The bottom of the display is attached using magnets and Microsoft clearly chose magnets that could also be used in a junkyard to pick up scrap metal – they are quite strong.

By pressing firmly at the top of the screen, the bottom pivots towards you almost violently. For the SLS, this means the display can be pulled forward and turn into a Surface Pro-like device or lay flat like a tablet. Much like the Book 3, the party trick for this device is with a hinge that expands the functionality of the laptop. But with TB4 now being included on this (and on the Surface Pro 8), this opens the door to a much better experience with peripherals, especially docks and external GPUs. The ports are mostly heading in the right direction, with a pair of Thunderbolt ports, headphone jack, and Surface Connect, the only thing missing is an SD slot. Sure, this device can be outfitted quite extensively with an Intel i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, Nvidia A2000 (or RTX 3050ti), up to 2TB of storage which should be enough horsepower to run most graphic-intensive applications and highlights that this is a portable workstation, not a minimalist travel companion (take a look at the Surface Pro 8 if that’s what you are looking for). With a device like the SLS (Surface Laptop Studio), raw specs don’t tell the entire story. You get the DNA to create the Surface Laptop Studio which I have been using for a few days – these are the initial impressions but a longer-term review is on the agenda.

So what happens when you take a Surface Studio, a Surface Laptop, and a Surface Pro and put them in a blender. What Microsoft announced last month is the Surface Laptop Studio, an evolution of the mindset of what the high-water mark can be for Surface. You could look at this through the lens that Surface Book was a failure but I don’t think that is appropriate. It was a laptop, a tablet, a do-all, be-all device that the company hoped would set the brand apart as being ambitious but also establish that it was able to execute complicated designs.Īfter three revisions, the company is back with a new flagship but this time around, they are attempting to build a better mousetrap, rather than force a design into existence. Several years ago, Microsoft took to the stage in New York City and unveiled the Surface Book, a device that was the pinnacle of Surface.

Surface laptop studio