Refreshing to see reviewers not just bang on about specs but what it's like to work on. I have a Surface 2 Go Core M3. I use it to write scripts for my radio show and write my blog. for that, and the fact I do that in a coffee shop, and not worry about it making a noise, battery life etc it's perfect for. this laptop would be perfect for that also. Most people who game have a dedicated PC for that, or a console. For office work, research, Watching RUclips or Prime and Video calling, these are perfect.
Yep I just needed something that I could open up Microsoft word and not have my computer freeze because it's using too much RAM. Kinda true story. It's a premium device that just doesn't have high end specs to keep the cost down but you still get the premium feel. My old tablet had 2GB ram and was struggling to run the full version of office. Never tried the tablet version but I upgraded to the lowest speced go 2 tablet and love it. Like you said if I want anything more powerful I can go home and use my gaming beast.
That is the reason I got myself a surface pro 7. I have my own rig with a 3070 . All I need for my laptop is to help me take notes and be lightweight and portable that is all. I had a 2013 MacBook Pro that I had for 2 years until it crapped on me.I paid to much money and it was bulky as hell. Never again
@@FAINTEN17 the surface pro line is physical larger than the go line so if you still want something smaller then there you have it. And it sounds like you don't care it's not as powerful.
I actually own the Surface Laptop GO 2 (8GB RAM - 128GB SSD Storage). Bought it for €549,- and I think it's amazing. Not a hardcore gamer or anything. I'm just an average user (internet and documents) that also likes to watch some videos and this laptop is more than fast enough. Really enjoy using it. The materials used for this laptop are so good. It feels and looks really premium.
As a student who bought the Surface Laptop Go 1, 4 months ago, the form factor and the overall experience is great. I managed to get the midspec model for $700 AUD ($500 US), and as such i dont think there are many laptops i couldve gotten for the price that are as nice to use for school as the Go 1. When i heard about the pricing for the Go 2 and the lack of changes there were, model to model, i think i got really lucky.
I got the laptop go last September and love it. The 1024p screen is fine, performance more than enough, built quality is fantastic, trackpad and keyboard are amazing, touch screen is useful. The 2 things that it lacks is backlit keyboard and only 5 hrs or so battary life. I am so disappointed that the laptop go 2 doesn't use 12 gen i5, just get the laptop go 1 for now, much better deal.
Graphics between the 11th and 12th gen are similar though, and compared to uhd graphics of the 10th gen chip, the Iris xe g7 (presumably 80EUs) is going to blowwww UHD graphics out of the water. 900p gaming on lighter titles would be pretty decent.
I got the surface go with $200 off the mid spec model. $499 was great for me. Very portable decent battery life. Nice top shell, looks very nice in sandstone.
The whole 'you cannot game' is a bit misleading.. I've been rocking a generation 1 surface go... And it is a retro gaming monster! Doom, quake, unreal tournament 2004.... It is the most portable gamefest I have ever owned. Yeah it isn't gonna do the microtransactions and the live service... ( Oh my god what a shame!!!) My steam and gog library is 2000 and around that. And my surface does great! So this laptop go 2 maybe ok for retro gaming!
Went on Facebook marketplace and bought a brand new base model surface laptop go. Then went on to eBay and purchase a 512 GB SSD for $79, and in total I did not even spend over $300 and got an instant upgrade. Opened up the laptop go and it wasn't hard to swap out the emmc to ssd. Tutorials everywhere on RUclips. Now to get more ram, used micro SD card and in windows 10 you can configure your micro SD card to ram. So now I have 512gb ssd and total of 12gb ram.
@@jacobcorral341 RUclipsr made a video. Just type surface laptop go ssd upgrade and he will show you how to take it apart. It was easy for me to follow that tutorial. Good luck
I just bought this 8gb/128gb sage green version. i went into my local best buy to try out a variety of laptops and just really loved the 3:2 aspect ratio, the keyboard, and the small and portable size of it. i dont really care about backlit keys; i find the nubs on the 'f' and 'j' key and im set. i would like to replace the ssd myself at some point though.
The problem with this laptop is that I was able to get a factory refurbished Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5 14 with 16GB of RAM, Ryzen 5700U and RX Vega 8 that is a touch screen 2-in-1, has a fingerprint sensor, and is just as light and portable with great IO, 65W USB-C Charger included, and it only cost $480.
Too expensive for what it is once you pass the terribly specced base model, and no keyboard backlight is a killer. You get way too close to M1 MBA prices with much more performance, a high DPI screen, and a backlit keyboard, especially if you err, use the education store because you're totally a student.
One thing no reviewer mentions is that the Surface Laptop Go doesn't support pen input. When you buy a Surface product, you would normally expect it to have a pen digitizer...
I have the surface pro 7 and I've been hating it since I bought it. Everything crashes, it overheats, sometimes it don't recognize it's own keyboard and the battery drains fast AF. At least my Switch Charger can charge it too
I can't speak for the laptops, but I've been running a surface pro 5 with LTE for almost 5 years. I wouldn't recommend the surface pro line of devices for anyone. It's a cool portable device with decent specs but simply isn't worth the money all things considered. The surface pro line is nothing more than a tablet that runs full windows desktop. It's built like a phone with everything glued together, and all components are soldered directly to the motherboard. So there's nothing inside easily repairable or upgradable, and in 2022 it runs windows so unstable (even on a clean install) I wouldn't bother figuring out upgrades even if I was willing to go through the hassle. Plus, these devices run proprietary microsoft UEFI firmware. If something goes wrong or you get a rootkit, it is NOT POSSIBLE to reflash the firmware yourself, short of using open source tools to build your own firmware for the device (assuming you have that kind of knowledge). You have to wait for Microsoft to release the next firmware update, assuming there's gonna be another update that is. So if anything breaks on these devices, you either have warrenty or you're fucked, and there's very little you can do. For the amount of money I put into this device I could've bought a premium MSI gaming laptop, which is fully user serviceable, upgradable, and can last a decade or more. I should just be happy the one I have has lasted this long. Surface Pro devices of the time didn't have a great track record of surviving past warranty period, and the one I purchased, which was ordered directly from Microsoft, came with a defective display out of the box. I drove 120 miles to the nearest Microsoft store, and the service guy helping me had to bring out 2 more computers before we unboxed one that worked the way it's supposed to. Yeah I know it's my fault for buying the damn thing. My bad.
I love the surface products, they are the apple of windows PC's, but the best part is the depreciation, the $2800 15 inch surface book 2 is now worth only $700 and its worth it, I love mine, I use it every day, only need to charge it every 2 days, not as powerful as other products but the value is there, of course its used but if you are carefull when searching and purhasing a used product, you will be fine
Gaming is not a big deal for me (I'm old!). Portability, build quality and usability certainly are big deals. This machine does seem to tick those boxes. The one issue for me is the lack of a SD card reader. Obviously one can use a usb stick instead - it's just a little more cumbersome when you consider that the whole point of a little laptop like this is it's small footprint.
I was shopping for one now and the naming is confusing especially when retailers use their tricks to deceive their customers. They advertised the laptop go 1 along with the laptop go 2 and it almost fooled me. Edit: and especially when RAM and CPU config comes to play. So confusing
But if you show some patience, you can often end up with good deals on the devices. I literaly got a Laptop 4 for half the price of a new one, in my quite expensive country. It was a returned device with a few tiny scratches on it, otherwise in perfect condition and with full 5 year guarantee as all laptops/phones have here. I love the Microsoft Surface keyboards, they are amazing.
I don't care about storage anymore. 128 GB is OK, but 4 GB of RAM is not. Even 8 GB is getting a bit too low these days, so my minimum specs today would be 16 GB RAM, 256 GB storage.
I don't think anybody should expect this to game. Why would you even consider this if you wanted to game!?! Surely it's just an ultimate portable every day simple task laptop. It's a great laptop for that. It's like not recommending a Toyota Camry because it doesn't handle as well as a sports car for more money.
I sell laptops at Best Buy and the Laptop Go 1 is my favorite ~$600 laptop we carry. Just need portable productivity, boom, done, have a nice day. It's usually on sale and usually a no brainer. This one? Eh... I honestly would've been a lot happier, and a lot more interested in selling them, if the base configuration was an 11gen Core i3 and 8gb of RAM. Any basic productivity will run well enough on an i3, but there's some weak sauce multitasking on 4gb RAM. (Obligatory views and opinions expressed are my own and not representative of Best Buy.)
being honest I don't think anything you're bringing up is that big of a deal even bringing up gaming is comical, and having active cooling is never a problem.
Well, good deals can be had with Surface devices. Just got a slightly used but will full warranty Laptop 4 from a store for 600 bucks including taxes, literaly half the price of the regular price in my country. 8GB, 256GB, 6 core Ryzen 5.
Base model M1 MacBook air is only 100 dollars more expensive than highest configured Surface laptop go 2 with same RAM and SSD. That's just sad. This should be 500 max
i love mine. Besides the fact I got home and none of the operationsystems were not booting up so it just stayed black. They were nice enough to give me a new one
i still got surface go 2018 base model. I agree that surface is good for typing, media consuming and browsing the web. But for modern gaming, don't even bother unless its streaming, RDP or retro/emulation gaming
Yeah, no shop in our area even touches surfaces. You take off that screen it isn't going back on. Selling dog specs on a machine you can't touch the internals once it leaves the factory for this price is gross tbh
So I am going to give my 2 cents on why I think the Go Laptop is even a thing. I am a asset manager for a massive org and we obtain computers in a typical three generational timeline. When the time comes you open your contact list up to all the manufactures you have worked with in the past to try and see what solutions they can offer. Microsoft was one of them, and I remember it was almost impossible getting the Surface book's within a reasonable price range, especially considering I wanted to purchase these units by the thousand. They managed to tick off a few hundred bucks here and there but, I felt the table and ended up going to another distributer. My guess is they figured they needed to open the market up for pricing, a typical user working in the O365 space doesn't need more then 8GB and some cases can be just fine with 4GB. 699$ for 6 Core, 8GB Ram, 128GB is pretty competitive to be honest.
4gb of ram and 128gb hard drive is just not really enough anymore, a 256gb ssd, 8gb of ram should be minimum. I use a cheap low power laptop daily with a 256gb ssd, 8gb of ram, and a Ryzen 4650u. It is great, but I would not want something much weaker then that, it would be a struggle to just run windows and a web browser with 4gb of ram and a 128gb ssd would be full all of the time.
Save to the cloud, can get up to 1TB cloud storage for pretty cheap these days from the usual offerings. Offline storage doesn’t really matter that much anymore on a laptop.
I have a surface tablet go 2 lowest specs and it works fine because I can go home and have a desktop with 64GB ram and 2tb SSD with i9 and GTX 3090 ti. What I'm saying is if you just need something that you can take with you somewhere and then if you really need power you can always go home then there is a good use for something built well but with lower specs. Specifically they mentioned 128GB SSD not being enough storage. If you do need storage then hopefully there is an SD card slot or use a USB with HDD. (If the USB port puts out enough juice)
Personally, I don't see how the naming of the surface line is any more confusing than Macs. Surface -> Pro/Go -> # Surface Laptop -> Go/Studio -> # Surface Book -> # Surface Studio -> # Intuitive enough for me
No one ever talks about slightly used. On swappa you can get a Surface Laptop Go with 8gb ram and 128gb ssd for $350. Would so get that all day over a $700 version with the only difference is a 11th gen over 10th gen
850 dollar/euro you can get a msi alpha with a ryzen 5 5600h andd a rx6600m, 16gb ddr 4 512 gb nvme. all the prots nice display battery could be better. or for simple tasks look at hp with a ryzen 5 5300u 8gb 256 gb for 450dollar/euro. i can now i just bought two laptops these ones for these prices brandnew. why two one for my daughter for high school. and then came across the msi alpha and for that price/perfomance while i was waiting for a steamdeck. so cancelled the steam deck and i am amazed how good a budget gaming laptop can game these days. i use it as a desktop pc at home and just pick it up and game where i want.
I've been rolling with a 2020-ish mid tier spectre x360 13". If you can't find a surface laptop go 2 wtfbbq, that would be my second recommendation. It'd all metal, the 1080p screen is fine, and it is quite thrifty too 🔋
At Costco you can buy a Dell Laptop with a 12th Gen Core I5, 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD for $750-$770 Regular Price or $550 on Sale. Microsoft definitely needs to evaluate their budget Go Line of Laptops
Just found one of these for $360. Feel like thats a decent deal and it'll be a huge upgrade for my mom. Glad that their main concern was pricing (and lack of RAM but we got the 8 gig model). Thanks guys!
I dunno that it's worth the upgrade. I got a surface go laptop 1 around 350 for the i5 8b. I actually do notice the resolution quite a bit. If that were a normal 1080p, I would 100% recommend to everyone
Here in China the refurbished 13' i5 laptop 3 with 8g ram and 256 SSD is literally at the same price of a refurbished laptop go with the same spec. I bought both of them, kept the former one. Laptop go is just not good enough.
@@airrwalker that little size difference really doesn’t matter to me though I thought smaller is better for carrying around. And thermally, laptop go could easily get hot while 13’ laptop performs much better in this respect.
I wonder if part of the reason they're willing to have this balance of performance vs price is because of Xbox Cloud Gaming. If you *do* own a cheap laptop like this one, you *could* pay for Game Pass Ultimate & get access to games at much higher visual quality than any laptop at that price could give you (let alone for that weight & noise). Is it the right direction? I'm not sure. I know most kids/teens that want to be able to do more with their laptop (especially kids into gaming) after school/work would find this laptop *boring*.
I bought first Surface Laptop Go and battery life was so tragic that I returned it and instead bought Huawei Matebook 14 and its much much better for the same price
Why tech products are always more expensive in Europe that in the US? I watch the reviews, see the prices, go all happy to look to buy, see that is a lot more expensive that in the US and Canada, closes the tab all sad.
Yes U.S. do not include sales tax on advertised listing price of the laptop. Some areas of U.S. high sales tax and some areas little to no sales tax 🤷♂️
How's the naming scheme bad or complicated? The surface laptops fall into three: go, just on its own and then studio. Then there's yhe surface on its own that's a tablet
@@cameronj739 Im running Project 64, ReDream and Psx emulator. Also Gta Vice city and San Andreas run fine. (from the Rockstar launcher) Im not really into newer games lately I'd Suggest getting a Usb-C dongle/hub with power pass through and hdmi so u can hook it up to a monitor or tv and not have to worry about low power and use an xbox controller via bluetooth. Perfect little portable emulation set up :)
$600 is honestly not bad. Should anyone buy it with 4 gb no. At $600 you can either get a poorly built laptop with decent specs (i5/ryzen5 8gb 256 SSD) or a well built laptop like this one with bad specs.
hey, Austin.. i need help. if i connect my series x to a samsung Odyssey G5 via the HDMI cable, and then connect external speakers to the monitor (the model is HP DHS 2101) via a 3.5mm audio jack, will i hear the audio?
Matt I daily a 3 laptop combo as well, an Alienware X14, MacBook Air M1 and the Surface Pro 9.......we both need to be stopped.....Cheers from India...
I have this laptop the one I hate about it is that it says 8gb but in reality you only really get to use 1gb of it.. It uses the rest for the graphics or something
I bought one for my daughter and to me it’s crap. There was an update as soon as I started downloading the update it crashed and would not boot up again. Turns on but can’t get in main menu.
I'm torn between wanting something super portable, but also still allowing some 3d gamedev work (low end). I'd love the flow but I end up wondering if the venting would turn me off on it -_-. I have an older surface pro 3 and it handles the super portable but I end up wishing for more power. Realistically I'm not sure I need it... but I wish I had it.
Valid question. How is this working properly on a dual core processor? Is it running a RT, ARC, or a barebone version of windows? I have seen equally spected budget laptops that just downright suck.
Dual core works fine on a decent ssd while doing just word processing etc. I have a 8 year old Celeron laptop with 2gb ram running w10 fine on an ssd lol. But anything more than 5 chrome tabs kill it tho. But word typing is fine
Refreshing to see reviewers not just bang on about specs but what it's like to work on. I have a Surface 2 Go Core M3. I use it to write scripts for my radio show and write my blog. for that, and the fact I do that in a coffee shop, and not worry about it making a noise, battery life etc it's perfect for. this laptop would be perfect for that also. Most people who game have a dedicated PC for that, or a console. For office work, research, Watching RUclips or Prime and Video calling, these are perfect.
Yep I just needed something that I could open up Microsoft word and not have my computer freeze because it's using too much RAM. Kinda true story.
It's a premium device that just doesn't have high end specs to keep the cost down but you still get the premium feel.
My old tablet had 2GB ram and was struggling to run the full version of office. Never tried the tablet version but I upgraded to the lowest speced go 2 tablet and love it.
Like you said if I want anything more powerful I can go home and use my gaming beast.
That is the reason I got myself a surface pro 7. I have my own rig with a 3070 . All I need for my laptop is to help me take notes and be lightweight and portable that is all. I had a 2013 MacBook Pro that I had for 2 years until it crapped on me.I paid to much money and it was bulky as hell. Never again
@@FAINTEN17 the surface pro line is physical larger than the go line so if you still want something smaller then there you have it. And it sounds like you don't care it's not as powerful.
I actually own the Surface Laptop GO 2 (8GB RAM - 128GB SSD Storage). Bought it for €549,- and I think it's amazing. Not a hardcore gamer or anything. I'm just an average user (internet and documents) that also likes to watch some videos and this laptop is more than fast enough. Really enjoy using it.
The materials used for this laptop are so good. It feels and looks really premium.
Hi,how long does the battery last,I plan on getting one but I'm anxious about the battery life
As a student who bought the Surface Laptop Go 1, 4 months ago, the form factor and the overall experience is great. I managed to get the midspec model for $700 AUD ($500 US), and as such i dont think there are many laptops i couldve gotten for the price that are as nice to use for school as the Go 1. When i heard about the pricing for the Go 2 and the lack of changes there were, model to model, i think i got really lucky.
I got the laptop go last September and love it.
The 1024p screen is fine, performance more than enough, built quality is fantastic, trackpad and keyboard are amazing, touch screen is useful.
The 2 things that it lacks is backlit keyboard and only 5 hrs or so battary life.
I am so disappointed that the laptop go 2 doesn't use 12 gen i5, just get the laptop go 1 for now, much better deal.
Graphics between the 11th and 12th gen are similar though, and compared to uhd graphics of the 10th gen chip, the Iris xe g7 (presumably 80EUs) is going to blowwww UHD graphics out of the water. 900p gaming on lighter titles would be pretty decent.
but can you get windows11 on the go 1?
@@greg00 yes
@@neneseal5182 oh are you sure? i read that you cant
@@neneseal5182 do you have to pay for it ?
I got the surface go with $200 off the mid spec model. $499 was great for me. Very portable decent battery life. Nice top shell, looks very nice in sandstone.
how long does the battery last for you?
The whole 'you cannot game' is a bit misleading.. I've been rocking a generation 1 surface go... And it is a retro gaming monster! Doom, quake, unreal tournament 2004.... It is the most portable gamefest I have ever owned. Yeah it isn't gonna do the microtransactions and the live service... ( Oh my god what a shame!!!)
My steam and gog library is 2000 and around that. And my surface does great! So this laptop go 2 maybe ok for retro gaming!
Went on Facebook marketplace and bought a brand new base model surface laptop go. Then went on to eBay and purchase a 512 GB SSD for $79, and in total I did not even spend over $300 and got an instant upgrade. Opened up the laptop go and it wasn't hard to swap out the emmc to ssd. Tutorials everywhere on RUclips. Now to get more ram, used micro SD card and in windows 10 you can configure your micro SD card to ram. So now I have 512gb ssd and total of 12gb ram.
Which tutorial did you use bro? Im about to swap to ssd because my storage runs out immediately (newbie here)
@@jacobcorral341 RUclipsr made a video. Just type surface laptop go ssd upgrade and he will show you how to take it apart. It was easy for me to follow that tutorial. Good luck
Aye bro quick question what SSD did you buy ?
@@18thSTVATO Microsoft Surface Laptop SSD 512GB M.2 2230 NVMe Model 1912 MSPN M1119069-003 . Ebay
I just bought this 8gb/128gb sage green version. i went into my local best buy to try out a variety of laptops and just really loved the 3:2 aspect ratio, the keyboard, and the small and portable size of it. i dont really care about backlit keys; i find the nubs on the 'f' and 'j' key and im set. i would like to replace the ssd myself at some point though.
what a damage control
@@jandrex007 Whah? English?
I just bought one off of Amazon for $350. Specs was core i5 8 gb ram with 128 ssd. Only catch is that it's renewed, which isn't a problem.
The problem with this laptop is that I was able to get a factory refurbished Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5 14 with 16GB of RAM, Ryzen 5700U and RX Vega 8 that is a touch screen 2-in-1, has a fingerprint sensor, and is just as light and portable with great IO, 65W USB-C Charger included, and it only cost $480.
+ ryzen cpus are really efficient
i got the surface laptop 2 on sale. 8g of RAM. 128GB ssd. and i love it
Too expensive for what it is once you pass the terribly specced base model, and no keyboard backlight is a killer. You get way too close to M1 MBA prices with much more performance, a high DPI screen, and a backlit keyboard, especially if you err, use the education store because you're totally a student.
How Austin said "ENOUGH.." is just satisfying
One thing no reviewer mentions is that the Surface Laptop Go doesn't support pen input. When you buy a Surface product, you would normally expect it to have a pen digitizer...
My step-father loves his Surface Laptop. He doesn't play games more complicated than hearts or minesweeper, though.
I have the surface pro 7 and I've been hating it since I bought it. Everything crashes, it overheats, sometimes it don't recognize it's own keyboard and the battery drains fast AF. At least my Switch Charger can charge it too
I can't speak for the laptops, but I've been running a surface pro 5 with LTE for almost 5 years. I wouldn't recommend the surface pro line of devices for anyone. It's a cool portable device with decent specs but simply isn't worth the money all things considered. The surface pro line is nothing more than a tablet that runs full windows desktop. It's built like a phone with everything glued together, and all components are soldered directly to the motherboard. So there's nothing inside easily repairable or upgradable, and in 2022 it runs windows so unstable (even on a clean install) I wouldn't bother figuring out upgrades even if I was willing to go through the hassle. Plus, these devices run proprietary microsoft UEFI firmware. If something goes wrong or you get a rootkit, it is NOT POSSIBLE to reflash the firmware yourself, short of using open source tools to build your own firmware for the device (assuming you have that kind of knowledge). You have to wait for Microsoft to release the next firmware update, assuming there's gonna be another update that is. So if anything breaks on these devices, you either have warrenty or you're fucked, and there's very little you can do. For the amount of money I put into this device I could've bought a premium MSI gaming laptop, which is fully user serviceable, upgradable, and can last a decade or more. I should just be happy the one I have has lasted this long. Surface Pro devices of the time didn't have a great track record of surviving past warranty period, and the one I purchased, which was ordered directly from Microsoft, came with a defective display out of the box. I drove 120 miles to the nearest Microsoft store, and the service guy helping me had to bring out 2 more computers before we unboxed one that worked the way it's supposed to. Yeah I know it's my fault for buying the damn thing. My bad.
I love the surface products, they are the apple of windows PC's, but the best part is the depreciation, the $2800 15 inch surface book 2 is now worth only $700 and its worth it, I love mine, I use it every day, only need to charge it every 2 days, not as powerful as other products but the value is there, of course its used but if you are carefull when searching and purhasing a used product, you will be fine
off topic, i love the brotherhood between the PS5 & XBOX controller at the back.....
Gaming is not a big deal for me (I'm old!). Portability, build quality and usability certainly are big deals. This machine does seem to tick those boxes. The one issue for me is the lack of a SD card reader. Obviously one can use a usb stick instead - it's just a little more cumbersome when you consider that the whole point of a little laptop like this is it's small footprint.
It is good for a student who just needs something for school work but you need 8 GB and 128GB SSD
I was shopping for one now and the naming is confusing especially when retailers use their tricks to deceive their customers. They advertised the laptop go 1 along with the laptop go 2 and it almost fooled me.
Edit: and especially when RAM and CPU config comes to play. So confusing
That's what they want... They attract you with $600 and you end with a $1000 laptop
But if you show some patience, you can often end up with good deals on the devices. I literaly got a Laptop 4 for half the price of a new one, in my quite expensive country. It was a returned device with a few tiny scratches on it, otherwise in perfect condition and with full 5 year guarantee as all laptops/phones have here. I love the Microsoft Surface keyboards, they are amazing.
I don't care about storage anymore. 128 GB is OK, but 4 GB of RAM is not. Even 8 GB is getting a bit too low these days, so my minimum specs today would be 16 GB RAM, 256 GB storage.
I love this laptop because i DID have to pay for it.......got it on sale at Best Buy for $350........no brainer for me.
I purchased my M1 Macbook Air for $800, I'd argue that is a much better ultra portable device for the price.
@@akshayjumani I got mine during a back to school sale in July of 2021.
Yes, always look around for deals. But at least in my country, Apple devices rarely drop much in price. Microsoft devices do.
I don't know what Surface does with the mic setup but since the Surface Pro 4 from 2014 they all always sound so amazing. No need for an external mic.
Tip: just open a Microsoft account and while on the laptop page qualify for a student discount and you’ll get almost $100 off of it 😉
I don't think anybody should expect this to game. Why would you even consider this if you wanted to game!?!
Surely it's just an ultimate portable every day simple task laptop. It's a great laptop for that.
It's like not recommending a Toyota Camry because it doesn't handle as well as a sports car for more money.
I sell laptops at Best Buy and the Laptop Go 1 is my favorite ~$600 laptop we carry. Just need portable productivity, boom, done, have a nice day. It's usually on sale and usually a no brainer.
This one? Eh... I honestly would've been a lot happier, and a lot more interested in selling them, if the base configuration was an 11gen Core i3 and 8gb of RAM. Any basic productivity will run well enough on an i3, but there's some weak sauce multitasking on 4gb RAM.
(Obligatory views and opinions expressed are my own and not representative of Best Buy.)
Ram is important. I've seen more powerful hardware get beaten out because crappy or at least somewhat weaker ram.
I love the size. But I'd like 16GB of ram. This is coming from someone who embrace the OG netbooks.
Got the i5 8gb 128gb model for 480€ on amazon as a school laptop for all my note taking and stuff and im super happy with it :)
please tell me how is the battery life is?? im wondering if i want it for college
@@supershysiri I have no comparison but depending on your task you might have to charge it once in the afternoon, but it charges pretty fast imo
being honest I don't think anything you're bringing up is that big of a deal even bringing up gaming is comical, and having active cooling is never a problem.
Do you guys that this laptop will work for editing videos?
I use it every day and it's awesome.
Well, good deals can be had with Surface devices. Just got a slightly used but will full warranty Laptop 4 from a store for 600 bucks including taxes, literaly half the price of the regular price in my country. 8GB, 256GB, 6 core Ryzen 5.
Base model M1 MacBook air is only 100 dollars more expensive than highest configured Surface laptop go 2 with same RAM and SSD. That's just sad. This should be 500 max
i love mine. Besides the fact I got home and none of the operationsystems were not booting up so it just stayed black. They were nice enough to give me a new one
i still got surface go 2018 base model. I agree that surface is good for typing, media consuming and browsing the web.
But for modern gaming, don't even bother unless its streaming, RDP or retro/emulation gaming
Why would you game on a laptop ?
Isn’t the Surface lineup just Go > Base Name > Pro > Studio? Doesn’t seem too hard from that point.
Microsoft also doesn't sell the replacement rubber strips (which you have to remove to service) for the laptop GO, at all.
Yeah, no shop in our area even touches surfaces. You take off that screen it isn't going back on. Selling dog specs on a machine you can't touch the internals once it leaves the factory for this price is gross tbh
So I am going to give my 2 cents on why I think the Go Laptop is even a thing.
I am a asset manager for a massive org and we obtain computers in a typical three generational timeline. When the time comes you open your contact list up to all the manufactures you have worked with in the past to try and see what solutions they can offer.
Microsoft was one of them, and I remember it was almost impossible getting the Surface book's within a reasonable price range, especially considering I wanted to purchase these units by the thousand.
They managed to tick off a few hundred bucks here and there but, I felt the table and ended up going to another distributer.
My guess is they figured they needed to open the market up for pricing, a typical user working in the O365 space doesn't need more then 8GB and some cases can be just fine with 4GB.
699$ for 6 Core, 8GB Ram, 128GB is pretty competitive to be honest.
This form factor is perfect for Windows on ARM laptop.
4gb of ram and 128gb hard drive is just not really enough anymore, a 256gb ssd, 8gb of ram should be minimum. I use a cheap low power laptop daily with a 256gb ssd, 8gb of ram, and a Ryzen 4650u. It is great, but I would not want something much weaker then that, it would be a struggle to just run windows and a web browser with 4gb of ram and a 128gb ssd would be full all of the time.
Save to the cloud, can get up to 1TB cloud storage for pretty cheap these days from the usual offerings. Offline storage doesn’t really matter that much anymore on a laptop.
How strong is the Ryzen?
I have a surface tablet go 2 lowest specs and it works fine because I can go home and have a desktop with 64GB ram and 2tb SSD with i9 and GTX 3090 ti.
What I'm saying is if you just need something that you can take with you somewhere and then if you really need power you can always go home then there is a good use for something built well but with lower specs. Specifically they mentioned 128GB SSD not being enough storage. If you do need storage then hopefully there is an SD card slot or use a USB with HDD. (If the USB port puts out enough juice)
Personally, I don't see how the naming of the surface line is any more confusing than Macs.
Surface -> Pro/Go -> #
Surface Laptop -> Go/Studio -> #
Surface Book -> #
Surface Studio -> #
Intuitive enough for me
I was thinking the same. Literally I haven no idea which one is the latest and which one is the flagship of them all.
No one ever talks about slightly used. On swappa you can get a Surface Laptop Go with 8gb ram and 128gb ssd for $350. Would so get that all day over a $700 version with the only difference is a 11th gen over 10th gen
850 dollar/euro you can get a msi alpha with a ryzen 5 5600h andd a rx6600m, 16gb ddr 4 512 gb nvme. all the prots nice display battery could be better. or for simple tasks look at hp with a ryzen 5 5300u 8gb 256 gb for 450dollar/euro.
i can now i just bought two laptops these ones for these prices brandnew. why two one for my daughter for high school. and then came across the msi alpha and for that price/perfomance while i was waiting for a steamdeck. so cancelled the steam deck and i am amazed how good a budget gaming laptop can game these days. i use it as a desktop pc at home and just pick it up and game where i want.
Should i buy this one or the old one? Im a student btw, and i really like the old one
I've been rolling with a 2020-ish mid tier spectre x360 13". If you can't find a surface laptop go 2 wtfbbq, that would be my second recommendation. It'd all metal, the 1080p screen is fine, and it is quite thrifty too 🔋
At Costco you can buy a Dell Laptop with a 12th Gen Core I5, 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD for $750-$770 Regular Price or $550 on Sale. Microsoft definitely needs to evaluate their budget Go Line of Laptops
Just found one of these for $360. Feel like thats a decent deal and it'll be a huge upgrade for my mom. Glad that their main concern was pricing (and lack of RAM but we got the 8 gig model). Thanks guys!
I dunno that it's worth the upgrade. I got a surface go laptop 1 around 350 for the i5 8b. I actually do notice the resolution quite a bit. If that were a normal 1080p, I would 100% recommend to everyone
BROOOOO Don't tell me I'm the only one who expected him to say "Hello internet, welcome to game theory" xd 0:03
Here in China the refurbished 13' i5 laptop 3 with 8g ram and 256 SSD is literally at the same price of a refurbished laptop go with the same spec. I bought both of them, kept the former one. Laptop go is just not good enough.
Why?
@@airrwalker that little size difference really doesn’t matter to me though I thought smaller is better for carrying around. And thermally, laptop go could easily get hot while 13’ laptop performs much better in this respect.
apples trackpads were glass which is why they are so good idk if modern ones are still but my my 2012 is and its still my daily
I wonder if part of the reason they're willing to have this balance of performance vs price is because of Xbox Cloud Gaming. If you *do* own a cheap laptop like this one, you *could* pay for Game Pass Ultimate & get access to games at much higher visual quality than any laptop at that price could give you (let alone for that weight & noise).
Is it the right direction? I'm not sure. I know most kids/teens that want to be able to do more with their laptop (especially kids into gaming) after school/work would find this laptop *boring*.
I bought first Surface Laptop Go and battery life was so tragic that I returned it and instead bought Huawei Matebook 14 and its much much better for the same price
not all laptops are meant for gaming.
only buy on sale, 500 for the 8gb 128 is a steal. full price def not
I have the Laptop 4 with 8 GB of RAM and think that's just about enough for Windows 11. 4 GB will slow down just after three chrome tabs.
My PC has 8 GB of RAM and can't even run Windows 11
@Mihailo Aleksic I can with 8, but it always run with at least 80% usage
I brought a refurbished Microsoft surface 3 “B Grade” for $199.98
Great Matt, I love you re honest, a weird thing in RUclips, so I I love this point.
Why tech products are always more expensive in Europe that in the US? I watch the reviews, see the prices, go all happy to look to buy, see that is a lot more expensive that in the US and Canada, closes the tab all sad.
US pricing does not always include taxes. Some states do not charge taxes at all. 💩🙈
Yes U.S. do not include sales tax on advertised listing price of the laptop. Some areas of U.S. high sales tax and some areas little to no sales tax 🤷♂️
How's the naming scheme bad or complicated? The surface laptops fall into three: go, just on its own and then studio. Then there's yhe surface on its own that's a tablet
My surface go is used for general work but......its amazing for an emulation station and that's what i wanted for retro gaming on the go
What games do you play on it if you don't mind me asking, I'm am trying to see what it can handle.
@@cameronj739 Im running Project 64, ReDream and Psx emulator. Also Gta Vice city and San Andreas run fine. (from the Rockstar launcher) Im not really into newer games lately
I'd Suggest getting a Usb-C dongle/hub with power pass through and hdmi so u can hook it up to a monitor or tv and not have to worry about low power and use an xbox controller via bluetooth. Perfect little portable emulation set up :)
Which laptop should I buy if I’m an accountant?
$600 is honestly not bad. Should anyone buy it with 4 gb no. At $600 you can either get a poorly built laptop with decent specs (i5/ryzen5 8gb 256 SSD) or a well built laptop like this one with bad specs.
Something this size but with the steam deck apu would be wild
Very possible that a Surface Laptop will come with Ryzen and RDNA 2. Laptop 4 already has a Vega 8 based Ryzen laptop.
I got the top spec 250g laptop for 650, if you look for sales you can get some of this stuff for a good deal
That is a perfect laptop for uni for me but it's just too much for me to bother
hey, Austin.. i need help.
if i connect my series x to a samsung Odyssey G5 via the HDMI cable, and then connect external speakers to the monitor (the model is HP DHS 2101) via a 3.5mm audio jack, will i hear the audio?
I wish they make the hinge in this go 360 for next gen with 12th gen processor, imagine,that will be super hit.
I specifically bought this because I had a 360 hinge break on my HP Envy and it was going to cost $500 to have it fixed. I hardly ever used it anyway.
Video topic suggestion
Do you think with the switch,steam deck and various other handheld pcs Razer should revive their version?
Tbh m1 MacBook air with parallel license for windows virtualization is much better value
The thing is most people either know this is for them or it isn't.
lmao its the magic keyboard on the iPad pro not the smart keyboard [not a big deal just me paying attention to small details :)]
So Surface Go 3 or 4 could be interesting, when there might be a viabel option based on ARM that can compete with the M1/M2 MacBook Air.
No laptop in 2022 should have a 4gb of ram as an option.
Matt I daily a 3 laptop combo as well, an Alienware X14, MacBook Air M1 and the Surface Pro 9.......we both need to be stopped.....Cheers from India...
Why the heck are you trying to game on a Surface laptop?
I wonder what gaming with Xbox game pass would be like on that
I have this laptop the one I hate about it is that it says 8gb but in reality you only really get to use 1gb of it.. It uses the rest for the graphics or something
Calling out Microsoft for bad naming is the same as calling out water for being wet.
if you look at gaming performance of the intel chip with the new iris graphics it is quite capable of gaming lots of esports titles
I bought one for my daughter and to me it’s crap. There was an update as soon as I started downloading the update it crashed and would not boot up again. Turns on but can’t get in main menu.
No backlit keyboard , otherwise great portable laptop.
I'm torn between wanting something super portable, but also still allowing some 3d gamedev work (low end). I'd love the flow but I end up wondering if the venting would turn me off on it -_-. I have an older surface pro 3 and it handles the super portable but I end up wishing for more power. Realistically I'm not sure I need it... but I wish I had it.
You should do a review on a acer spin laptop, they are awesome
I found it now speced:(i5-1135G7/8GB/128GB SSD/W11 Pro) Platinum for 380 open box is it a good deal?
Hey u guys what's more important:
Camera or set up?
That cut when Austin tried to lift his iPad around with two fingers.........
Valid question. How is this working properly on a dual core processor? Is it running a RT, ARC, or a barebone version of windows? I have seen equally spected budget laptops that just downright suck.
Dual core works fine on a decent ssd while doing just word processing etc. I have a 8 year old Celeron laptop with 2gb ram running w10 fine on an ssd lol. But anything more than 5 chrome tabs kill it tho. But word typing is fine
I bought this because it fits EXACTLY in my sling bag.
please tell me how is the battery life is?? im wondering if i want it for college
Austin let Matt talk!!!
Does it run Bloons though?
The naming of Microsoft products are so confusing also the xbox naming is confusing
why surface laptop has the bigger bezel than surface laptop go 2 ? Make no sense at all
The best build quality laptop at that price range