason it isnt a good alternative is cause sellers are trying to push Premium prices on a clearly entry level ship with the AI/ARM promisse At that price strix lunar and m4 will just obliterate this chip
X-Elite is currently Qualcomm's flagship ARM SoC for portable devices. They don't have an equivalent to the Max and Ultra M3 variants Arguably, they have an equivalent to the M3 Pro chip on core count (The X-Elite), but they do their marketing comparisons punching down on a base spec M3 chip in a fan-less Air chassis There's the Snapdragon X-plus base spec tier 10 core SoC no-one is reviewing or comparing to the base M3 (I wonder why, lol), and the flagship 12 core X-Elite tier Note that just because their SoC is being sold in cheaper products doesn't necessarily mean it's considerably cheaper to manufacture
I'd an AI that can optimize your software vis-a-vis to your hardware on your system. i mean would it not be great if AI can make or optized your hardware drivers.
When your review begins with talking about what colors the laptop comes in and whether or not it is a fingerprint magnet It’s hard to take your review seriously.
6:47 I knew this....I have no regrets to move my creative work to the Apple ecosystem and won't certainly come back to Microsoft...my M2 Macbook Air is the best move I've made when ot comes to power and performancd.
Software experience on Windows is so terrible with the forced updates, bugs and crashes that it's terrible to use natively on x86, and now with emulation it's only going to be a nightmare. Apple tax it is!
Throwing that much money at a laptop in hope of things eventually getting better doesn’t make sense. Should always consider what the product can do at the moment you buy it. If you are not an experimental user, MacBook Air M3 will be the more solid choice. MacOS ChatGPT native app is also coming/ should be available for premium users already.
Thanks for the review and the quality footage. Although for me personally it seemed that there was a bit of disconnect between the positivity of the introduction, and what was mentioned during the video, about the so-so display, and the compatibility/performance problems experienced. But what was shocking for me is the price difference between the 16GB and 32GB model at 5:54... 360 dollars for an additional 16GB feels incredibly unfair and extortionist, even more so than what Apple does. The actual cost of the +16GB RAM must be around 30 or 40 dollars, considering that you can buy a full 32GB DDR5 RAM kit for around 100 euros. I was really hoping that we're already past this practice on the PC market, since recently I've seen quite fair pricing from e.g. Lenovo, so I'm disappointed that Microsoft is still doing that. Also, I personally think it's problematic that most of these devices are sold with 16GB RAM, including the almost 1800 dollar Galaxy Book. Even on Mac users are increasingly arguing that 16GB should be the base, and on Windows the memory consumption is considered higher. Most people are probably buying these laptops for 3-4 years of productivity use, and I can't see it guaranteed that they won't run into issues with 16GB under Windows. I personally absolutely don't want to buy a laptop in 2024 above 1200 dollars where I have to then worry about how many tabs I open in the browser if I have some productivity desktop apps opened too. Especially as a software engineer who might want to run some docker containers as well.
Ah. Saw the title. Then saw all of your apple videos. Not surprising. Of course there's some growing pains. But it's 90% there for most people and a couple months away of getting most apps updated. The title should read "an incredibly promising start" or "a very bright future"
So the takeaway from this appears to be that these snapdragon elite laptops are "okay" but there's some caveats with app compatibility, battery life is a bit better but not stunningly so and there's no real "killer app" with most of the AI features being either fluff (co-creator) or unrealised. It's disappointing that the copilot app launched by the dedicated copilot button is just a PWA with no access to local resources, rather than an on-device application. Coming soon I guess? Seems to be a solid 'wait for second gen devices' situation, as I'm not seeing anything that really differentiates them from x86/x64 Windows laptops. Well except working sleep, which tbh is enough of a killer feature! :)
@@cosmicreaverkassadin1143 they can play quite a lot of games very well. Not the newest AAA games for sure, just like every other laptop with integrated graphics.
Window's went in first the ARM way before Apple ...i wonder why thry didn't optimise their apps for the last 7 years... Apple juat began the project 3 years ago and are now way ahead of software optimization... MS ISA joke
In 1-2 years the SW might catch up for ARM, glad I got a deal on Lenovo Yoga Slim 6 AMD version, runs windows and Linux, no problems with docker containers, Oled full HD display so no need for scaling and plenty of power for both CPU and GPU!
Can you install Linux on it? Windows is horrible now and makes me want to go back to vista. 11 make it feel like I'm borrowing a computer from Microsoft that I don't own.
There are Linux for ARM distributions out there. My guess is that there will probably be driver compatibility issues and perhaps compromises on battery life. Virtualization or emulation would probably be a better call on this machine. You may still suffer battery life issues due to the translation layer, but at least then you can return to Windows pretty easily.
Microsoft has been making arm chips for a while. We are currently on the SQ3 chip. It was crap. It looks like we have a win with this new Snapdragon X Elite chip. But honestly Microsoft had years to have better support for arm than this. Apple warped the industry when the M1 chip came out. The M1 was so good and so incredibly efficient that it could run full tilt on battery alone. It was wild. The new X Elite chip was designed by some of the former team that made the M1 chip. Essentially, Snapdragon took Apples formula and sold it to Microsoft.
@@honaker326 I know that, however this time the developers will optimise the apps efficiently for Windows. Before Windows was 10 years behind but now they are 5 years behind. Only reason people buy Windows laptop is ability for gaming .
This is the first early review I have seen where it states that battery really isn't that good. I thought Microsoft had finally figured that out. Hopefully, yours was an anomaly because decent battery life is something Windows PCs have needed since the beginning of time.
@@David-Zita Sure it's better than before but Snapdragon really hyped this release. People, including me, were expecting battery life to be on par with macbooks
I've long since solved the battery issue as I typically order a second power supply for my home. That way, my Surface Pro 9 is never without power. I only need battery power if I'm at the cafe or visiting my mum. The compatibility issue concerns me as that can be a real show stopper. Hopefully that improves over time.
Running benchmarks is exactly putting the SoC to run at the maximum power, so the battery will drain quickly just like the result in this video. Arm based SoCs are good at minimizing the power consumption for slight workloads like web browsing, office, messaging etc.: you won't keep your laptop running with the max power all the time, so you can get long battery life.
I've read on reddit many people claiming great 15-20hrs battery life. Windows has many settings like power plans, debloat windows etc that you can tweak for better battery life. But this review is claiming opposite. Maybe he tracked battery life of heavy testing and heavy softwares like blender? Or his model has some faults?
It’s because he has the x Elite version. The x Plus 13.8 is the chip / configuration that causes the battery life to surpass even the M3 Air on basic use cases.
@@AlphaWitcher Enjoy. I am receiving an M3 Air with 24/512. To others, I’d recommend the SL7 you’re getting, if they don’t mind Windows and perhaps some growing pains for the adoption of ARM by various software. Search up “alex ziskind ultimate battery test” if you’d like to see a comprehensive battery test.
I wonder what the response time on this display is? I have it set to 120Hz, and I realize its variable, but I am seeing a lot of ghosting on my mouse cursor and when I scroll down a black or gray screen.
Good video. However, I think your unit has a very bad battery in it. Andrew Marc David posted his video of the Surface Laptop 7, and he was able to get 20 hours and 9 minutes of battery life with the brightness set at 40% and the screen at 120hz. He also said he would have gotten more battery life if he set the refresh rate at 60hz. So, something is definitely wrong with your battery unfortunately. Again, good video and after some firmware updates please do a follow up video.
@@bradavon True. But 20 hours and 9 minutes at 120hz is unheard off. Raise the brightness to 65% and lower the refresh rate to 60hz and he probably would have gotten the same results. This unit here definitely has a defective battery.
Remember that this is local video playback time, which is still impressive on a charge. Every new installation of Windows needs a few hours to build up all the indexes and depending on the profile setting for windows can impact battery severely. Running X86 in Prism will gable up power quickly. So I think the values we see from TH-cam testers need to be taken into consideration, and I would just write them a note and asking what settings they had. 40% is low, but for video playback could be enough. On the other hand, these are not gaming laptops yet, but that is development I am waiting for before I spend my cash.
@@aelaan12 Remember brotha, in Andrew Marc David's review video on the Surface Laptop 7 he said he ran a 4k video at 120hz with brightness set at 40% and got 20 hours and 9 minutes. That is super incredible! We all know that 120hz and a native 4k anything will drain your battery super-fast. So, 4 hours on this Surface device sounds like a very bad battery.
Thanks for another honest review Kyle. I'm happy to see competition with the M series MacBooks, I think we all benefit from that, and I'm looking forward to your direct comparison with the MacBook Air.
Hey Kyle, Solid, quite complete video! Could you describe the experience with Fusion360 a bit, I saw it threw some warnings in the video but was it still usable? Thanks for your time
There might be some way to install the Beta. The Beta may just not be as dependable as they'd prefer for an official feature. On the other hand... Launching with a web app makes no sense.
@@Leto2ndAtreides aka people are paying microsoft to be alpha testers. This copilot nonsense will only be mainstream ready next year, but they rushed it out to inflate their stock prices before the AI boom dies.
10:32 That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard so far about the new surface in a review 😂😂😂 pretty everbody agrees on the fact that battery lofe is very good on these new arm devices
I can't get how Microsoft hasn't been able to get x86 emulation right for more than 5 years, while apple got it at first try, this is only looking worst, like once more we are trapped in x86, on the other hand AMD Ryzen is really really good, just got myself an hp 14 with OLED and 7840u and it's amazing, it's crazy fast, crazy good display, very good battery life, so I'm not in the need of the arm version, but still it is crazy how Microsoft can't get emulation right while apple did almost perfectly
I feel like the scenario for Microsoft and Apple is different though. Apple has full vertical integration -- the only devices a developer needs to develop for are Apple devices when it comes to MacOS. So when Apple said, "we're switching over..." the choice for devs was clear -- 100% of macs would move over. In contrast, Microsoft has to deal w/ the fact that many manufacturers will still build intel machines, intel machines will need to continue to be supported in a variety of contexts, etc., So for developers, it's not "switch your efforts over." It's "support 2 different architectures together." nevertheless, it's REALLY disappointing to see microsoft flub this launch.
I agree with you on this ..coz the other dynamic that MS has to deal with is the market for NVIDIA, Intel and AMD chips@@subversiveasset Maybe MS is buying things for AMD and Intel too build their competitive ARM chips before announcing full migration Mac seemingly doesn't care whatever happens to intel and AMD ... Though I guess they have a choice to build something for gamers
I can only comment on my own experience, but I do know other folks who have had similar issues, with this machine in particular, and also with the new Galaxy laptop. I think it likely largely depends on how you're using it, but I did find it interesting when I just left it open not doing anything that it was draining at roughly 11% an hour.
These “folks” have to say only the nice thinks because otherwise daddy manufacturers won’t give them their products and money. You gotta be no older than 12 to believe them.
seems largely dependent on the person and how they use it right now, it didn't for me personally, but I have heard a few people getting really great life with light use and in energy saving mode
@@KyleErickson it's frustrating that MS Windows has all of these different power/energy settings that vary between OEM's Reviewers changing to high performance to compare bench tests and then switching into energy saver mode to compare on battery life feels misleading as a consumer. Most people will simply use the device on the default setting The device should be smart enough to regulate this itself; what's the point of a neural engine for a web based AI and manual user intervention for functions as basic as performance and power regulation??? It can be annoying having limited customisation in Apple's OS but you have to admit the M3 laptops "just work" in this regard; they compete well in the benchmark tests *and* get good battery life without needless user intervention
I’ve got a 2020 surface 15 with the AMD processor, as a work laptop this has been flawless and gets used literally daily as a desk top, hard to justify a Mac vs a new surface 15 … plus the touch screen is a winner when showing clients documents / presentations. Not a coder or a gamer litrally gets used for emails/crm/ canva/ photo editing and it’s been fine runs windows 11 easy … probably getting a silver not the black this time
Comprehension has to be poor. Up to 80. It should be far less under normal conditions. Like 10W. You dont even need to run full power when it performs are peak under battery
Here's my review of the surface laptop 7 15: bought two units and neither could stay reliably connected to wifi. Returned both. Consider yourself warned. Could not stay connected for more than 5 minutes.
i was gonan upgrade to surface laptop 7 because of the battery claims if its like this id rather stick with my T480 i still get 8-9 hours of modrate use with its 70WH battery
With the Intel/AMD focus on efficiency cores in their newest gen coming out I wonder if this is really worth it? These aren’t keeping up with M3 Airs on performance or battery in real world use, so why switch at all?
Half of your video should be complaining about Adobe not Microsoft 🤦♂️
Adobe sucks including their customer service! Ugh
People can hate Apple all they want, but you have to appreciate how effortlessly and smoothly Apple handled the transition from x86 to ARM with the M1 chips - even with 8GB RAM the M1 devices performed amazingly well. And let's not forget the battery efficiency and how fast developers adopted the transition (Rosetta 2 was great as well). All this was achieved 4 years ago! Wild stuff!
Yeah this is the problems competition seems never get right, optimization
@@sandosimbolon6993lmfao, ARM has some serious beef with qualcomm because of licensing
And that too at the prices they were launched. Had Windows OEM had similar devices they would charge double. If Apple is greedy, the rest are even worse
The closed ecosystem helps with that, Microsoft have it harder.
It's really crazy, people don't understand how wide a gap Apple has on the ARM transition.
I really wanted these ARM/Copilot laptops to be good, it helps move developers to this architecture (good for everyone) but I'm not convinced they've made any real progress beyond M1 MacBook Air as an all-round everday laptop. I guess we'll have to wait
I ordered the Sapphire will arrive in couple days, but your video, made me regret that, I should've to get the Dune
I also do both MacOS and Win 11. I had the Surface Laptop 3, and can't fault it. Got the Surface Laptop 5 not all that long ago, and now see the Surface Laptop 7. Must have missed the 6? Anyhoo, am really interested in the specs of the model 7. Wondering if it might be better to wait for the second iteration of this new platform?...Randy
Most apps will be updated soon (within 3/4 months) but you have to decide on what works when you’re deciding to buy or not. MS and Qualcomm are hitting hard and heavy with this and that’s why most OEMs are releasing so many products, so I expect the same effect as Apple’s M products.
Nevertheless, if you use lots of 3rd party gadgets or not so well known apps, don’t expect miracles and I would go for AMD. I’ll avoid Intel and Asus.
Six was the latest and greatest for about nine months and only sold to businesses. I guess Microsoft knew we'd be more interested in this 7 than the 6.
I really liked my Surface laptop 4 and still have it, so I'm not too worried about not being able to game on the 7 because I can game on that. I do like that this one gets 20 hours of battery life, though, so I can take it anywhere without worrying about plugging it in.
@@ricarmigwhy on earth should I avoid Intel in favor of AMD?
@@talgy2671 let me see… better performance/watt; better GPU performance; better price; depending on the app… even better CPU performance.
First time seeing your channel
And what a beautiful production. Cooler's and tones and everything has harmony and it's beautiful.
Every shot is soft and color matched
Well down man. Well done.
Wouldn't it be unfair to compare this to the m3 air simply on the principle that most of what's useful to you in terms of apps aren't yet available on there/aren't optimised well enough
It’s not unfair, should compare the actual product, not hopes and dreams…
First direct mention of blender I saw here, very appreciated! Looks like you have been able to run cycles?
Could you make a video note about blender specifically? Perhaps with external GPU?
Thanks!
Personally, I'm glad they have a non-OLED option. Just not in the market for OLED on a laptop. I would much rather prefer a higher-end mini LED screen over OLED
I also wish they had added a USBC port on the other side. Always nice to have a port on both sides.
Really hope devs get onboard and hope Microsoft proactively goes out to all the top devs and help them. I use a Mac M1 max and a Dell XPS x86 and seriously, over x86 on laptops
Id buy one just to add to the overall sales numbers that will hopefully give devs a kick up the behind.
honestly completely agree with you.. not all oleds are the same but this would definitely benefit from either a usb type a or type c on the other side along with the connect port
Dune Color looks fantastic and the new trackpad is sensational.
Love to hear that you like the haptic trackpad!
Does anyone know if Dune is similar to Sandstone of the 3rd edition? I’d like to upgrade to the 7 but only if Dune is similar enough
Looks like an excellent premium Chromebook. With Google forsaking premium ChromeOS devices, these will be great alternatives. The so-so GPU means gaming is not a selling factor and the relative poor performance per watt for intensive workflows gives it no advantage over cheaper current AMD/Intel machines, ignoring the upcoming cycle of M4, AMD and Intel.
My take, as I think AI is marketing spiel at the moment, is wait 2-3 months for the next-gen rivals and then decide whether the Snapdragon chips are worth the incompatibility issues.
These are not Chromebooks. These are not Gaming laptops.
@@bradavon nothing wrong with being a chromebook. And Ultrabooks are just one step up from Chromebooks anyway. The lack of a good GPU seriously inhibits the effectiveness of x-elite devices to be more than upcoming AMD and Intel ultrabooks. Rumours is AMD iGPU will be 2X faster at the same wattage as x-elite.
artificial intelligence is just utter useless and not practical in day to day use. It is even banned in certain universities 😢
Really liked the detailed info - Just a small request - are the channels reuploading videos to get more clicks ? and changing subject - How is this related to growing pains in subject ? Have seen this trend in many channels
honestly, what we need is new battery technology. That's it. Replace our powerful x86 laptops with the new tech
thanks but if you can't figure out what's going on with your battery after a week of use then you might want to get your money back and try something else....
Your experience has been a lot different than mine, but then you are using those high-powered applications. I'm getting 20 hours or more battery life on the exact same model you have. Battery life decreases by 1% every 15 minutes or so while using the computer.
I have to correct one comment you made. Working with Adobe LightRoom ARM version there are some issues. One of them being AI Denoise runs 20X slower then current Intel / Mac Silicon version also there are some missing RAW files support on the ARM version. For now I am sending back my new Surface Laptop 7 until Adobe releases new version of the ARM based LR
Thanks for the honesty. I am thinking more consumers will do as you have done. Too many bugs with Snapdragon laptops right now. Maybe next year…
Hi Kyle, many of these new Arm/Snapdragon chip based laptops are all being compared to the Apple Air…..no one so far has done any comparisons to the Macbook M3 Pro’s? Any chance you can arrange a Mac M3 pro comparison? Great review by the way, Thank you!
I might be able to take a look provided I have time!
Im getting my SL7 x elite 13.8 on Saturday feel free to ask questions im just a student who wants long batterylife for studying and no compact windows laptop ever did that for me let see how this one goes.
How was the battery life since you got it?
I recommend getting the x Plus chip 13.8 instead for better battery life.
I am not a pc nerd and starting to get into it but I am already annoyed by all the details that are not self explanatory. What the hell does copilot even mean. How would I know what the difference to the laptop 5 is??
my copilot key just trigger the context menu. If I press Fn+copilot key it starts copilot web app.
Zenbook 14 with the 155H is way better than this and way less cost. ARM has a ceiling for x86 applications, so unless recompiled just for ARM, the ceiling is pretty low.
Good luck if you need support from Asus
@Lead_Foot Got from Best Buy with 2yr warranty that comes with tech membership.
So MS did M1 Macbook Air. Nice.
Live caption is in all windows 11 builds, and runs on old non-AI intel CPU's. It's not demanding at all and shouldnt be included in the copilot feature set when its years old by now.
4 hours of battery life is exactly what I expected from a new arm based surface. My m1 MacBook pro also had 4hours of actual usage battery life, the same as my phones( arm chips).
The advantage of arm chips are the connectivity when you are away from your laptop. In fact, they are good in sleep mode, consuming much less battery and they are still connected to internet. They are not battery champions if you are gaming or surfing internet.
Meaning 4hrs of battery life?
Ain't no way you getting the same battery performance as a 4 year old laptop
i get 8-10hours of internet surfing with my M1 MBP at full brightness
I feel like many devices nowadays have similar problems or gives similar feeling when using. Bloatware, forced "features", constant updates all with very high prices. I am looking for a new device for work and I don't even know what to get now. Cause all I'm seeing are ARM devices which doesn't seems to have many good reviews.
Snapdragon X and X86 are not buddies. ARM has to work hard and even harder for GPU related operations.
No USB and HDMI ports, less and unexpandable RAM and ROM, Fan based low performance, and less battery capacity in Snapdragon processor-based laptops but they have whopping prices, it sucks.
no stylus support, 😢
This processor isnt really flagship, it cost way less to manufacture than m3-m4 or even strix/hawk point from amd.
The only reason it isnt a good alternative is cause sellers are trying to push Premium prices on a clearly entry level ship with the AI/ARM promisse
At that price strix lunar and m4 will just obliterate this chip
X-Elite is currently Qualcomm's flagship ARM SoC for portable devices. They don't have an equivalent to the Max and Ultra M3 variants
Arguably, they have an equivalent to the M3 Pro chip on core count (The X-Elite), but they do their marketing comparisons punching down on a base spec M3 chip in a fan-less Air chassis
There's the Snapdragon X-plus base spec tier 10 core SoC no-one is reviewing or comparing to the base M3 (I wonder why, lol), and the flagship 12 core X-Elite tier
Note that just because their SoC is being sold in cheaper products doesn't necessarily mean it's considerably cheaper to manufacture
It is so funny that all of a sudden everyone is a video editor!
I'd an AI that can optimize your software vis-a-vis to your hardware on your system. i mean would it not be great if AI can make or optized your hardware drivers.
Your unit may be faulty, I had an old ued thinkpad, could last 5 hours with heavy work
"heavy work" watching yt doesn't count :P
What about stylus support?
sadly no... but were you really using it that much anyways?
great!
Hello
Advertising these to have great battery life and then not giving you an OLED panel is near criminal. Such a dumb move
When your review begins with talking about what colors the laptop comes in and whether or not it is a fingerprint magnet It’s hard to take your review seriously.
Cool
6:47 I knew this....I have no regrets to move my creative work to the Apple ecosystem and won't certainly come back to Microsoft...my M2 Macbook Air is the best move I've made when ot comes to power and performancd.
so basically it's a frigging prototype and might be ready in a couple of years.
Software experience on Windows is so terrible with the forced updates, bugs and crashes that it's terrible to use natively on x86, and now with emulation it's only going to be a nightmare. Apple tax it is!
We love to see it
when last did you use a windows laptop 😂😂, havent had a crash on my laptop in years you prolly had a cheap laptop
@@Rusty01 Facts! I can't recall the last crash and all updated run in the background these complaints sound like he read them on Reddit
Which sort of devices are you using that is always crashing and has bugs. You might have been using a $90 laptop
@@EverydayTechSJB fr
apple fanboi trashes new macbook competitor, more news at 9.
Throwing that much money at a laptop in hope of things eventually getting better doesn’t make sense. Should always consider what the product can do at the moment you buy it. If you are not an experimental user, MacBook Air M3 will be the more solid choice. MacOS ChatGPT native app is also coming/ should be available for premium users already.
Thanks for the review and the quality footage. Although for me personally it seemed that there was a bit of disconnect between the positivity of the introduction, and what was mentioned during the video, about the so-so display, and the compatibility/performance problems experienced. But what was shocking for me is the price difference between the 16GB and 32GB model at 5:54... 360 dollars for an additional 16GB feels incredibly unfair and extortionist, even more so than what Apple does. The actual cost of the +16GB RAM must be around 30 or 40 dollars, considering that you can buy a full 32GB DDR5 RAM kit for around 100 euros. I was really hoping that we're already past this practice on the PC market, since recently I've seen quite fair pricing from e.g. Lenovo, so I'm disappointed that Microsoft is still doing that.
Also, I personally think it's problematic that most of these devices are sold with 16GB RAM, including the almost 1800 dollar Galaxy Book. Even on Mac users are increasingly arguing that 16GB should be the base, and on Windows the memory consumption is considered higher. Most people are probably buying these laptops for 3-4 years of productivity use, and I can't see it guaranteed that they won't run into issues with 16GB under Windows. I personally absolutely don't want to buy a laptop in 2024 above 1200 dollars where I have to then worry about how many tabs I open in the browser if I have some productivity desktop apps opened too. Especially as a software engineer who might want to run some docker containers as well.
Ah. Saw the title. Then saw all of your apple videos. Not surprising. Of course there's some growing pains. But it's 90% there for most people and a couple months away of getting most apps updated. The title should read "an incredibly promising start" or "a very bright future"
Your indepth coverage of Surface Laptop 7 and how it works is one of a kind..Appreciate your work, it was awesome and very useful. Thanks... 👍
So the takeaway from this appears to be that these snapdragon elite laptops are "okay" but there's some caveats with app compatibility, battery life is a bit better but not stunningly so and there's no real "killer app" with most of the AI features being either fluff (co-creator) or unrealised. It's disappointing that the copilot app launched by the dedicated copilot button is just a PWA with no access to local resources, rather than an on-device application. Coming soon I guess?
Seems to be a solid 'wait for second gen devices' situation, as I'm not seeing anything that really differentiates them from x86/x64 Windows laptops. Well except working sleep, which tbh is enough of a killer feature! :)
Wow these laptops look amazing. Im excited.
I went to a retailer to see it in reality, and yes, the design/build quality is amazing. Particularly liked the smaller model
@@Workaholic42$2.1k snapdragon surface laptop vs $2.2k Asus Pro Art 16 with AMD AI 9 370HX & RTX 4070. Would recommend Asus over Surface every time!
trash tbh, they can't play games 😢
Im fine without gaming on mac. So I will be fine with windows laptop with snapdragon x elite @@cosmicreaverkassadin1143
@@cosmicreaverkassadin1143 they can play quite a lot of games very well. Not the newest AAA games for sure, just like every other laptop with integrated graphics.
Love the production quality of the video. it felt like an advertisement with an honest narration.
Window's went in first the ARM way before Apple ...i wonder why thry didn't optimise their apps for the last 7 years... Apple juat began the project 3 years ago and are now way ahead of software optimization... MS ISA joke
Strange on the battery front. Other reviews seem to rate it much higher, maybe in synthetic benchmarks though.
Very different to everything else I've seen. All reviews rate the battery life higher.
Yeah exactly. Everywhere on Reddit people claiming good battery life at least on laptop 7. Other brands may not have equivalent battery life.
The discrepancy may be the X Plus chip vs the X Elite. The former having better battery life. Or something is up with his unit.
Another video claim that the X plus is more efficient
Now I'm starting to get confuse with the different comments of TH-camrs about the efficiency
In 1-2 years the SW might catch up for ARM, glad I got a deal on Lenovo Yoga Slim 6 AMD version, runs windows and Linux, no problems with docker containers, Oled full HD display so no need for scaling and plenty of power for both CPU and GPU!
Likewise for Lenovo z16
So battery is shit, the snapdragon chip is the effeciency of chips 2 years ago.
As expected, kind of disappointing though could get better over time. Windows land will be messy for a time with ARM and x86 duking it out
3:02 man where did display go lol
Can you install Linux on it? Windows is horrible now and makes me want to go back to vista. 11 make it feel like I'm borrowing a computer from Microsoft that I don't own.
There are Linux for ARM distributions out there. My guess is that there will probably be driver compatibility issues and perhaps compromises on battery life. Virtualization or emulation would probably be a better call on this machine. You may still suffer battery life issues due to the translation layer, but at least then you can return to Windows pretty easily.
Looks like we have to wait a year or two for windows to be fully optimised for arm chips
Microsoft has been making arm chips for a while. We are currently on the SQ3 chip. It was crap. It looks like we have a win with this new Snapdragon X Elite chip. But honestly Microsoft had years to have better support for arm than this. Apple warped the industry when the M1 chip came out. The M1 was so good and so incredibly efficient that it could run full tilt on battery alone. It was wild. The new X Elite chip was designed by some of the former team that made the M1 chip. Essentially, Snapdragon took Apples formula and sold it to Microsoft.
@@honaker326 I know that, however this time the developers will optimise the apps efficiently for Windows. Before Windows was 10 years behind but now they are 5 years behind. Only reason people buy Windows laptop is ability for gaming .
It is quite dissapointing that the battery life is still the same. I was waiting for these chips to change Windows laptops forever.
How the heck, MS controller prevent their engineers integrating SSD with 1TB minimum? Who is going with 512GB today? This is ridiculous.
This is the first early review I have seen where it states that battery really isn't that good. I thought Microsoft had finally figured that out. Hopefully, yours was an anomaly because decent battery life is something Windows PCs have needed since the beginning of time.
It drops 10%/hr = 10hrs of usage, that's a good battery in my book
@@David-Zita Sure it's better than before but Snapdragon really hyped this release. People, including me, were expecting battery life to be on par with macbooks
@@Oryon44pay attention to actual battery tests on macbooks, it is better.
I've long since solved the battery issue as I typically order a second power supply for my home. That way, my Surface Pro 9 is never without power. I only need battery power if I'm at the cafe or visiting my mum. The compatibility issue concerns me as that can be a real show stopper. Hopefully that improves over time.
Running benchmarks is exactly putting the SoC to run at the maximum power, so the battery will drain quickly just like the result in this video.
Arm based SoCs are good at minimizing the power consumption for slight workloads like web browsing, office, messaging etc.: you won't keep your laptop running with the max power all the time, so you can get long battery life.
The battery life claims are interesting because several other reviews are in direct conflict with your assessment. Really frustrating as a consumer.
Thanks! Not buying this now. Also not buying the M3 Mac
I've read on reddit many people claiming great 15-20hrs battery life. Windows has many settings like power plans, debloat windows etc that you can tweak for better battery life. But this review is claiming opposite. Maybe he tracked battery life of heavy testing and heavy softwares like blender? Or his model has some faults?
It’s because he has the x Elite version. The x Plus 13.8 is the chip / configuration that causes the battery life to surpass even the M3 Air on basic use cases.
@@SomeSubhuman i think thats the model I'm going with. And 16/256 variant comes at $999
@@AlphaWitcher Enjoy. I am receiving an M3 Air with 24/512. To others, I’d recommend the SL7 you’re getting, if they don’t mind Windows and perhaps some growing pains for the adoption of ARM by various software. Search up “alex ziskind ultimate battery test” if you’d like to see a comprehensive battery test.
I wonder what the response time on this display is? I have it set to 120Hz, and I realize its variable, but I am seeing a lot of ghosting on my mouse cursor and when I scroll down a black or gray screen.
I can't expect that every software will be running without issues on new platform. I have zero issues for my software development
How would you review software development on surface 7? Is it good? Did you check how is it going on battery?
I just want drivers for printers, peripherals, and VPNs!
the first M series also have the same issues related to apps, takes time just like gaming.
Apple vs Microsoft is far different. M1 has been optimized fastly, but for Microsoft… I dont know …
Good video. However, I think your unit has a very bad battery in it. Andrew Marc David posted his video of the Surface Laptop 7, and he was able to get 20 hours and 9 minutes of battery life with the brightness set at 40% and the screen at 120hz. He also said he would have gotten more battery life if he set the refresh rate at 60hz. So, something is definitely wrong with your battery unfortunately. Again, good video and after some firmware updates please do a follow up video.
Less than 60% is never usable though but the 4 hours still seems strange.
@@bradavon True. But 20 hours and 9 minutes at 120hz is unheard off. Raise the brightness to 65% and lower the refresh rate to 60hz and he probably would have gotten the same results. This unit here definitely has a defective battery.
Remember that this is local video playback time, which is still impressive on a charge. Every new installation of Windows needs a few hours to build up all the indexes and depending on the profile setting for windows can impact battery severely. Running X86 in Prism will gable up power quickly. So I think the values we see from TH-cam testers need to be taken into consideration, and I would just write them a note and asking what settings they had. 40% is low, but for video playback could be enough. On the other hand, these are not gaming laptops yet, but that is development I am waiting for before I spend my cash.
@@williamcopeland2617We don’t know that. 4 hours may be the average with performance mode. & 20 hours is the exception.
@@aelaan12 Remember brotha, in Andrew Marc David's review video on the Surface Laptop 7 he said he ran a 4k video at 120hz with brightness set at 40% and got 20 hours and 9 minutes. That is super incredible! We all know that 120hz and a native 4k anything will drain your battery super-fast. So, 4 hours on this Surface device sounds like a very bad battery.
Thanks for another honest review Kyle. I'm happy to see competition with the M series MacBooks, I think we all benefit from that, and I'm looking forward to your direct comparison with the MacBook Air.
Hey Kyle,
Solid, quite complete video! Could you describe the experience with Fusion360 a bit, I saw it threw some warnings in the video but was it still usable? Thanks for your time
So as far as AI features, I can do more with my Copilot prelease than you can on the Copilot+ PC as well as everything else you can do?
There might be some way to install the Beta.
The Beta may just not be as dependable as they'd prefer for an official feature.
On the other hand... Launching with a web app makes no sense.
@@Leto2ndAtreides aka people are paying microsoft to be alpha testers. This copilot nonsense will only be mainstream ready next year, but they rushed it out to inflate their stock prices before the AI boom dies.
@@Leto2ndAtreides If you enroll in the insider program. Basically running a beta version of Windows 11.
10:32 That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard so far about the new surface in a review 😂😂😂 pretty everbody agrees on the fact that battery lofe is very good on these new arm devices
I love your artistic Thumbnails.
Keep up the good work Kylie
SL7 was compared with MBA and MBA isn't great a gaming. Nitpicking on steroids!
just from the first min i figured out its a iSheep channel, not wasting anymore time here
i am more interseted in intel lunar lake laptop
yup, me, too :)
I can't get how Microsoft hasn't been able to get x86 emulation right for more than 5 years, while apple got it at first try, this is only looking worst, like once more we are trapped in x86, on the other hand AMD Ryzen is really really good, just got myself an hp 14 with OLED and 7840u and it's amazing, it's crazy fast, crazy good display, very good battery life, so I'm not in the need of the arm version, but still it is crazy how Microsoft can't get emulation right while apple did almost perfectly
I feel like the scenario for Microsoft and Apple is different though. Apple has full vertical integration -- the only devices a developer needs to develop for are Apple devices when it comes to MacOS. So when Apple said, "we're switching over..." the choice for devs was clear -- 100% of macs would move over.
In contrast, Microsoft has to deal w/ the fact that many manufacturers will still build intel machines, intel machines will need to continue to be supported in a variety of contexts, etc., So for developers, it's not "switch your efforts over." It's "support 2 different architectures together."
nevertheless, it's REALLY disappointing to see microsoft flub this launch.
I agree with you on this ..coz the other dynamic that MS has to deal with is the market for NVIDIA, Intel and AMD chips@@subversiveasset
Maybe MS is buying things for AMD and Intel too build their competitive ARM chips before announcing full migration
Mac seemingly doesn't care whatever happens to intel and AMD ... Though I guess they have a choice to build something for gamers
how is the build quality and design just for comparison?
Looks just like MacBook - how original.
Many folks are reporting great battery life. You don't agree. Wish I knew the truth.
I can only comment on my own experience, but I do know other folks who have had similar issues, with this machine in particular, and also with the new Galaxy laptop. I think it likely largely depends on how you're using it, but I did find it interesting when I just left it open not doing anything that it was draining at roughly 11% an hour.
Wdym don’t agree, if that’s his experience, then that’s what he reports
These “folks” have to say only the nice thinks because otherwise daddy manufacturers won’t give them their products and money. You gotta be no older than 12 to believe them.
I got 19 hours easily.
@@KyleErickson 11% sounds great enough compares to 30% an hour on intel and 20% on ryzen that i've been getting
My oh my, Kyle is cute. I'll see myself out now.
love the oilers hat!!
It’s still a thick boi
So the battery not better
dissapointed
No it’s so much better lol
Best battery life of any laptop or surface pro I've owned.
As a STEM student, I just have to use a laptop with an Intel chip😂
Seems very good if you're not using it for video editing...which is most consumers
Or... Gaming, or coding. It's a 1.4k netlfix and excel machine kek.
@@someguy9175 coding looks fine
@someguy9175 yes gaming. Coding seems fine
Does the battery life claim hold up?
seems largely dependent on the person and how they use it right now, it didn't for me personally, but I have heard a few people getting really great life with light use and in energy saving mode
@@KyleErickson it's frustrating that MS Windows has all of these different power/energy settings that vary between OEM's
Reviewers changing to high performance to compare bench tests and then switching into energy saver mode to compare on battery life feels misleading as a consumer. Most people will simply use the device on the default setting
The device should be smart enough to regulate this itself; what's the point of a neural engine for a web based AI and manual user intervention for functions as basic as performance and power regulation???
It can be annoying having limited customisation in Apple's OS but you have to admit the M3 laptops "just work" in this regard; they compete well in the benchmark tests *and* get good battery life without needless user intervention
Watch the video before commenting 😉
@@scod3908 you are on point. Windows still is a sh*t show in that regard :/.
I’ve got a 2020 surface 15 with the AMD processor, as a work laptop this has been flawless and gets used literally daily as a desk top, hard to justify a Mac vs a new surface 15 … plus the touch screen is a winner when showing clients documents / presentations. Not a coder or a gamer litrally gets used for emails/crm/ canva/ photo editing and it’s been fine runs windows 11 easy … probably getting a silver not the black this time
i'm not sure about Qualcomm's claim, SD X Elite can consume power up to 80 watts, what can be expected for battery life?
Comprehension has to be poor.
Up to 80.
It should be far less under normal conditions.
Like 10W.
You dont even need to run full power when it performs are peak under battery
Battery is performing very good on my Surface Pro
Great battery life with my surface laptop 7. I can use it all day and maybe go down to 50%.
Here's my review of the surface laptop 7 15: bought two units and neither could stay reliably connected to wifi. Returned both. Consider yourself warned. Could not stay connected for more than 5 minutes.
i was gonan upgrade to surface laptop 7 because of the battery claims if its like this id rather stick with my T480 i still get 8-9 hours of modrate use with its 70WH battery
With the Intel/AMD focus on efficiency cores in their newest gen coming out I wonder if this is really worth it?
These aren’t keeping up with M3 Airs on performance or battery in real world use, so why switch at all?
It’s a step in the right direction. But with arm on windows I think it’s going to take years to have full compatibility.
Half of this video is repeating factual spec stuff. No in depth review at all. Unprofessional...
Well, it seems like we will need to wait a year for the 2nd gen laptops for this to be really good.
What this video has to do with "after 7 days"
Honestly another unboxing video
Apple Studio Display works on this? It’s almost thunderbolt, but it’s not, officially. 🤨🤔
I hate these companies are keep releasing half cooked products
I'd like to see how the surface laptop 7 runs minecraft bedrock
Wishlist: Thinkpad x1 carbon Gen 12 with haptic touchpad
3.8 TFLOPS? Nvidia 1660Ti has 5.4 TFLOPS
The problem with the Macs is that Office is 💩