When Apple released the first couple of Apple Silicon Macs back in late 2020, the one thing the company pointedly did not change was the exterior design. Apple didn’t comment much on it at the time, but the subliminal message was that these were just Macs, they looked the same as other Macs, and there was nothing to worry about.
Microsoft’s new flagship Surface hardware, powered exclusively by Arm-based chips for the first time rather than a mix of Arm and Intel/AMD, takes a similar approach: inwardly overhauled, externally unremarkable. These are very similar to the last (and the current) Intel-powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop designs, and in the case of the Surface Pro, they actually look identical.
Familiar on the Outside
Both PCs still include some of the defining elements of Surface hardware designs. Both have screens with 3:2 aspect ratios that make them taller than most typical laptop displays, which still use 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratios. Those screens also support touch input via fingers or the Surface Pen, and they still use gently rounded corners (which Windows doesn’t formally recognize in-software, so the corners of your windows will get cut off, not that it has ever been a problem for me).
Both devices have face-scanning webcams for Windows Hello authentication, usable for logging into your system, activating passkeys in your browser, and (when it’s available) unlocking the Recall feature, among other things. And each continues to include a Surface Connect port and a Surface Connect charger by default, though the USB-C ports on both devices work equally well for charging, and I’ve used USB-C chargers with these laptops pretty much exclusively outside of performance testing. (If you wonder why Microsoft is still using Surface Connect, consider how rapturously received the return of the Mac’s MagSafe charging port was. Surface Connect is fussier than MagSafe, but they’re conceptually similar).
The main takeaway is that, like using the earliest M1 Macs, the experience of using Snapdragon X-powered Arm PCs is mostly indistinguishable from using any other recent Surface device as long as you don’t trip over app compatibility problems. More on that in a bit.
Surface Laptop 7 vs. Surface Pro 11
Of the two machines, I find myself gravitating toward the Surface Laptop far more than the Surface Pro 11, but that’s because my computer usage is weighted heavily in the direction of keyboard-and-trackpad input, and I prefer the larger screen and more stable base. The Surface Pro remains a usable laptop design, and its best selling point as a tablet remains its built-in kickstand.
But Windows’ gradual retreat from tablet-y features—the retirement of a tablet UI in Windows 11, the pending death of the Windows Subsystem for Android, and a continuing dearth of truly touch-optimized native Windows apps—means that unless you do a lot of drawing or note-taking with the Surface Pen, the Laptop would be the system I’d get. Not that the Surface Pro is bad; it’s pretty, well-constructed, and functional. But the basics of this PC were designed around Windows 8, and there are just things about it that make less sense to me when running Windows 11.