Surface Laptop 13-inch review: a little less for a little less

Microsoft finally found its answer to the MacBook Air last year with the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop (formerly known as 7th Edition). That Snapdragon X-powered laptop matched the MacBook in build quality, battery life, and at least some aspects of performance – something Windows laptop makers have been trying to do for ages. The 13.8-inch Surface Laptop was brilliant, but Windows on Arm’s occasional app incompatibility stopped it just shy of being the default alternative to the MacBook Air.

Nearly a year later, Microsoft has new Snapdragon-based Surfaces that are a little smaller and a little cheaper. The $899.99 13-inch Surface Laptop is nearly as great as last year’s, despite some cost-cutting measures like a lower-resolution screen, a processor with two fewer cores, no face unlock, and no magnetic charging port. The hardware remains excellent, and Windows on Arm is even slightly better than last year. It’ll probably work fine for some of you, but not all.

The base 13-inch Surface Laptop, officially known as the Microsoft Surface 13-inch 1st Edition with Snapdragon (man alive, what a name), has an 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, 16GB …read more