Hands-on with Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop: It’s what’s inside that counts
Many of Microsoft’s Surface devices aim at something: a tablet. A mini laptop. A pull-forward design. The Surface Laptop 2024 (7th Edition) is less about the Microsoft hardware than what’s inside it — namely, a new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip.
Like the Surface Laptop 5, the Surface Laptop 2024 comes in two sizes, a slightly larger 13.8-inch (versus a 13.5-inch display for its predecessor) and the 15-inch model. On paper, the 15-inch model is a third of a pound lighter, but I didn’t notice a difference while lifting it. Both displays put out 400 nits, which is close enough to the 384 nits we measured the Surface Laptop 5 at.
All told, it’s another way of saying that the most recent Surface Laptop 5 doesn’t really offer that many obvious changes. It’s the same design, but with some tweaks; the touchpad hides the haptics found inside the Surface Laptop Studio.
Unlike the Surface Pro 2024, whose Flex Pro keyboard benefits from the haptic touchpad, the haptics here didn’t do anything for me at first touch.