I would actually appreciate a longer rant/standalone video from Alex going a bit more in depth about Windows modern standby and why it's terrible and what would be better. maybe Anthony could also be in it and add some more helpful ideas on how to fix it.
@@jeroenk3570 when you put a windows laptop into sleep by closing the lid. The laptop keeps running. Drains your battery and gets hot in your backpack. When a MacBook goes into sleep, it actually sleeps. Doesn’t use battery and wakes up quickly when needed
@@mikebrownphotography2784 which is really dumb, because hibernating with modern nvme drives is so fast. Like a 16GB laptop takes seconds to hibernate or wake. All Microsoft needs is to standardize a method to wake from lid open/keypress from hibernation. Which they totally could do on their own hardware first.
I have to use one for work, and it's IO is indeed horrible. The worst part is the single USB Type C, since using an External Display at all uses the only available USB C Port. Plus, the USB A Port on the Charger is pretty dodgy when using Linux or Enterprise Windows. I have to use USB C and USB A hubs just for it to be usable for more than 2 things at a time.
@@EkiToji Sure, for power users all that really matters is having some way to change it (or at least any easy way without hacks to load customized ACPI tables). But if it isn't overall better for typical users, it shouldn't be the default and shouldn't require this to get better behavior.
I like that he keeps mentioning it. Linus just excused the latest nvidia reviews saying people don't like to hear things repeated. That's wrong. People do need to be reminded. Thanks Alex!
@@togden88 why do you think they named a capacity the definition for it's rate? its for this exact conversation. it's the same reason why mph is a measurement of speed when miles (a distance) is in its name. it's for easier conversion and can be used interchangeably. eg 50 mph (rate speed) is the same as 50 MILES per hr (distance) is the same as 50 miles per HR (time). therefore 48 watthours (capacity) is the same as 48 WATTS per hr (rate) is the same as 48 watts per HR (time). therefore saying 48 watts per hr can be interchangeable with 48 wh.
@@togden88 Watt-hour (P*t=E) is the unit of an energy and thus has a physical meaning. Watt per hour (P/t=E/t²) would be energy divided by by time squared and has no physical meaning.
terrible laptop line in general. i'm surprised they put in a removable ssd. many MANY people including myself were PISSED that they lost their data permanently since the iterations prior to this one soldered the ssd drive to the board. would never buy another microcrap hardware product again. the resentment is for life! microcrap did this intentionally, not just once, but many times. cant ever respect this company after it royally screwed many people over and held their data hostage.
Alex, I would really appreciate it if you could channel all that rage you have for Windows Modern Standby and make a stand-alone video about it. I am one of these 'die-hard' Windows Users (never purchased a single Apple product) and I am definitely getting a Macbook this holiday because of the terrible sleep issues that Windows laptops have. Maybe if you guys ran a full story on this issue, someone at Microsoft will attempt to fix it. Please and thank you!!!!
You should try the low power mode on the modern Macs it is amazing, all the battery numbers people quote are in regular power mode! switching to low power mode tends to have a 20% perf impact for very heavy tasks but for everything else your not going to notice! Since it basicly turns off the perfomance cores and hard down clocks the GPU you end up saving a mad amount of power without a big drop in perf.
@@leonro hibernation is an annoying workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. If sleep was working properly, you would have much faster boot-up time than with hibernation, which can actually make quite a noticable difference.
@@sebastianjost Try disabling "connected standby" through the registry or group policy editor, I find it seems to mitigate most of the issues with modern standby, although S3 is still superior.
Could we please get a dedicated video about Windows modern standby? I would love video of Alex just going into depth on the issue. Use this channels position to encourage Microsoft to finally do something about it.
Hey editor, I really liked that shadow effect when showing the lasptop that was playing the audio, I used to be confused on that part of the video with only the text cue.
Amazing energy! My SL3 is the best small laptop I've ever used, by far. As a regular engineer / consultant guy (doing PDF and occasional autocad) with a separate gaming desktop, I would choose this over the XPS's I've owned, or anything made of plastic that sucks air from my thighs for cooling. AND, standby has never, not once, messed up. One day with my XPS 15 and my backpack almost melted and fused to my t-shirt. If you do the office things, buy a used one, even an SL3 for much cheaper and forget about the latest tech - just pure joy in the typing, trackpad, and screen experience.
I'm whelmed by this update. Last years AMD option got three hours more battery life according to the verge, and this year they'd have 5nm and RDNA 2 IGPs. This one is still struggling to meet that last years multicore and IGP performance and just wins single core by a bit, but that's against last years AMD, again. It's also launching well into the 12th gen lifespan so even with just looking at Intel it's going to spend half the year competing with 13th gen, which hopefully fixes the efficiency. And the years old design. To me, this is the very last generation they can get away with this, hopefully they refresh to 13th gen and a full physical refresh faster. I'd give up Thunderbolt for the option for a 5nm AMD model.
I have to agree with you. Normally I like Alex for his authenticity but this review seems extremly biased! This is a mediocre laptop for late 2022, especially for the price. They had the chance to take Surface to the next level with either this low power cpu and amazing batterie life, good performance uplift with like a 1240p or both with AMDs 6000 chips. But they did not and still the review seems like it's exeptional tech. Underwhelming..
Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED UN5401RA with Ryzen 6800H is $1200 and demolishes this laptop. About 12,100 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, can run Halo Infinite at 2880x1800 medium settings 40-50 FPS, fully sustained peak performance thanks to the cooling. The chassis is insanely stiff. The keyboard is perfect. The trackpad is great. The OLED display is gorgeous. And it comes with full size HDMI, USB A, and two USB C PD ports with USB 4 (Thunderbolt). Remind my why anyone would buy a Surface laptop? Oh, and the screen is 90hz. It even comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 standard and a 1 TB OEM Samsung 980 Pro, the fastest and most power efficient SSD on the market. And I get 9-10 hours of medium-light web browsing, office tasks, and video watching. To be fair, it does make quite a few overpriced Intel laptops on the market seem like a bad deal.
@@adaml.5355 Yes Asus Zenbook and Vivobook laptops with OLED are great. I got my mom a Vivobook Pro 14 OLED recently to watch movies on the go and she loves it. Because of 5600h it also lasts quite awhile.
yeahhh, 12th gen this late in 2022 is eh. either intel 13th gen (though that mightve required a delay) or ryzen 6000 series would have made this a much more competitive product for the price
There are hacks to force it to use the full brightness capabilities though. BetterTouchTool ships with the ability to let you toggle an ultrabright mode, though it really messes up image clarity.
I had a Surface Laptop 3 - loved it. Good speakers, excellent screen, great build and good performance. What let it down was the design - the housing looked sleek (if a little bland) but the bezels were downright ugly. I'd had a Huawei Matebook before it, and although the Huawei's build quality was awful, the display looked much more modern thanks to the slim bezels. Kind of disappointed to see the large bezels remain, but they are fantastic laptops.
Just bought a Matebook 16 with Ryzen 7 5800H. Absolute monster for a low price, very good build quality, good design, very good battery life, no bloatware. Check that out.
@@95yashsheel On the Matebook or the Surface? Both were excellent, though the Matebook I owned had a peak brightness of 324 nits (rated at 300) and the Surface Laptop was closer to 450 (rated for 400). Both screens were 3:2 aspect ratio and good PPI
The Surface Pro 9 comes with a 1080p webcam (since 2015) and 120hz screen (since 2021). There is absolutely no reason this more expensive laptop can't have both of those things.
@3:31 I had the battery bloat after a year of use. Unfixable because of the glue. And Microsoft told me to, get this, pay *them* another $200 for a replacement. Got a Lenovo instead.
Great review but a few comments regarding the surface laptop 3 that I have been using since launch (3 years to the day). 1)You mention a thunderbolt port FINALLY being added. While that is great- I don’t think it really matters to your average user. Using the usbc port I connect to a dock that has 2 displays, a headset, charger, keyboard, and mouse. A dock is worlds cheaper than a whole new laptop. 2)personal opinion but I think the keyboard deserves more than you give it credit for 3)You mentioned we previously needed to use the MagSafe port to connect to things… I don’t think that is necessary (same logic as 1) 4)Build quality is on par with newest gen laptops. Again personal opinion but until they do a complete redesign I think the 3 is still a great option 3 years later.
I work in IT, we used to buy a lot of Surface products, but they would have tons of issues like CMOS battery would fail over time, which is normal, but you can't replace it on older Surface products, and if you use two factor authentication like DUO or RSA, then you'll have sign in issues. I've had a lot of screens that detached, and down get me started with Surface Pro screens cracking, I ended up getting screen protectors for them. The worst thing is that unless the product was under warranty, you're screwed, and all Microsoft offered was an out of warranty replacement discount. I mean sure a discount is nice, but if I spent $2000 on a laptop, I expect at a minimum to be able to go 3 years without having to replace it. I'm glad they finally made them repairable. Anyways, we just go XPS 13/15 for premium laptops now, and they are far superior IMO.
Just to note: The MBP is only 1000/1600 when displaying HDR content. The Crab Rave-video is not HDR.... (If you want higher than 500 nits on the MBP during normal use you need a third party app).
They make this mistake on every single laptop video, because they always compare to the MBP display and then make this absurd claim. It's like they don't even read any of the comments.
@@TheStopwatchGod It does, and I think you can criticize Apple for not exposing increased brightness controls to the user, but there is no getting away from the fact that the screen can get MASSIVELY bright.
13:20 this is an understatement ;) I closed my surface laptop 4 one night with 60% battery and when I woke up it was dead. Nothing was open except for chrome. I tried to look at what drained the battery and the settings had no idea. Sometimes ill open the lid and it will take 15-20 seconds to turn on for no reason. Most of the time it's instant. It's honestly so bad, it's unbelievable.
Alex, the MacBook does deliver 1600 nits but that requires HDR content. Standard gamma stuff on macOS is limited to 500 nits. It’s the best laptop display for contrast, color accuracy, and overall brightness on the market.
To the editor, who may want to learn a fun fact: At 12:52 the dialogue is "Watt-hours" but the on screen text says "Watt per hour". "Watt-hours" is the correct one. They're not the same units lol, watt-hours is (watt * hour), while watt-per-hour is (watt / hour). Watt-hours is actually a unit of energy that is time-independent, the time dimension in "hour" is canceled by the per-time dimension in "watt". The reason they use watt-hours instead of joules is because they think people are more familiar with watts and hours. Watt-hours and Joules are dimensionally the same.
Why. WHY do Apple MacBooks or MS Surface laps not have a simple latch. JUST a latch to open the top of the case like a door. No screws. Just a latch. Maybe a hinge. Just make the keyboard/trackpad/touchID sensor becabled and enable repairability like that.
Our company stopped using surface because of the lack of thunderbolt and the chargers and displays kept breaking. I’m not confident build quality is any better this time around
I have one of those that I bought “refurbished” in 2018 or 2019 I’m not even sure. I’m not even sure if it’s the first or the second generation lol. It’s still is my main machine and love it. I put refurbished within quotation marks because I’m almost certain nobody had used it before me. It was owned by a large corporation which they probably bought in quantities before returning them or whatever. I got it for about $650 - $700 I believe. One of the best purchases I have ever made.
I've been using my surface laptop 4 with an external monitor on the USB C port and it works just fine. Not sure what difference thunderbolt would make, unless I wanted a bunch of external monitors rather than just one. I have a printer and charger hooked up to the USB C hub too.
0:33 i can actually answer this not so well but, it is because we all know that fancy people don't like big screen laptops and big screen laptop users don't deserve a nice fancy box because: reasons.
For my work laptop I have a surface book 3. I was wondering why hell the computer never went to sleep and instead decided to cook itself in my laptop bag and kill the battery. It's infuriating. Then I bought a XPS 15 for personal use only to find out it does the same thing. I thought clearly the problem is me and I'm somehow not putting my computer to sleep properly. Now after you mentioning this modern standby "feature" I've finally found out i'm not alone!! please make a video on this!!
I'd consider a Surface Laptop when it gets P series (or Ryzen 6000 U series) CPU *and* a haptic trackpad. Oh, and maybe when they'll use up the internal space on the 15" model for bigger heatsinks and batteries.
true. wish there was more competition around this price point (and lower bc laptops should not all be at least a thousand dollars) in windows laptops bc the m1 macbook air for all its macos and arm caveats is 2 years old by now and still feels more capable than some of the current windows laptop offerings.
ngl if microsoft could subsidize these laptops and make them half their current prices with double the specs,(to be able to push buyers to their services and whatnot.) these laptops would probably be more popular then macs just for the gamepass avalibility alone.
I've recently just bought one of these and I have to say the lack of I/O isn't an issue at all for me. Most people aren't going to need more than what is offered. I've been having a good time using it as my general use laptop.
I get the Windows modern standby issue, I experienced it a couple of times with my Surface Go 2. But it's been a year since I upgraded to Surface Laptop Studio, and I have never had a single instance of the issue. The laptop is always in sleep by closing the lid and I hardly lose any battery throughout the day. I think a deep dive and finding how/why it happens will be great.
Damn, I had the Modern Standby issue with my Surface Pro 5 and it was annoying enough to get me to also upgrade to a Surface Laptop Studio. Unfortunately, my SLS does the same thing. Welp, it is what it is.
I'd been holding off on a new laptop this whole year, waiting to see what the Surface 5 would bring. Turns out, new intel only versions at higher prices with nothing else different. I ended up spending 50% less to get a comparable Framework, and while I've only had it about a week, I'm very happy with it.
So for the Peak brightness, 1600 nits on the Macbook Pro is only achieved when displaying HDR content, this requires a software trigger to allow the display to output above 400 nits. There's an app called Vivid that will trigger HDR brightness on SDR content. - This doesn't damage the display as Vivid uses Apple Official HDR SDK - The color remains accurate - full control of up to 1000nits sustain.
You know why do many laptops have poor io? Because nobody cares. Most people don't need IO, or if they do, are using a USB-C dock so they replicate to display, ethernet, and peripherals with a single cable. I literally don't use any IO on my personal laptop, and my work laptop only needs a single USB-C port to be usable.
tbh The Surface Laptop 4 has one of the best laptop keyboards, they feel even better than the M1 MacBook Air. Not sure what Alex was on about, maybe perhaps in comparison to the Surface Laptop 5.
Windows sleep mode has always been pretty hit or miss in my experience. Even 10 years ago, I remember opening my laptop up for class and finding it extremely hot and battery completely drained because of Windows failing to sleep.
I’m fairly certain the box you got for the 15 is what they send to businesses/ suppliers as they don’t care about the packaging. The 13” box is more for consumers so it has to look nice on the shelf
I can't believe people complain about including 8gb of RAM and 256GB of storage in a base Macbook air meanwhile everybody ignores it when Microsoft does it and charges even more than apple for it's upgrades.
8gb RAM on MacOS and Windows isn't the same anyways, no matter what the idiots say. MacOS doesn't take up like 4gb from it like Windows does, which makes this even worse.
I just purchased the i7 / 16gb / 512gb black 15 inch surface laptop for my wife. That did come in the fancy packaging. So far very impressed. I may consider a Surface for myself when my latest ThinkPad needs replacing.
14:45 was waiting the entire video for this. The moment the audio changed followed by the slight camera shift - knew exactly what was coming. Cinematic master piece.
9:15 well you could really tell that the macbook has a way better contrast than the surface one. The display on the surface just looks too foggy if you compare it to the macbook.
I don't get how the conclusion is that it's fantastic when your summary of the features is basically that nothing has changed and almost everything is a bit subpar?
One key feature that it seems the tec press is un-aware of with Macs is the ability to fully flash the entier device firmware using the USB-C port. and the fact apple provide the tools and software to do this. I do not think any other laptop vendor provides the ability to fully reset the entier device firmware, some provide systems to flash the bios but you can still end up broked, and that does not flash or reset other firmware on the device. The DFU mode is flashing method that is designed to not be brickable and has been proven by yeas of apple devices to work very well.
I personally would choose Microsoft Surface Pro. Many years ago i had a Yoga tablet and i loved the stand, it didn't occupy much space and did what i wanted to do, but was android, which i hated. Bought the surface pro 7 just because of the stand and the lack of fans (so it would always be silent) and i love it to this day. Silent, small, powerful enough for what i do (mostly watch youtube and tv shows). The only thing i hate about it is that it randomly decides to not detect the speakers so i have to restart it to fix it, and the intel power saving feature is extremely bad, it pretty much slows the whole device just to save a bit of battery, which i never want to do
That's just a Surface issue (at least with the 2-in-1 models like the pro & book). Run a speaker diagnostic, say no to everything, skip everything, then close out the test. It will magically start working again and is faster than turning it off and on. I also notice the speaker issue happens when you let you laptop sleep(not screen off, actually sleep) then wake it up.
I have the Surface Laptop 3 and I have disabled the sleep setting when the lid is closed to Hibernate which saves a lot of battery and the startup is maybe a few seconds longer. Also I hope they fixed it in this version, but the glass of my screen broke and got replaced twice, the second time they installed a thicker glass screen and left more space between the keyboard and screen.
@4:30, why did you give points for the laptop when he was saying they didnt do anything to update it and it was not like the other one he did like? thats not right
Surface Pad and Surface Laptop (I had the 4th gen laptop) which were known for battery swelling. Any word on if that is still a persistent problem? (it's honestly the reason I gave up on the Surface Lineup altogether. My brother's screen popped of the Surface due to battery swelling. The keyboard on my laptop developed a huge swelling). Both devices were working perfectly except for the battery swelling that necessitated device replacement.
I always look the tests up. Than I go to the store and well I always end up with a ThinkPad. No matter how hard dell or whatever gets promoted. So I am looking forward to test that. But I doubt it.
If you place producing quality content above optimizing watch times, a price point or price range and the date at which you checked to account for the price changing over time, for whichever country (pick one, US or Canada would be most logical), should always be one of the first info we get (If the price isn't available yet, just say that). Please start saving our time. People just watching for the vicarious unboxing feels will keep watching, people looking for useful information might start enjoying your videos more.
@@Mr.Danny2 yeah right. I wish LTT wasn’t so biased, they never complained when the xps got its last redesign and took away all the ports. Linus doesn’t even know how to properly use an iPhone, and then they put out review videos like what?
Is the keyboard flex better because you have the metal top? I would choose alcantara everytime over metal. I've been using the surface laptop 2 for almost 5 YEARS and its only started failing this year, best purchase ever. I love the keyboard because of the alcantara handrest and the smooth edge but noticed that your review of laptop 4 said its got too much flex. Is it a noticeable difference and does 5 make it better? (I dont really care that much about thunderbolt, the keyboard is the most important)
I think Microsoft could have made this more like a Lenovo Yoga for a different kind of 2-in-1 approach without compromising it as a laptop. At this point, why not add a 360° hinge?
Seems kinda weird that it still comes with a 720p webcam when even the Surface Go tablets have 1080p. I like that it still has the USB-A after Surface Pro and Surface Laptop Studio were USB-C only. Still kinda feeling like they need to figure out if they want to push touch screen Windows laptops to professionals or compete with Apple on the "sleek looks, minimal I/O" front, seems like trying to do both is hard and might make products harder to sell.
The editors’ inclusion of memes in videos are always great. Seeing that dumb little emoticon in the corner of the screen made me laugh every time and I am so glad for it
Intel chips are the battery killer and deal breaker for these Surface laptops. I hope / wish in a few years MSFT starts building custom ARM chips like AAPL and ditch Intel chips.
MS do not have the single minded vision or willingness to commit to such a transition. Apple is one of the few companies that is willing to work on ideas for 10+ years internal spending billions before shipping them. MS have attempted arm multiple times but they never wait until they are ready they always get pushed by the C-leves to ships before its ready since they cant justify having a 10+ year project without any return on investment.
@Goat they could build silicon but that would require a massive investment for many many years before selling anything and MS is not willing to put that amount of R&D into a single project
@Goat these days they are premeraly a services/hosting company and that is the direction they want to go in but I get your point any HW they design themselves will be exclusive to Azure and not sold to consumers as HW you put in azure you can charge for hourly so has much more $$$ to be made.
There's a couple of easy way to deal with the standby issues 1. Upgrade to Windows 10 from 11. 2. turn your computer off or use hibernate. The 3 seconds you save aren't going to make you more productive.
I would actually appreciate a longer rant/standalone video from Alex going a bit more in depth about Windows modern standby and why it's terrible and what would be better. maybe Anthony could also be in it and add some more helpful ideas on how to fix it.
Step one: do not copy Linux, this is an area where Linux absolutely fails.
Me too, I don't really understand what the problem is.
@@jeroenk3570 when you put a windows laptop into sleep by closing the lid. The laptop keeps running. Drains your battery and gets hot in your backpack.
When a MacBook goes into sleep, it actually sleeps. Doesn’t use battery and wakes up quickly when needed
@@mikebrownphotography2784 which is really dumb, because hibernating with modern nvme drives is so fast. Like a 16GB laptop takes seconds to hibernate or wake. All Microsoft needs is to standardize a method to wake from lid open/keypress from hibernation. Which they totally could do on their own hardware first.
I'd subscribe to floatplane for a longer, uncensored rant.
That's a pathetic amount of I/O for an expensive 15" laptop
it's the apple strategy
@@SnoopGotTheScoop the io on the new MacBook Pros are quite a bit better than this, lol.
@@startedtech Well sure but these start at 899. You can add a dongle boi for that difference :P
I have to use one for work, and it's IO is indeed horrible. The worst part is the single USB Type C, since using an External Display at all uses the only available USB C Port. Plus, the USB A Port on the Charger is pretty dodgy when using Linux or Enterprise Windows. I have to use USB C and USB A hubs just for it to be usable for more than 2 things at a time.
@@startedtech ah yes, 2 thunderbold ports...
I like that Alex keeps complaining about Windows modern standby. Hopefully one day Microsoft will finally fix it.
It truly is terrible but wouldn't be so bad if more laptops let you have more BIOS control so you could force S3 instead.
@@EkiToji Sure, for power users all that really matters is having some way to change it (or at least any easy way without hacks to load customized ACPI tables). But if it isn't overall better for typical users, it shouldn't be the default and shouldn't require this to get better behavior.
My brain literally expects to hear it when I see Alex and a laptop (it IS trash to be clear)
@@ids1024 I can't think of any reason Modern Standby would be better when not plugged in.
I like that he keeps mentioning it. Linus just excused the latest nvidia reviews saying people don't like to hear things repeated. That's wrong. People do need to be reminded. Thanks Alex!
12:49
A quick note for the editor. A watthour is not watt per hour, but watt times hour.
whats the difference. 48 watts per hour is the same as 48 watts x 1 hr
@@oksu132 They're different measurements altogether. Watt-hours are a description of capacity. Watts/hour is a rate of energy usage.
@@togden88 why do you think they named a capacity the definition for it's rate? its for this exact conversation. it's the same reason why mph is a measurement of speed when miles (a distance) is in its name. it's for easier conversion and can be used interchangeably. eg 50 mph (rate speed) is the same as 50 MILES per hr (distance) is the same as 50 miles per HR (time). therefore 48 watthours (capacity) is the same as 48 WATTS per hr (rate) is the same as 48 watts per HR (time). therefore saying 48 watts per hr can be interchangeable with 48 wh.
@@togden88 Watt-hour (P*t=E) is the unit of an energy and thus has a physical meaning. Watt per hour (P/t=E/t²) would be energy divided by by time squared and has no physical meaning.
@@oksu132 that's not how scientific units work, my friend. Look up dimensional analysis for more details.
I always enjoy Alex's windows modern standby rants. I'd echo others in being interested in a standalone video about it.
terrible laptop line in general. i'm surprised they put in a removable ssd. many MANY people including myself were PISSED that they lost their data permanently since the iterations prior to this one soldered the ssd drive to the board. would never buy another microcrap hardware product again. the resentment is for life! microcrap did this intentionally, not just once, but many times. cant ever respect this company after it royally screwed many people over and held their data hostage.
Alex, I would really appreciate it if you could channel all that rage you have for Windows Modern Standby and make a stand-alone video about it. I am one of these 'die-hard' Windows Users (never purchased a single Apple product) and I am definitely getting a Macbook this holiday because of the terrible sleep issues that Windows laptops have. Maybe if you guys ran a full story on this issue, someone at Microsoft will attempt to fix it. Please and thank you!!!!
Have you used hibernation mode? It's basically sleep mode, except you have to activate it in the settings.
You should try the low power mode on the modern Macs it is amazing, all the battery numbers people quote are in regular power mode! switching to low power mode tends to have a 20% perf impact for very heavy tasks but for everything else your not going to notice! Since it basicly turns off the perfomance cores and hard down clocks the GPU you end up saving a mad amount of power without a big drop in perf.
@@leonro hibernation is an annoying workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.
If sleep was working properly, you would have much faster boot-up time than with hibernation, which can actually make quite a noticable difference.
If you have the money now, the 14” and 16” MacBooks are on good sales for Black Friday.
@@sebastianjost Try disabling "connected standby" through the registry or group policy editor, I find it seems to mitigate most of the issues with modern standby, although S3 is still superior.
Could we please get a dedicated video about Windows modern standby? I would love video of Alex just going into depth on the issue. Use this channels position to encourage Microsoft to finally do something about it.
Hey editor, I really liked that shadow effect when showing the lasptop that was playing the audio, I used to be confused on that part of the video with only the text cue.
9:30: 1600nit peak brightness in HDR only. The typical max brightness is 500nits, so that’s a LOT closer to the 400 nit on Surface
classic LTT, never does its research
@@sirjamessommer it’s not their first time to make this kind of silly mistakes
@@sirjamessommerthey make this mistake all the time.
Amazing energy! My SL3 is the best small laptop I've ever used, by far. As a regular engineer / consultant guy (doing PDF and occasional autocad) with a separate gaming desktop, I would choose this over the XPS's I've owned, or anything made of plastic that sucks air from my thighs for cooling. AND, standby has never, not once, messed up. One day with my XPS 15 and my backpack almost melted and fused to my t-shirt. If you do the office things, buy a used one, even an SL3 for much cheaper and forget about the latest tech - just pure joy in the typing, trackpad, and screen experience.
I love it when he talks about windows modern standby. Its like a demon inside him just comes out for a second.
I'm whelmed by this update. Last years AMD option got three hours more battery life according to the verge, and this year they'd have 5nm and RDNA 2 IGPs. This one is still struggling to meet that last years multicore and IGP performance and just wins single core by a bit, but that's against last years AMD, again. It's also launching well into the 12th gen lifespan so even with just looking at Intel it's going to spend half the year competing with 13th gen, which hopefully fixes the efficiency. And the years old design. To me, this is the very last generation they can get away with this, hopefully they refresh to 13th gen and a full physical refresh faster. I'd give up Thunderbolt for the option for a 5nm AMD model.
Neither Zen 3 nor RPL-u/p are launching this year, so it wasn't going to use chips that don't come out until 2023 H1
I have to agree with you. Normally I like Alex for his authenticity but this review seems extremly biased! This is a mediocre laptop for late 2022, especially for the price. They had the chance to take Surface to the next level with either this low power cpu and amazing batterie life, good performance uplift with like a 1240p or both with AMDs 6000 chips. But they did not and still the review seems like it's exeptional tech. Underwhelming..
Exactly, Ryzen 6000 in these laptops would be amazing.
Asus Zenbook Flip 14 OLED UN5401RA with Ryzen 6800H is $1200 and demolishes this laptop. About 12,100 in Cinebench R23 multi-core, can run Halo Infinite at 2880x1800 medium settings 40-50 FPS, fully sustained peak performance thanks to the cooling. The chassis is insanely stiff. The keyboard is perfect. The trackpad is great. The OLED display is gorgeous. And it comes with full size HDMI, USB A, and two USB C PD ports with USB 4 (Thunderbolt). Remind my why anyone would buy a Surface laptop? Oh, and the screen is 90hz. It even comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 standard and a 1 TB OEM Samsung 980 Pro, the fastest and most power efficient SSD on the market. And I get 9-10 hours of medium-light web browsing, office tasks, and video watching. To be fair, it does make quite a few overpriced Intel laptops on the market seem like a bad deal.
@@adaml.5355 Yes Asus Zenbook and Vivobook laptops with OLED are great. I got my mom a Vivobook Pro 14 OLED recently to watch movies on the go and she loves it. Because of 5600h it also lasts quite awhile.
love the sleek design, but I wish it had a bit better performance :)
Image them with a AMD 6800U... it would be just THE laptop.
@@MallocFree90 word
yeahhh, 12th gen this late in 2022 is eh. either intel 13th gen (though that mightve required a delay) or ryzen 6000 series would have made this a much more competitive product for the price
@@filedotnix Ryzen has an astonishing integrated gpu and a way better battery life than whatever Intel can offer
Dell XPS is pretty sleek and far better performance
The macbook advertises 500 nits of brightness in SDR content. So the similarity is expected. You'll need HDR content to get the 1600 nits from it.
There are hacks to force it to use the full brightness capabilities though. BetterTouchTool ships with the ability to let you toggle an ultrabright mode, though it really messes up image clarity.
I had a Surface Laptop 3 - loved it. Good speakers, excellent screen, great build and good performance. What let it down was the design - the housing looked sleek (if a little bland) but the bezels were downright ugly. I'd had a Huawei Matebook before it, and although the Huawei's build quality was awful, the display looked much more modern thanks to the slim bezels.
Kind of disappointed to see the large bezels remain, but they are fantastic laptops.
Just bought a Matebook 16 with Ryzen 7 5800H. Absolute monster for a low price, very good build quality, good design, very good battery life, no bloatware. Check that out.
what about Screen / display quality?
@@95yashsheel On the Matebook or the Surface? Both were excellent, though the Matebook I owned had a peak brightness of 324 nits (rated at 300) and the Surface Laptop was closer to 450 (rated for 400).
Both screens were 3:2 aspect ratio and good PPI
The Surface Pro 9 comes with a 1080p webcam (since 2015) and 120hz screen (since 2021). There is absolutely no reason this more expensive laptop can't have both of those things.
i hope it dose when im ready to upgrade from my pro 7
13:00 wait for it .....
My favorite moment of Alex's reviews of laptops.
@3:31 I had the battery bloat after a year of use. Unfixable because of the glue. And Microsoft told me to, get this, pay *them* another $200 for a replacement. Got a Lenovo instead.
Great review but a few comments regarding the surface laptop 3 that I have been using since launch (3 years to the day).
1)You mention a thunderbolt port FINALLY being added. While that is great- I don’t think it really matters to your average user. Using the usbc port I connect to a dock that has 2 displays, a headset, charger, keyboard, and mouse. A dock is worlds cheaper than a whole new laptop.
2)personal opinion but I think the keyboard deserves more than you give it credit for
3)You mentioned we previously needed to use the MagSafe port to connect to things… I don’t think that is necessary (same logic as 1)
4)Build quality is on par with newest gen laptops.
Again personal opinion but until they do a complete redesign I think the 3 is still a great option 3 years later.
I work in IT, we used to buy a lot of Surface products, but they would have tons of issues like CMOS battery would fail over time, which is normal, but you can't replace it on older Surface products, and if you use two factor authentication like DUO or RSA, then you'll have sign in issues. I've had a lot of screens that detached, and down get me started with Surface Pro screens cracking, I ended up getting screen protectors for them. The worst thing is that unless the product was under warranty, you're screwed, and all Microsoft offered was an out of warranty replacement discount. I mean sure a discount is nice, but if I spent $2000 on a laptop, I expect at a minimum to be able to go 3 years without having to replace it. I'm glad they finally made them repairable. Anyways, we just go XPS 13/15 for premium laptops now, and they are far superior IMO.
Just to note: The MBP is only 1000/1600 when displaying HDR content. The Crab Rave-video is not HDR.... (If you want higher than 500 nits on the MBP during normal use you need a third party app).
That's Vivid, and it costs money I think
@@TheStopwatchGod Someone posted a free and open source alternative to that on the macbook subreddit some time back
They make this mistake on every single laptop video, because they always compare to the MBP display and then make this absurd claim. It's like they don't even read any of the comments.
@@TheStopwatchGod It does, and I think you can criticize Apple for not exposing increased brightness controls to the user, but there is no getting away from the fact that the screen can get MASSIVELY bright.
13:20 this is an understatement ;)
I closed my surface laptop 4 one night with 60% battery and when I woke up it was dead. Nothing was open except for chrome. I tried to look at what drained the battery and the settings had no idea. Sometimes ill open the lid and it will take 15-20 seconds to turn on for no reason. Most of the time it's instant.
It's honestly so bad, it's unbelievable.
Alex, the MacBook does deliver 1600 nits but that requires HDR content. Standard gamma stuff on macOS is limited to 500 nits. It’s the best laptop display for contrast, color accuracy, and overall brightness on the market.
1:31 3.5inch headphone jack!? How did they fit that in such a small chassis??🤔
Killed it in the editing for the speaker test.
To the editor, who may want to learn a fun fact:
At 12:52 the dialogue is "Watt-hours" but the on screen text says "Watt per hour". "Watt-hours" is the correct one. They're not the same units lol, watt-hours is (watt * hour), while watt-per-hour is (watt / hour). Watt-hours is actually a unit of energy that is time-independent, the time dimension in "hour" is canceled by the per-time dimension in "watt".
The reason they use watt-hours instead of joules is because they think people are more familiar with watts and hours. Watt-hours and Joules are dimensionally the same.
Keep hammering them on the standby thing Alex, you're doing the Tech Lord's work.
The action music during the Windows Modern Standby section is a great touch.
MS fails with the power adapter, they missed the chance to add data access to the brick and add a useful port.
Why. WHY do Apple MacBooks or MS Surface laps not have a simple latch. JUST a latch to open the top of the case like a door. No screws. Just a latch. Maybe a hinge. Just make the keyboard/trackpad/touchID sensor becabled and enable repairability like that.
Our company stopped using surface because of the lack of thunderbolt and the chargers and displays kept breaking. I’m not confident build quality is any better this time around
I have one of those that I bought “refurbished” in 2018 or 2019 I’m not even sure. I’m not even sure if it’s the first or the second generation lol. It’s still is my main machine and love it.
I put refurbished within quotation marks because I’m almost certain nobody had used it before me. It was owned by a large corporation which they probably bought in quantities before returning them or whatever. I got it for about $650 - $700 I believe. One of the best purchases I have ever made.
I've been using my surface laptop 4 with an external monitor on the USB C port and it works just fine. Not sure what difference thunderbolt would make, unless I wanted a bunch of external monitors rather than just one. I have a printer and charger hooked up to the USB C hub too.
0:33 i can actually answer this not so well but, it is because we all know that fancy people don't like big screen laptops and big screen laptop users don't deserve a nice fancy box because: reasons.
For my work laptop I have a surface book 3. I was wondering why hell the computer never went to sleep and instead decided to cook itself in my laptop bag and kill the battery. It's infuriating. Then I bought a XPS 15 for personal use only to find out it does the same thing. I thought clearly the problem is me and I'm somehow not putting my computer to sleep properly. Now after you mentioning this modern standby "feature" I've finally found out i'm not alone!! please make a video on this!!
Put it in hibernate instead to keep it from killing itself
Try to change settings to hybernate on lid close.
I'd consider a Surface Laptop when it gets P series (or Ryzen 6000 U series) CPU *and* a haptic trackpad. Oh, and maybe when they'll use up the internal space on the 15" model for bigger heatsinks and batteries.
true. wish there was more competition around this price point (and lower bc laptops should not all be at least a thousand dollars) in windows laptops bc the m1 macbook air for all its macos and arm caveats is 2 years old by now and still feels more capable than some of the current windows laptop offerings.
@@filedotnix There's plenty of competition (at Costco).
Really loving the editing lately! Makes watching it super super enjoyable and engaging ♥️
6:50 "for comparison" ... loud ad starts playing, pure genius 🤣
At least you can open it without completely destroying the metal now.
ngl if microsoft could subsidize these laptops and make them half their current prices with double the specs,(to be able to push buyers to their services and whatnot.) these laptops would probably be more popular then macs just for the gamepass avalibility alone.
I've recently just bought one of these and I have to say the lack of I/O isn't an issue at all for me. Most people aren't going to need more than what is offered. I've been having a good time using it as my general use laptop.
Editing with this one was 👌👌👌 well done editors! 8:34 lmaoo I loved this one
I get the Windows modern standby issue, I experienced it a couple of times with my Surface Go 2. But it's been a year since I upgraded to Surface Laptop Studio, and I have never had a single instance of the issue. The laptop is always in sleep by closing the lid and I hardly lose any battery throughout the day. I think a deep dive and finding how/why it happens will be great.
Damn, I had the Modern Standby issue with my Surface Pro 5 and it was annoying enough to get me to also upgrade to a Surface Laptop Studio. Unfortunately, my SLS does the same thing. Welp, it is what it is.
9:27 that’s only for HDR. For normal content viewing they say it’s a lot less (but I can’t remember the number).
I'd been holding off on a new laptop this whole year, waiting to see what the Surface 5 would bring. Turns out, new intel only versions at higher prices with nothing else different. I ended up spending 50% less to get a comparable Framework, and while I've only had it about a week, I'm very happy with it.
So for the Peak brightness, 1600 nits on the Macbook Pro is only achieved when displaying HDR content, this requires a software trigger to allow the display to output above 400 nits. There's an app called Vivid that will trigger HDR brightness on SDR content.
- This doesn't damage the display as Vivid uses Apple Official HDR SDK
- The color remains accurate
- full control of up to 1000nits sustain.
At this rate why not get Framework, they have about the same price, same performance and plus you can actually fix it yourself with standard parts
I took that back, Framework have BETTER performance, so there we go...
You know why do many laptops have poor io? Because nobody cares. Most people don't need IO, or if they do, are using a USB-C dock so they replicate to display, ethernet, and peripherals with a single cable.
I literally don't use any IO on my personal laptop, and my work laptop only needs a single USB-C port to be usable.
tbh The Surface Laptop 4 has one of the best laptop keyboards, they feel even better than the M1 MacBook Air. Not sure what Alex was on about, maybe perhaps in comparison to the Surface Laptop 5.
10:54 that webcam looks way more than just fine. And so does that internal audio.
Loving the thumbs up counter. We need this more for Alex's videos!
8:15 when your current processor gets called out for being slowAF and you can't afford to upgrade yet.... *cries*
Windows sleep mode has always been pretty hit or miss in my experience. Even 10 years ago, I remember opening my laptop up for class and finding it extremely hot and battery completely drained because of Windows failing to sleep.
I love the dramatic tone shift when talking about modern standby. Thanks for the review. Great work as always.
Give your editor a raise 👌👍
Loved the editing on this video, another great watch!
I’m fairly certain the box you got for the 15 is what they send to businesses/ suppliers as they don’t care about the packaging. The 13” box is more for consumers so it has to look nice on the shelf
I can't believe people complain about including 8gb of RAM and 256GB of storage in a base Macbook air meanwhile everybody ignores it when Microsoft does it and charges even more than apple for it's upgrades.
8gb RAM on MacOS and Windows isn't the same anyways, no matter what the idiots say. MacOS doesn't take up like 4gb from it like Windows does, which makes this even worse.
I just purchased the i7 / 16gb / 512gb black 15 inch surface laptop for my wife. That did come in the fancy packaging. So far very impressed. I may consider a Surface for myself when my latest ThinkPad needs replacing.
14:45 was waiting the entire video for this. The moment the audio changed followed by the slight camera shift - knew exactly what was coming. Cinematic master piece.
Only the people who have experience windows modern standby can understand his pain.
9:15 well you could really tell that the macbook has a way better contrast than the surface one. The display on the surface just looks too foggy if you compare it to the macbook.
Giving the charger a secondary use so it doesn't feel like you're carrying so much dead weight is honestly a pretty cool touch.
I don't get how the conclusion is that it's fantastic when your summary of the features is basically that nothing has changed and almost everything is a bit subpar?
The editing on this is top notch.. editor should get a raise also everytime the thumbs up counter raised up i loved it.
One key feature that it seems the tec press is un-aware of with Macs is the ability to fully flash the entier device firmware using the USB-C port. and the fact apple provide the tools and software to do this. I do not think any other laptop vendor provides the ability to fully reset the entier device firmware, some provide systems to flash the bios but you can still end up broked, and that does not flash or reset other firmware on the device. The DFU mode is flashing method that is designed to not be brickable and has been proven by yeas of apple devices to work very well.
12:53 Oof, 45.8W per Hour != 48Wh please fix this asap!
I personally would choose Microsoft Surface Pro. Many years ago i had a Yoga tablet and i loved the stand, it didn't occupy much space and did what i wanted to do, but was android, which i hated. Bought the surface pro 7 just because of the stand and the lack of fans (so it would always be silent) and i love it to this day. Silent, small, powerful enough for what i do (mostly watch youtube and tv shows). The only thing i hate about it is that it randomly decides to not detect the speakers so i have to restart it to fix it, and the intel power saving feature is extremely bad, it pretty much slows the whole device just to save a bit of battery, which i never want to do
That's just a Surface issue (at least with the 2-in-1 models like the pro & book). Run a speaker diagnostic, say no to everything, skip everything, then close out the test. It will magically start working again and is faster than turning it off and on. I also notice the speaker issue happens when you let you laptop sleep(not screen off, actually sleep) then wake it up.
I have the Surface Laptop 3 and I have disabled the sleep setting when the lid is closed to Hibernate which saves a lot of battery and the startup is maybe a few seconds longer. Also I hope they fixed it in this version, but the glass of my screen broke and got replaced twice, the second time they installed a thicker glass screen and left more space between the keyboard and screen.
The editing is delightful
damn, why can't there be a normal powerful laptop with touchscreen and pen support?
Love the editing. Hilarious. Specially during speaker test
“Years”
- Alex
@4:30, why did you give points for the laptop when he was saying they didnt do anything to update it and it was not like the other one he did like? thats not right
So what's the most demanding thing you can do on this device with TB4? Any unexpected limitations?
Jump roping with it is not advised
Did you turn on enhanced audio on the surface? Makes. Huge difference
My school disabled the windows hello 😔
9:42 how does Apple get away with lying about brightness? Am I missing something?
man, imagine a gaming laptop with such a design and build quality with 13 inch display. god, I would buy it immediately!
Those timed cuts on crab rave... Beautiful editing, team. Love your work
Surface Pad and Surface Laptop (I had the 4th gen laptop) which were known for battery swelling. Any word on if that is still a persistent problem? (it's honestly the reason I gave up on the Surface Lineup altogether. My brother's screen popped of the Surface due to battery swelling. The keyboard on my laptop developed a huge swelling). Both devices were working perfectly except for the battery swelling that necessitated device replacement.
What is a surface pad?
The dude couldn't fix his old computer due to anti-repar build so... he bought a macbook instead?
Jeez, talk about a step learning curve...
Ah yes. A great laptop to go to town on the windows registry. And who can forget DLL? Amazing software.
The editing when the beat dropped in crab rave was perfection. Kudos!
I always look the tests up. Than I go to the store and well I always end up with a ThinkPad. No matter how hard dell or whatever gets promoted. So I am looking forward to test that. But I doubt it.
If you place producing quality content above optimizing watch times, a price point or price range and the date at which you checked to account for the price changing over time, for whichever country (pick one, US or Canada would be most logical), should always be one of the first info we get (If the price isn't available yet, just say that). Please start saving our time. People just watching for the vicarious unboxing feels will keep watching, people looking for useful information might start enjoying your videos more.
The surface line is so far behind on everything and it sucks that nobody calls them out on this
I/O
Display
Power
Battery
Kinda true, really hate premium windows laptops. If you have the money buy a m1 air, if not there are great 500$ Ryzen laptops
@@Mr.Danny2 yeah right.
I wish LTT wasn’t so biased, they never complained when the xps got its last redesign and took away all the ports.
Linus doesn’t even know how to properly use an iPhone, and then they put out review videos like what?
Is the keyboard flex better because you have the metal top? I would choose alcantara everytime over metal. I've been using the surface laptop 2 for almost 5 YEARS and its only started failing this year, best purchase ever. I love the keyboard because of the alcantara handrest and the smooth edge but noticed that your review of laptop 4 said its got too much flex. Is it a noticeable difference and does 5 make it better? (I dont really care that much about thunderbolt, the keyboard is the most important)
I think Microsoft could have made this more like a Lenovo Yoga for a different kind of 2-in-1 approach without compromising it as a laptop. At this point, why not add a 360° hinge?
13:42, yes i have switched to the Mac for those reasons
Apple's charging port: "Magsafe"
Microsoft's charging port: "Proprietary BS"
So you're telling us Magsafe isn't proprietary? I got news for you.
@@marcel151 i was being sarcastic
bro 45Wh for a 13" laptop in 2022
A MacBook Air from like 2012 has a 50Wh battery wtf is this chromebook-tier use of space 😭
The irony of buying a MacBook because you're angry you can't repair your surface
Seems kinda weird that it still comes with a 720p webcam when even the Surface Go tablets have 1080p. I like that it still has the USB-A after Surface Pro and Surface Laptop Studio were USB-C only. Still kinda feeling like they need to figure out if they want to push touch screen Windows laptops to professionals or compete with Apple on the "sleek looks, minimal I/O" front, seems like trying to do both is hard and might make products harder to sell.
3.5 inch headphone jack would be yuuuuge!
Even the larger headphone ports are only 1/4" lol
The editors’ inclusion of memes in videos are always great. Seeing that dumb little emoticon in the corner of the screen made me laugh every time and I am so glad for it
Intel chips are the battery killer and deal breaker for these Surface laptops. I hope / wish in a few years MSFT starts building custom ARM chips like AAPL and ditch Intel chips.
MS do not have the single minded vision or willingness to commit to such a transition. Apple is one of the few companies that is willing to work on ideas for 10+ years internal spending billions before shipping them. MS have attempted arm multiple times but they never wait until they are ready they always get pushed by the C-leves to ships before its ready since they cant justify having a 10+ year project without any return on investment.
@Goat they could build silicon but that would require a massive investment for many many years before selling anything and MS is not willing to put that amount of R&D into a single project
@Goat these days they are premeraly a services/hosting company and that is the direction they want to go in but I get your point any HW they design themselves will be exclusive to Azure and not sold to consumers as HW you put in azure you can charge for hourly so has much more $$$ to be made.
There's a couple of easy way to deal with the standby issues
1. Upgrade to Windows 10 from 11.
2. turn your computer off or use hibernate. The 3 seconds you save aren't going to make you more productive.
Short Circuit edits are the best, love it.
great job with the editing, v2FINALFINAL