The Vergecast - Surface extravaganza: a review of Windows 11 and Microsoft’s new Surface lineup

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Dieter Bohn hosts a discussion on reviews for the newest Microsoft products launched this fall — Windows 11, Surface Pro 8, Surface Laptop Studio, and Surface Go 3 — with The Verge's Monica Chin, Dan Seifert, and Tom Warren. Further reading: Windows 11 review: a familiar home that’s still being renovated  Surface Pro 8 review: the best of both worlds Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review: back to the drawing board Microsoft Surface Go 3 review: left behind Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like,

Build Me a Revenue Dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast. My name is Dieter Bone, and it is Tuesday, which means that we are doing a run of special episodes. You may have heard a bunch of the episodes that Ashley Carman did about AI. They are amazing.

For basically the rest of the year, we're going to do some focused episodes on a bunch of different topics, some of which I'm very excited about. I'm also excited about today's topic, which is I'm just going to call it the Surface Stravaganza, because Surface Spectacular is too.

obvious. We have an amazing group of guests here. We have Dan Seaford. Hi. I'm here. Monica Chin. Hello. And Tom Warren. Hello. And we are going to talk about all of the surface devices that just came out. All of us have reviewed one of them. And we also have Windows 11 to discuss. So it's going to be a fun conversation, especially because we're just going to jump right into Windows 11. And what's more fun than Windows 11, Tom, honestly? Anything? Windows 11 ice cream? Or Windows 11? 60 animated music festival with an NFT free. I think those are kind of fun.

Yeah, this is worth talking about. So Microsoft famously had like the Rolling Stones launch Windows 95, massive huge launch, the Friends cast doing infomercials for it. And nothing has ever lived up to that. But this year the launch was weird because one, we were promised that Windows 10 was the last version of Windows and that turned out to not be true. Uh-oh.

But two, it's been in like a big public beta for a long time. time and we all sort of knew it was coming, and we thought there was going to be like a different version of it for foldables. And it just sort of like rolled out over time. And then it landed with custom ice cream and an NFT. Is that, is that about the size of this launch? Would you say, Tom? Yeah, the launch is like, I appreciate that Microsoft's not doing in-person events at the moment

stuff, obviously, for the pandemic. But that launch event was super weird. They could have just not done anything, which I didn't think they were doing anything until, like, hours before when they suddenly sent all this ice cream out to people. and directing people to this website. I watched it at like 1 a.m. my time last night, and I was just like, the hell is going on here. I was trying to mint these NFTs,

which were basically just promo links to Amazon and Walmart entries for laptops, like $100 off. There's such a missed opportunity here for them to do a spinal tap collaboration joke because they were turning it up to 11, and they just didn't do it. I think they probably had a marketing budget, it and they were probably at one point thinking they were going to have an in-person event,

and then they were like, let's give away ice cream and at FTs. That sounds cool. So the Windows 11 review and the fact that you can maybe get it right now is fascinating because we have been living with it for so long. You in particular have been living with it for so long. And so it's a big release, but it's also, I don't know, it feels like a weird one because, again, like we were expecting them to stick with Windows 10 for a long time. And it also feels like it's not so much a giant splashy release or everything changes now as it is it's a moment in time as they're developing it

and they just picked this particular moment to say it's official. Yeah, essentially like I said in the review really, it's unfinished. Personally, I also feel like they've kind of rushed it to that day and I'm not entirely sure why. I think we spoke about this on the Vergecast every week. It's driven by like a

refresh cycle for PCs and stuff, I think at that date. But yeah, it's very unfinished. It doesn't mean that it's bad. It's just not a kind of, I think, what people we were expecting. The consistency, the UI changes aren't quite there. There's some missing features. And like the rest of it's like great. Like it's, it feels modern, I think, in most parts until you're sort of like scratch under the surface and you're like, oh, I need to change something with my mouth. And it's like, ah, Windows 95 and like, you know, the Rolling Stones. Yeah.

And all that sort of stuff. That is very much Windows 11. Like they've done a bunch of blog posts and videos of like how they've, you know how like designers sit around in these really fancy rooms? Like the perfect lighting and they're all like, this is, you know, this is how we've designed this, this amazing bloom wallpaper. It's why every single detail matters. From the tiniest hinge to every pixel you will see on the display, to every piece of the experience that flows across Windows 11. Are designers not allowed to yell? Do they have to whisper?

No, they have to like really radio voice. They've done loads of all that sort of stuff. And then it's like, you know, you can imagine a TikTok video of it, right? It'd be like that video. And it'd be like a really horrible noise going when you open like the mouse settings or something. Like I haven't upgraded on my main PC, which I said in the review. And I did like a really angry rant. I hate the Windows 11 task bar the other week.

And to you probably say everyone's kind of saying the same thing. Right. Like a lot of people are missing this task bar. Yeah. There's a million of these things that we need to get into. But we should just, for those who are unfamiliar or who are holding off and updating, what's like the top line three or four things that Windows 11 is supposed to do compared to Windows 10? Yeah.

So like there is a bunch of good stuff in there. So like of Snap Assist and Snap layouts and Snap groups, they keep sort of interchanging the Snap Assist and Snap Layouts thing. But let's just call it Snap. Yeah. That feature, you've obviously been able. to snap Windows CyberSydeen in Windows for years. But now it's like, it makes it a lot easier. And it surfaces stuff that perhaps you need is no gestures for or keyboard shortcuts

and, you know, like power user features right to the front. You hover over the maximise button and it's all quite there. And, you know, I think that genuinely will improve your Windows usability for a bunch of people who use it daily and that perhaps never knew that stuff existed. So I think that's good. The new Windows store, although it's still a little bit clunky here and there. It looks a lot better. It's a little bit easier to navigate around.

It feels like it responds a bit quicker. But most importantly, it's a little bit more open, so there's more apps in it. So it's like actually a place that you can go to and go, okay, I need Zoom. Click install. Don't have to worry like what XI'm downloading or whatever. Yeah.

You're trusting Microsoft, you know, verified them all. A Discord. And it's just a bunch of stuff. I think Mozilla announced today or the other day that Firefox is going to be in there. Not Chrome, of course. No Chrome yet. No.

I wouldn't be surprised that happens, though. like I feel like it will. They might as well. Yeah. Like it's just another point for Google to be in. Although, you know, the Mozilla Firefox thing, it's kind of interesting because Firefox has obviously worked around the browser restrictions thing. Right.

So they can one click and set default. So I'm curious if that's, if Microsoft's going to allow it in the store. Right. Yeah, I mean, it would be hilarious to have Chrome in the store and then you can't change the default browser after you install Chrome. Yeah, very easily. I was having trouble doing it. Like when, because I always, whenever I said a new PC,

I always make Chrome the default, but it's a lot harder to do in settings now. You have to scroll through several more things to do it. Yeah, so basically, when you install a new browser now, like you'll click on a link, like, say from the mail app or something, it'll be like, oh, you've got new browsers. Do you want to open it in this browser or keep using Edge? And if you don't tick, always open it in this browser, which is a really kind of, you know, small option at the bottom.

If you don't do that. I miss it every time. You never get that option again. Yeah, exactly. You have to go and dig into these crazy settings. But Microsoft CEO, Satchi Nadella, says that Windows 11 is the most open operating system ever. So there's that.

I mean, there's also that. Well, I mean, it does run a bunch of Linux stuff. And in theory, it's someday it's going to run Android apps, right? Yeah. There's one update per year for Windows 11. So I think in a year probably. Right. realistically on that.

But yeah, like, so the Windows store is there. That's a good one. The new UI is good, I think, like overall. Like I like the rounded corners and the sort of like depth and color that they've put on, all the apps in the operating system in general. I think that's all great. But to be honest, there's not much there to actually say, oh, you should get Windows 11 because of this. I think there would be if they had some of the features that they actually promised were there.

Dynamic refresh rate. Oh, we are going to get to that. We have got three hours planned to talk about refresh rates on the surface stravaganza. It's going to be very exciting. I want to get into the – so it's got this new look. It's not a reason to upgrade, but it's nice even though gets rid of some taskbar functionality. But every year with the Windows redesign, every time there's a window, Windows redesign, going back to at least Vista, it's been, well, the new stuff looks nice,

but as soon as you dig two levels deep into settings, you're looking at the old stuff. Yeah. And I feel like that's gone from a complaint to just like, I don't know, it's an accepted part of Windows? Is it a thing that we should still complain about? Is it a thing that still bothers you? Is it a thing that they need to fix? Or is it just, yep, that's just how Windows is. There's always a weird, you know, box that was designed in 1995 sitting in there somewhere.

Yeah, it's like the whole thing about Windows is. It's so weird because there's always like three or four ways to do things. Like, you know, you can pull up the file explorer by clicking on the button or you can press Windows key and E, for example. Like that's a, that's a shortcut. And it's just a variety of ways to navigate around to the point where you sometimes stumble across stuff that's like so old. Yeah. And it's so easy to stumble across it if you are a power user especially. But I feel like they're getting so close to like being at a point where they don't surface that stuff as much.

So it kind of does go into the background. and it can just sort of sit there. Like, I didn't mind that it's there. I think it's cool that they have these backwards compatibility and stuff. But I just don't want to see it when I'm like trying to figure out my mouse things. Like, here's the most insane thing about Windows, right? So I switch between, well, I used to switch between Windows and Mac a lot. So in Windows, I would change my scroll direction on my scroll on my mouse just to match the Mac

because I kind of got used to the Mac way of doing it. Yep. Now, in Windows, I can't do that unless I dig into the registry and set it. Really? Yeah, unless your mouse manufacturer has enabled it in their custom app settings or whatever, there's no way to do it through Windows. And now, if I install a monthly update in Windows 11, so I've been trying out all the dev betas, it resets that those registry keys that I've switched every time there's a monthly update. So I'm like, ah. This is point in your review, Tom, is that there's like, that is an example.

There's another, like, what we're kind of used to on other platforms, other modern OS's things. that Windows still doesn't have. It doesn't automatically switch between light and dark mode based on time of day. You can't do that. You have to manually change your settings on that. And it's like every mobile OS does that. Mac OS does that. Like everyone is accustomed to that feature by now.

Something like, you know, we talked about seeing the Windows 95 UI. Well, now we've got Windows 95 UI, Windows 98 UI, Windows XPUI, Windows 7 UI, Windows 8 UI, Windows 10 UI, and Windows 11 UI. And so when you change volume in Windows 11, you get the Windows 8 volume box, which looks so out of place in the Windows 11 UI. It's just like, these are little things that you might not notice right away, and really does it ruin your experience? Probably not, well, why didn't they finish that?

Like, it's not like they don't have a lot of people working on this stuff. And so, like, why aren't these things kind of addressed? And it's just kind of weird. And every time there's a new version of Windows, they just pile on more and more. And then it's just like... And the dark mode is a good point of that. Like, so I put the dark. dark mode on the whole time.

If I do start and run, it's like light mode. And then if I go into task manager, it's like light mode. It's just light mode like basically half the operating system and half is dark mode. It's just, it's really inconsistent. And I kind of hate that because I've been trying to dark mode everything on my computer. Because if I'm working late at night, it's like it really is pretty jarring if you're, if you're not in dark mode. But yeah, that inconsistency is just, it's just disappointing.

I think they could have given it a bit more time, I think. I appreciate that with Windows 10, they went to this whole, you know, cumulative updates and monthly updates, and every six months there's a bigger update. But I don't think that's reason to ship this in quite the way that they have. Well, do you think that they are thinking about Windows 11 in the same way that they thought about Windows 10, where they did have all these, you know, little updates? Or are they, you mentioned they're moving to like a more of a yearly big update cadence. So to me, part of me wants to be like, well, Windows is like Chrome OS. There's a new version all the time, and sometimes they make a big deal out of it. And the fact that this was the launch is like, well, it's not finished, but Windows has never finished.

It's in all of our hearts, and that's truly what it is. It's an ongoing project forever and ever, and so it's fine. Or is it more, no, no, they had a deadline, and they missed it. And so they rushed to finish some stuff, and they just super didn't finish other stuff. Yeah, so I feel like, so when they released the beta, it was basically the operating system was final then. in like relative terms because the way that they're actually servicing it is they're doing these things called cumulative updates on top. They're like a package of fixes and changes. So I feel like they're going to do that a lot more now.

So it's going to be a monthly thing. The weirdest part about all of this, right, is that I never run a beta operating system on my main PC. But if I was to upgrade to Windows 11 on my main PC, I think I'd probably want the beta version. Interesting. Which is strange because it has all the fixes, it has all the latest changes and improvements and stuff. They've said they're doing one big sort of major update a year, but I feel like we'll still get like bigger changes, you know, in the coming months and stuff. Right. I would imagine there's going to be some of that task bar stuff.

I feel like they're going to, you know, I know that internally they have builds where dark mode is a lot better. They just obviously weren't quite ready to ship it in the other day. So I feel like that stuff's all going to come. But I don't think we'll have to wait a year for it. Okay. We should talk about the task bar. It's in the middle now, but they also stripped out a bunch of, a functionality.

Yes. I mean, pull the room. Who is happy with the task bar? I hate it. You hate it? Is it the design or is it the fact that you can't drag and drop icons or what? So what I hate is that I am a religious user of the search bar. Like every time I need to find something I search for it.

I don't use file folders, stuff like that. I search for everything. And it used to be so large. And now it's this tiny little thing in the middle of a sea of these other icons. And it's just slightly hard for me to find, but I use it so often that it like adds time to my day. want that to be like half of my task bar again? I don't mind it because one, I've never put the Windows task bar on the side or the top, which you can't do anymore. But I've never done that. So it's always been at the bottom for me. I like having all the icons in the middle. I find that it's just

like easier for me to click them, especially I'm using a big ultra wide screen monitor a lot of times. And when the task bar is like all the way in the lower left corner, it's hard for me to find. So in the middle is a little bit easier for me. I think that the widgets are extremely. extremely stupid. And I think that, like, certain things, like you mentioned, drag and drop icons would be nice and stuff like that. But, like, in general, the things that slow me down are on the lower right corner, the new action center options or whatever. It's harder to get to... I'm having so much trouble with those. Yeah, it's harder to get to the apps that are running and things like that. I can't, like, pin them as easily. I can't change things like my Wi-Fi network

settings or my Bluetooth settings as easily. I end up having to go into the settings menu. So there's a bunch of like little things that add up. But I think the most offensive thing of it is that the chat icon forces teams on me and I can't right click and remove that. I have to literally go into settings and turn off a toggle for the chat icon that I have no interest in ever using. It's the most open operating system ever with equal access to all apps. I do like that they change the colors in the settings so that it's like a little easier to see what all the categories are on the left side. But I do, I still find settings like as difficult if not more difficult. to navigate as it was before, but now I am in it like all the time because so many of the things I

used to access, not in settings, I now have to dive in to find. One thing, Tom, you brought up, there seems to be an inspiration from mobile operating systems. And this is a theme across Mac and Windows and even ChromeOS, honestly, where a bunch of the interaction models and features seem like they're designed for people that are used to, I don't know, more phone or tablet stuff. So like the centered dock, the centered start menu. for me, the big one is the widgets. I don't like the new task bar slash start menu because I'm the guy who likes live tiles still. I'm the one who thinks that they're useful.

And they're more useful than the widgets in their current state. And that whole widget bar is just part and parcel just, oh, people on phones have accepted that we can throw a bunch of news updates and vague ads on our own personal information left of the home screen. So we're just going to do that on Windows. And like, all of those widgets are useless to me. in a way that lifetous at least you could pretend that there was going to be some utility there. I don't use widgets on my phone either, to be fair. I don't know. The only one that's actually useful is weather.

And that used to be slightly useful because it was in the task bar. But they were like, nope, let's go hide it away again. So you can go see the rain on the side. Yeah, like, you know my thoughts about the task bar. But I will say that the main thing about the task bar for me is it's ruined my sleep. And I say that because if I'm playing a game at like midnight, before I know it, it's like 3 or 4 a.m. And I haven't realized because my damn clock is not on my second monitor anymore because he's disappeared.

So like, that's my main gripe with it. I can probably work around the other stuff. I can buy you a clock, Tom. I can, I know. But it's not, it's not natural for me. It's like I just look to my other monitor for the time, like when I have a full screen app. But yeah, like the widgets, like there's no third party widgets in there. I don't know whether they're ever going to extend it to allow that.

and they force you into edge. Yep. It's like those things are troublesome. And then it's powered by like this whole AI engine MSN underneath for the news. Which to be honest, like they surface a lot of junk in there. And they have like, they used to have human editors in there that would curate pretty okay content, I guess. It was a lot better than it is now.

And they have like fired them on. And I think I heard recently that I think they're all gone now. Where have I heard that story before? Yeah. I'll just tell you right now, one of the top widgets is, a big alligator eats small alligator. That one I might use. I would click.

I would click that. That sounds more useful than weather. Last thing on Windows, I mean, there's so many things we could do, but where do you feel like the upgrade situation has netted out? Because there's a whole lot of, oh, you got out the modern processor, it's got us forth these security features, and everyone's real mad, and then maybe you can fix it, and then Microsoft had mixed messaging. And, well, it's here now.

What is the story with upgrades? Where is it actually landing? landing in, it's fine, or is it landing on all this is a fiasco? I know, people, people are pest. People are really angry. And particularly, I think from what I hear for most people is that it's seventh gen. Because I think people have, I don't think people are really necessarily still on the fifth or sixth gen, really expecting a new windows.

But I think the seventh gen people particularly are annoyed because I think that was when people like last did the big, you know, core and I'm refresh on their machine. So those people are annoyed that they can. can't get the upgrade. But like the way it's netted out is essentially it's eighth gen and newer, with the exception of the Surface Studio chip that for some reason is seventh gen and supported. It wasn't it like sixth gen? Jeez, that thing was ancient. Yeah. Like I wonder why that's supported. Perhaps because it's still being sold and it'd be weird. Really embarrassing. But like the surface go, the old, the original Surface Go, which is only three years old and you could have paid $700 for with a keyboard,

is not eligible to upgrade for Windows 11, and there's no, like, easy bypass there. It is just, like, the processor's too old and too slow, tough noggies, which is, like, kind of weird because all of our experience testing Windows 11 across a wide variety of machines, obviously, Tom, you tested a bunch, but we also pulled the staff,

and we had at least a dozen people using Windows 11 on a wide variety of machines. Nobody had any performance issues compared to Windows 10. Like, it performs just fine. So it's very odd that there's, like, this, you know, I understand there's a security level part of it, but there also seems to be like a performance ceiling that Microsoft wants your processor to be above in order to install Windows 11, which doesn't really make a ton of sense for

considering based on our experience so far at least. The security related stuff and their big security push, like I totally see where they're coming from. They do need to push like the Windows hardware along. And I think what we'll see is in time they will enable some of these security options where it will probably make sense like, okay, if I did have that enabled on my older you know, seventh-gen

process and then it will actually have performance impacts. There's been like a story floating around over the past week that if you enable VBS, which is their,

their virtualisation-based security, if you enable that, then you get like performance drops of like 20 or 30% in games. So that's like problematic. So they've gotten this massive white doc that they released yesterday

of like all their security things. And like reading through it it's like it's really well put together and I could see their point and why they've done it. I just just, think they didn't communicate it very well and it was all that confusion around tpm 2.0 and all that sort of stuff and i think in time we'll look back at this and go that was controversial but it kind of made

sense right like i think when we're in 10 years and windows machines are all getting hacked to pieces or some aren't because of these security things would be like okay that was the point in time where like they tried to shift things and okay kind of made sense that's what i predict anyway i mean the thing with windows is actually in some ways to me it's like android it's it's just it's part of the furniture. It's like the base state that a majority of people use. So we're going to get into how it's instantiated on surface devices. Now, that's very interesting this year. But Monica, you have reviewed more Windows computers in the last year and a half than I will in my lifetime. Do you anticipate that Windows 11 is going to looking at all the different kinds of laptops and

tablets and desktables and everything that you touch, going to make an appreciable difference? Or is it like, yep, it's a new version of Windows that looks nicer. It has a few new things, but fundamentally this is like still the same furniture. Yeah, I mean, it has definitely changed my experience in that as a laptop reviewer. The biggest difference is made for me and I recognize this is a me, very specific me thing, is that Cortana no longer screams at you every time you set up a new computer. It's no longer like, hi there, I'm Cortana, which I hear in my nightmares. Hi there. I'm Cortana and I'm here to help.

A little sign in here. A touch of Wi-Fi there. It's a little sign in here, a touch of Wi-Fi. there, I can recite the whole thing. I hate her. She's gone, and I'm very, very happy about that. Do you remember that video on Twitter with the like 20 or 30 machines all doing it? Yeah. A few seconds. There's the absolute... Nightmare. That it's, I hear it in my dreams every night. But I'm very, very happy that's gone. There is still

someone who talks to you, but she's like, quiet. It's not the kind of thing where, like, people walking by you, like, jump in her, like, what's that? Which is, like, what used to happen every time I turn it on a new computer. So I'm very glad they removed that. Again, that's kind of a niche thing. But otherwise, I mean, I think it has been a little bit more annoying to set some things up. I still haven't figured out like the easy way to make Chrome the default, which is annoying. I think getting the machines up to where I need them to be is just a little bit more difficult.

Now, it's hard to know, honestly, and hard to predict how much of that is like muscle memory that I'm just going to get accustomed to after me in Windows 10 for so long. and how much of that is actually like they made this harder to put on the settings that I need. It's a little harder to change the battery profiles, like those kinds of things. But, I mean, I think I like Snap Layouts a lot. I'm with Tom. I think once you sort of figure out how to use it and get adept with that, we'll probably make a difference in the way my workflow is. Yeah, I think that's the other main thing.

I like having the task bar in the center. I think it makes it look more like ChromeOS, which also for me as a reviewer is just helpful in having consistency of experience. I got to say snap, layouts, all the auto snap stuff is the best window management thing I've used in maybe years. It's the first time that I have sort of had an OS arranged stuff for me where I was like, oh, I get how that works. Oh, I'm going to use this all the time now. There was a moment where I had like the bigger window on the left and then a smaller window on the right. And it just like remembered that I didn't want to have it be split 50-50, that it wanted it that way.

and that I could come back to that. And it did it in a way that was automatic in like an opposite of clipy way, you know, where it wasn't like, I'm going to be helpful. And I'm like, I hate you so much. Stop trying to help. It just did it in a way that was like, oh, I get this. This works. And it's my favorite part.

It's interesting because there were some OEMs that sort of had third party things that were doing that. So ASUS, on its dual screen machines, for example, there was a whole thing called tab groups where you can like have one group for when you're working and one group for when you're playing games. and it remembered where all of them were. And that kind of thing was very cool. And I don't know, like, that's the kind of thing that should just everyone should have. So I'm glad it's finally on Windows now.

All right. We are going to take a break and we're going to come back. And it is time to genuinely get into the heart of this episode, the stravaganza of surfaces. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question.

What if, given the right tools, I've really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business.

If you're wondering, what if I need help? Then no worries, because you're never left to FendFord. yourself. Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Upwork. The days of doing it all, all by yourself. are over. There's no romance in burning out while you're trying to scale. Instead, you can check out Upwork. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across more

than 125 categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale without committing to full-time headcount. And finding the right talent is easy. You can browse profiles, review past work, and get help scoping the role so you can get started quickly. Seriously. You could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours, especially when you sign up with Business Plus. Their AI powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searcher required. You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-w-R-K.com. Upwork.com.

All right, we are back, and it is time to talk, the device that I'm most excited about. The Surface Pro 8, what do we think? It's good. Yeah? I think that Microsoft, the Surface Pro 7 for a while, has been a powerful device that has had the same design, has had a four-year-old design. I mean, it looks just like something that was made in 2015 because it basically is, they didn't change very much about the design since the 4 and the kind of five. the Service Pro X was sort of the opposite of that. It had an arm chip that was pretty slow, and there was a lot of stuff you couldn't run,

but it was in a really nice-looking chassis. So I talked to a lot of people who would ask me, like, should I get a 7 or should I get the X? I want something powerful. I want something that looks nice, and neither of these quite fill that, which was correct. So finally, I think Microsoft combined those two things and made sort of what all these people really wanted, which is a device that looks like the Service ProX but actually has a processor in it that can do powerful loads and games and all the stuff that people actually want. So this is the Service Pro we've been waiting for for at least a couple years. I know Tom in his review of the Surface Pro 7 begged Microsoft to make it look like a Service ProX.

We've been asking for that for a while, and they finally did it. Was it primarily the larger screen for you? A bunch of the other redesigns, like there's internal stuff, there's Thunderbolt, Herald. There's some screen like tech stuff that we definitely need to get into. But the basic shape and functionality of the thing is like it's a surface. They didn't fundamentally change that. They made the screen bigger and they fixed the keyboard, which I'm very excited about. Is that the main thing or is there some other sense of like the surfaces four through seven felt tired in some other way that really needed to be addressed?

The main thing is the bezels. It had very chunky side bezels before. The top one and the bottom one are still kind of big, which, I mean, you need something to hold it when you're using it as a tablet so that makes sense. But the side ones are significantly thinner. The keyboard still covers the bottom bezel without covering some of the task bar, which was the problem on the Surface ProX. So really from the front, it looks like you're looking at like a Dell XPS 13 or something that was made in 2021. Right. There's also the material is not as bad with the fingerprints.

That was a big issue with the previous material the chassis made of. And the keyboard is now carbon fiber core. So it's a lot stiffer. It's not sliding around. It's much sturdier, I think, as a whole. Yeah. I mean, there are surface keyboard decks where you, if you, like, set it on one leg and, like, rest your hands on it, you can click the mouse. Yeah.

It still happens with the Go3. That happened to me as well. Yeah. That's completely gone with this new deck from what I could tell, which is very exciting. And the port selection, it's two USBC Thunderfolt four ports now, which is more. There used to be in USBA on there and that they've modernized that. Yeah, but there is still the surface. Finn, if you want it, which isn't Thunderbolt, but has very similar capabilities, I guess.

The thing that's interesting about Surface is, I don't know, with the pixel and with Google and the Nexus phones and the pixel, it's like, well, okay, there's a new version of Android, and this is the thing that we're going to use to showcase a new version. And Microsoft doesn't have a new version of Windows often enough, as often as they cycle through surfaces, but this year, it feels like they were trying to have a moment where, like, Windows 11 is here, and so is a Surface Pro 8, which is awesome for Windows 11. Did those two things feel like they cohered together into like a moment or did they just happen to be a coincidence around the same time? You know, I think it would have more if the dynamic refresh rate feature actually worked.

Okay, we got, let's just get into it. We've been teasing it for like 15 minutes. What is the story with dynamic refresh on the surface price? Because they say it has 120 hertz display. But when they announced it, I was like, oh, 120 hertz display. That's great. Wait, it says default in parentheses after that. Every time they mention it, what does that mean?

So what does that mean? So they've been telling us that we've been hearing that Windows 11 is going to have this dynamic refresh rate feature that will automatically switch. If your screen supports 120 hertz refresh rate, it will automatically switch your screen between 120 hertz and 60 hertz based on what you're doing. So if you're playing a game, for example, it will put you in 120. If you're like doing something where the refresh rate wouldn't matter, it'll put you at 60. The Surface Pro 8 was released with a 120 hertz refresh rate screen. It has 120 hertz refresh rate. Seems like that would be a great device to take advantage of the dynamic refresh rate feature.

It seems perhaps the best device to take advantage of that feature. Unfortunately, it's not there. So you can't use it. We don't know if it's going to be on there. We don't know when it's going to be on there. If it is, they've not told us that. So what we have is essentially any other 120 hertz laptop. It is a screen that supports 120 hertz.

If you want to switch it down to 60, you can switch it down to 60. That's also true if you're using a razor blade or like any other. All laptops have that capability. So it's less unique in that respect without that special Windows 11 feature. And, you know, changing refresh rate is like kind of a pain. You have to go into settings. You have to go to display settings. You have to go to advanced display settings.

You have to scroll down. And then it's like you have to confirm your changes. Like it's this whole thing. You're probably not going to want to do it a lot. I think that this would have been a great opportunity to showcase that big feature of Windows 11, but it does not seem to be there. for default. So it is 60 hertz out of the box. If you want to make it 120, you have to go through, you have to jump through all the settings hoops and change it to 120. But I think it's probably 60, I guess, so that it doesn't kill the battery life of people who don't really know what 120 hertz means or care about it, I guess. Right. So, okay, does it kill a battery life if you go through the hoops?

So no, it did honestly didn't kill it. I mean, I was seeing around eight and a half hours at 60 and about seven at 120. Okay. So if I were using this my personal device, I would probably leave it at 120. and I would eat the hour and a half of battery life. But, you know, I wish that I didn't have to make that choice. I mean, I'm a high refresh rate person. I haven't had it on a laptop really yet. And so getting it there, once I get a high refresh rate,

I don't want to go back. Exactly, yeah. It's like with the iPhones this year. I've been telling people for years that high refresh rate was better and they're like, eh, it doesn't matter. With iPhone's fine. And then everyone very quietly this year is like, oh, wait, no, it matters, but not really because it does.

I was curious because I mostly have encountered 120 hertz refresh rates in the context of gaming laptops. I was like, oh, is this really going to matter if I'm like scrolling through Google Box? But it totally does. I mean, once I used it one time, I was like, and then I went back to 60. I was like, oh, this sucks. I'm going back to 120. So is this just another matter of Windows 11 isn't finished? Or is it another thing that Microsoft also tends to do, which is they've got a hardware device and they get it out the door,

but there's like software patches, you know, that they like need to get out right after it's released. right before it's release. Is it a surface thing or a Windows thing? As far as I know it's a Windows thing, I mean, like they have not given us any information. Maybe Tom knows more. But in my conversations with OEMs asking like, hey, are you guys going to

are you guys going to be making stuff that supports this? They have no timeline either from like everyone that I've heard from has told me like, we have no idea when we're going to have this feature or when we're going to be making stuff that has this feature. It seems to me like they are just as in the dark as we are. Yeah, it's definitely

a Windows thing. Yeah. Like they just don't have it ready in time. So like the universal mute button as well. Right. I forgot to mention that earlier. Yeah. I'm just going to sprinkle throughout this podcast, like missing Windows 11 features.

Random things that they said they do. It's going to pop up and be like, did you know? But hey, the sounds are a little quieter now. Oh, yeah. There you go. The sounds are really nice, actually. The sound scheme in Windows 11 is, yeah, is really nice. So at least they did that.

One of the big things with the Pro 8 that you mentioned is, that it is that X chassis with modern performance in it. So how has the performance been? It's got an 11th gen processor in it, right? Like, is it, can we game on this thing now? Is it, like, smoking other computers that are in this, like, kind of thin and light class? Like, what was your experience there?

Yeah, so this thing is fast. There are two processors you can choose. You can choose the Core I5 or the Core I7. The Core I7 that this thing has is the... It's essentially the top processor that Intel makes for Thin-Light laptop. So there's, like, technically, one that's a little more powerful. I think it's literally only in one. Miss I laptop.

Like, nobody uses it. This is like, this is what's in the Dell XPS 13. This is what's in the Lenovo Yoga 9i. This is what's in, like, the best 13-inch laptops that you can buy. Right. Like, this is as good as you're going to get. And it was, it was fast. I mean, I was putting it through Zoom calls on top of Chrome tabs, on top of Spotify

streams. Like, I was doing stuff that, like, all kinds of other machines, you would see some slowdown or you would see some crackling. This, it did not break a sweat. It wasn't super hot. Like, it was sometimes a little toasty, but I wasn't getting bombarded by fan noise. I wasn't, it wasn't like heating up the table. It did a good job.

Yeah, I haven't heard the fan once on it. Have you? I really haven't. I think sometimes I'll put my ear to the device and I'll be like, oh yeah, there's something going on. But yeah, it's very quiet. Yeah, it's super quiet. It's strangely quiet.

I'm like, is it in six months it's going to be like, you know, I'm at an airport or something. I mean, this gets to like the perennial question with the surface, which is what is it, who is it for? What do they mean to do with it? You know, Dan asked if it was a gaming machine. I noticed he didn't talk a whole lot about gaming, and it's not traditionally been meant for gaming. It's like it's the computer that is just really good and put together really well and also has a kickstand.

It's kind of my sense of it. Is that how you think about it? Yeah. So, I mean, you could absolutely game on this. Like, you could run a game if you wanted. Obviously, this isn't what we would recommend you buy if you're going to be playing lots of games. So I would hesitate to say, like, oh, it's a gaming machine. But, yeah, I mean, this is a processor that can absolutely run like Overwatch, stuff like that.

You know, it's not going to be running Red Dead Redemption 2 at its highest settings, but it can run a fair number of games, especially ESPorts stuff, without having to bump anything down, especially if you're not running in a native resolution. Right. The mains are a thing that you need to be aware of is the price. So it's pretty expensive, and it's not great value for the specs that it has. especially, you know, Microsoft conveniently doesn't put the price of the keyboard in the price that it gives you. My test model, which has that top processor and 16 gigabytes of RAM, combining that with the keyboard and the stylus will net you 1879. Wow. Which is pretty expensive and that, like, you can get a Dell XPS13 with that same processor and 16 bigabytes of RAM for like a few hundred dollars cheaper. Not to mention, like a MacBook Pro with those, with an M1 is also going to be a few hundred dollars cheaper. You know, that's sort of my hesitation with saying, like, you know, you can play lots of games on this.

Is really the reason to buy this is if you want the Surface Pro form factor and you're willing to pay extra for that. Like, it's for people who want, like the Deluxe PS 13 is too heavy. They want something really thin and light, but they still want it to have that kind of power. That's really who it's for. You know, I think it's a somewhat specific audience, which doesn't mean it's a small audience. But it is not at all the best value device for this kind of power. It's really all about the thin and light design. It seems to me that, you know, based on your review, what you were saying there, is that, like, as part from price, though, this is the least compromised Surface Pro.

That we've seen yet, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like, in prior years, like, even going to the Pro 7, you were compromising on design. If you went to the Pro X, you compromised on power. The Pro 6, the Pro 5, the Pro 4, you compromised on battery life and, like, other things. But, like, you've got pretty usable battery life. You got a great screen. You've got great power.

You've got, you know, the thin and light chassis that's normally monitoring. design, you just have to be willing to pay for it. Yeah, no, I mean, this is, this is the first Surface Pro that I think I would actually buy for myself as a personal computer. Like, it's something that I feel very comfortable saying, like, you could use this as your primary driver. This is also, with the bigger screen than the Surface Pro 7 helps with that as well. It's 13 inch rather than 12.3, which, you know, that's a noticeable difference.

Like, it feels much more laptop size than it does tablet-sized. This is, like, a laptop that I would buy as a laptop, which I, you know, haven't necessarily said about Surface Pro's in the past. But, you know, it's interesting, you know, normally you don't, you see people necessarily upgrading from, like, people who have last years at Dell XPS 13, like, aren't going to be upgrading to this year's Dell XPS 13. But, you know, I know people who use the Surface Pro 7 as their driver, who I would feel comfortable saying you could upgrade to the Surface Pro 8 if you have unlimited money and you feel like you want to do that, because it is, it is legitimately, the bigger screen, it's a, it's a nicer body. Like, it is a,

I think it's a significantly different, different experience. And I think it's more of what Surface users want. The Pro 8 is like a fascinating thing because it is, as someone who likes to pick holes in every single thing, like, you can sit there and look at it and it's pretty hard to like find negatives about it now. Because they've kind of answered all the things that we've been moaning about for years. And I think for me it's like, it's obviously Microsoft's, you know, MacBook Air. But it's like the MacBook Air from a few years ago and it was like super expensive. Well, it's pro-priced, but yeah.

It's pro-priced, yeah. But like the MacBook Air, when it first came out, it was super expensive, and it's taken Microsoft a while to, like, even get the pricing right there. But it's also, like, when I look at, like, people using that tops in coffee shops in London

and in, you know, all the little star-up places we have, you can spot the surface pro and Miloff. It's one of those, like, iconic designs, you know? Like, like the MacPurquet, you can spot a mile off, like, you know what that person's using. And it's definitely, I think they've got to the point with the design now where it feels like, okay, this design and this pro eight sort of form factor, I think that will last years now, just like the MacBook aired. Yeah, I mean, there are some,

there are some lines of laptop where it just gets to a point where people want to pay more, like, just for the branding. Like, I think the MacBook, the think pad is one. I think the Surface Pro is in that category. Like, there are people who, they will empty their pockets to get that logo and to get that form and that build. Yeah. Well, we're going to go from a surface that we love I don't know, maybe to pay a lot of money for that we understand that is stable and clear and obvious and make sense to a couple of services that maybe aren't those things. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited.

Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week.

With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focus shortlist that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database. limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and

columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. You got into it to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that. It's flexible, developer first, asset compliant, enterprise ready, and built for the AI era. Say goodbye to bottlenecks and legacy code. Start innovating with MongoDB. There's a reason it's trust. by so many of the Fortune 500. And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB.

It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, Dan, I reviewed the Surface Go3. I have like three things to say and they're not that important. You reviewed the Surface Laptop Studio and boy, oh boy, do I need to hear everything

that you think about this thing and especially it's pedestal, it's Plinth, it's MacBook on a stand design. Yeah, MacBook on a stand design is pretty accurate. You know, I've been using the thing, used it for a good week or so before, you know, publishing this review. The first thing I noticed was how much this reminded me of a MacBook Pro

in terms of its look, its presentation, its feel. And a lot of that is a good thing, right? Like the build quality is top notch. It feels like, you know, the same as a MacBook. The display is really nice. The keyboard is really nice. The trackpad is tremendous. Like these are some of the best.

input devices I've ever used on a Windows laptop. You said the keyboard is nice, so that doesn't seem like early MacBook Pros. Well, no, yeah. Okay, fair enough. But it is, you know, comparable to what you're going to get from a current MacBook Pro and M1 MacBook Pro or whatever. And then, like, there's other design details that are just really reminiscent of it. The corner radius of the edges are the same as, like, a 2015 MacBook Pro.

It has that same kind of sharp edge on its keyboard deck that digs into your palms, just like a MacBook Pro is. You know, the screens corners are the same. So it's very, you know, it's going for this look, it feels like. And it's most of the time it's nailing it. But, like, I think the average person looking at the front of this, if the screen wasn't on, would think it's a MacBook. They would not recognize as a Windows computer.

But there's a plinth, right? That, like, bottom part that is your favorite word ever. And it, like, is a stand. And I thought when this thing was announced that it was going to present all these problems with ergonomics. Like, it's going to feel like I'm raising my hands up to type on this thing and stuff. And to be honest with you, you never notice it. You can't see it when it's sitting on a desk in front of you.

You can't see it when it's on your lap. It is not so thick that it raises the computer up obnoxiously. So you just don't notice it. And I haven't thought about the plinth at all unless I picked it up. So they got away with it. They got away with it. That's amazing. There's like some weird things in the plinth.

Do you think it's going to be like an iconic design that we're going to be like, wow, they were geniuses? I wish somebody else had the courage to make a plinth on their laptop. Like, it's a genuine question. It's genuinely possible. Maybe. There's some weird things with it. Like, one of the things that's really weird is the model that I've got has the top

specs. So it's got the discrete GPU. It's an NVIDIA graphics card in there and stuff. So it's got, you know, a pretty beefy cooling system inside of it. Inside that plinth is where all of that, like, cooling system exists. And, like, all the fans are towards the front. So which I think Monica could attest that, like, most gaming laptops, most laptops with heavy-duty cooling systems, those fans are.

are in the back and they blow away from you. Yeah, which is like a normal experience. These are all the way at the front and they blow out the sides. So if you are like doing something heavy on this, running a game, video export or whatever, and your hands are like on top of it, you can just like feel jets of air, like shooting out the side of the laptop, which is kind of hilarious and I've never seen before. Is that going to be a thing that like other manufacturers will like adopt and how could it handle more powerful graphics cards and cooling systems?

I don't know. It might get a little weird. There might be a limit to how far that can be pushed. I mean, does it feel like it's like a cool muscle car with side exhaust? You know? You know, it kind of could. Like it's got this shaker hood, right? Like, you know, maybe it's jetting them out the sides or something.

What you're saying is it needs LGB. Yeah, maybe. There's no RGB. Everything needs RGB. There's no RGB. It has a backlight keyboard, but there's no RGB. So we've talked about all the design elements except the thing that the Surface Laptop Studio supposedly exists for, which is its screen that can lay flat.

on the top and sort of rotate out in those three positions. So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So you've got your normal clamshell laptop mode. You open the lid. It looks like a normal laptop. But you can pull the screen forward. So compared to the surface book, which this effectively replaces, that had a detachable

top part that you could make into a tablet or you could click, clip it around, flip it over, stuff like that. I just want to point out that I stand live tiles and Monica stands a detachable screen on the surface book and we're the only two people that love those things. You really are. We suffer in silence, Peter. The other way to do that's common that we see with laptops is a 360 hinge that folds the screen back to turn into a tablet.

This uses a two hinge system. There's a hinge in like halfway up the screen and you pull the screen forward and you can pull it partway and park it above the keyboard so that you just have the, you just see the track pad in front of you and the screen is closer to you and you can interact with and watch a movie or whatever. And it's at like a, I don't know, 55 degree angle or something like that. And then you can pull it all the way down and flatten it out to an effective tablet mode, which is meant for kind of that drawing position or writing position because using this as a handheld

tablet is pretty clumsy. It's four pounds and 14 and a half inch screen. Like you're not like laying back in bed holding this thing up watching a movie. So it's got like those two extra modes, which if you are an artist might be very interesting to you. I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but what I do do a lot on touch screens, and especially touch screens with pens, is I take handwritten notes when I'm in meetings. And so I use an iPad Pro with a pencil, you know, a fold three with its stylus or whatever, and I take digital notes so that I can access them later. And that's really what I've used

the flat down position for, because you mentioned the Surface Pro 8 has Thunderbolt, this has Thunderbolt ports, I can plug this into my Thunderbolt dock, use my main monitor, keyboard, and mouse as my input devices. Then I've got the laptop studio flat down next to me, and I can just write on it with the surface pen and take notes. And that's been like a really actual useful experience and like a thing that I would do if I owned this device. It's a little big, it's a little clumsy, but it lets me do it. This is something I've been curious about because the three positions you mention are also the three positions that like any two and one can do. Like if I have the Del XPS two and one. I can use it a clamshell. I can fold it a tablet. I can have it as a tent.

Like, does the studio, like, make those better in any way? Like, does it improve? Yeah, that's a great point. I don't think it really does. What it does do is it requires less compromise to have those positions available. And what I mean by that is really comparing it to the book. So if we go back to the book, it had that detachable tablet that only Monica loved. All of the processor stuff was in the tablet side of things. It had a battery. And so there was a limit to how powerful that computer could be because it had to fit into a tablet form factor. And that allowed them to have these various positions. With this, all of the processing power, the processor, the GPU, the SSD, the RAM, everything is in the bottom half of the computer

like you would expect from a normal laptop. It's in that plinth. So this has a more powerful processor. It has a more powerful GPU. It has the ability to change the SSD, things like that that you couldn't do with the book, and Microsoft was really running into a performance ceiling with the book's design. And it allows you to have those extra positions should you want them. Do I think most people will want those positions? No. I think most people are going to use this like a normal laptop, and they just want a powerful, fancy Microsoft-made surface laptop that has more power than the standard surface laptop. And I think that's how this would exist in most people's lives. But they're allowed to do those extra modes if they want.

I suppose your standard 360 hinge, like you got the keyboard on the back of tablet mode. knowing whatever. But it's also, they are typically thin in lights. And so if you want to have a beefy, powerful, thick laptop, having a screen that folds down, the way that this one folds down is like a different, easier demand of changes than one that needs to go around a really thick part of the laptop, right? It's quicker to move in between modes with this than with, like, a 360 that you are like lifting and flipping and, you know, doing a whole dance with it. I was going to ask, like, how do you move between the modes? Like, is the screen wobbly and, like, is it easy to move between those modes?

You know, as for like the screen wobbly, that was another book problem. They had that like really high-tech fancy hinge, but because... It was kind of a problem. But I mean, because there was a battery, there was processor, there was fans... It was top-heavy, right?

It was top-heavy, right? And so if you start poking the screen in normal laptop mode, it's going to be wobbly. This is way more solid. This feels like a normal laptop. Right. And then when you want to get into those other modes, it's a little awkward

because like you kind of have to like, flick the thing back and then pull it forward. And it doesn't sit in any position. It only fits in those three positions, right? Right. You're supposed to put it above the keyboard, but you could put it halfway above the track pad if you want it. Or you could put it, I don't know, right above your home row.

But it doesn't float, like, above the keyboard. Yeah, it doesn't, like, stay unless you put it all the way down. And what's the angles like on the screen? Like, if I sat with my knees up in the air and wanted to bend the screen all the way back, like how far does they go back? It goes back. I don't have a protractor to measure it, but I would estimate like a hundred and thirty-five degrees or so. What kind of laptop reviewer are. You don't have a pro tractor. Yeah, I know, right? What a hack I am. It feels about the same as like what you get with a MacBook.

That's what I hate about the pro. Yeah, it's going to hit a point where it won't let you push it back any further. But then when you have it closed, it's like a normal laptop. One question I want to ask all of you is I haven't had a chance other than my brief hands-on to use the new haptic stylus, the surface. Pen, haptic duo two, whatever they're calling the thing. Service Slim Pen, too. Surface Slim Pen, too. Thank you. How is it? How are the haptics?

I thought they felt gimmicky, but I only had like five minutes. But from reading your reviews, it seems like I'm wrong and it's actually pretty good. So I liked it, but I will say, so the intent is like, like you can feel the vibration in the stylus when you're using it in like a support app. I was using it to write in the journal app. I didn't feel it at the default. At the default, the intensity was set at 50. I didn't feel that at all. I cranked it up to 100 and then I could feel it.

Yeah. But I will say if the intent is to like mirror you writing on paper, like it didn't do that. Like I definitely didn't actually feel like I was writing on paper. Like there are some stylists that actually like do, like Lenovo's active pen like really does make it feel like you're writing on paper. This basically felt like I was writing on a stylus and it was vibrating. Is that good? Yeah, no, I agree. I liked it.

I mean, it doesn't feel like paper to me. Like I said, I use a pencil on an iPad pro a lot. but in order to make that feel right to me, I put a screen protector on the iPad Pro that's like a matte screen protector that adds drag. So this doesn't have that. And so it is like, you know, a hard plastic tip hitting glass.

It does slide around a bit. It feels like you're writing on glass. But the haptics are responsive enough to that, like when I'm jotting down quick notes and I'm handwriting things, like I appreciate that they are there. And it feels nicer than prior surface devices. Now, it also probably feels nicer

because these are 120-hertz screens and they're more responsive with the pen than the older surface devices, which I can never really get to feel normal to me. But I'm not an artist either. I'm just using it for handwritten notes, and I like it for that feature. I would like to have that in other styluses

that I use, styly. You know what it feels like to me using the slim pen too? So I had the slim pen too and the original slim pen so I could sort of compare them side by side. And it's like, you know, when you use like 120 hertz display,

you use it for like, I know, a couple of days and something like, then you go back to 60 hertz display, then you notice it. You suddenly notice what you, what you were using is better. I think that is kind of like the slim pen too. It's not always noticeable. The haptics, they're very subtle sometimes.

But then when you go back to using the other, like the regular surface slim pen, it just feels dead. Like it doesn't, it feels really weird. It's like really jarring going back to the old way. That's all it definitely felt like to me. Like I think it's very subtle, but like you can crank up the intensity of the tactile. feedback as well, as they call it. But out of the box, yeah, it's, I think it's at about the level it should be. All right, I'm sold. And you have to dig into settings as you often do on Windows 11.

New or old settings. I want to talk about some of the drawbacks with this. Yeah, well, I wanted to ask performance as well. So let's do performance and bummers. Okay, yeah. So performance, like I said, I've got pretty much a top spec model. It's $2,700 for the version that I have, which is 32 gigs of RAM, an 11-gen core I-7. It's a four-core chip. It's not a six-core chip. And it's got the NVIDIA 30-50 TI graphics card in it. So, like, if you're familiar with other gaming laptops, this is like kind of a budget,

mid-range level spec for a gaming laptop. Right. It is not the fastest GPU. It is not the fastest processor. So your performance expectations should be aligned with that. And that's basically what we're seeing. You can game on this, absolutely. Microsoft was pointedly calling it for the weekend gamer.

because they know that it's not like, you know, if gaming is your only thing you want to do with this, this ain't the right machine. And I would fully agree with it. Brottle it Monday through Friday. But on the weekends, they open it up. Sneaker cheeky halo game in there after you've done your PowerPoint. Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically, you know,

if you play older games, you'll be able to, you know, enjoy them pretty well. Newer games, AAA titles, you're not going to take advantage of that 120 hertz screen because it just can't do it. Like the GPU is just not strong enough. If you're doing creative tasks, like photo editing, video editing, graphics work and things like that, it's about middle of the pack. Like, it's what you would expect from a 30-50 TI.

It performed our video export test pretty well, but not the best. It performed our, we run a Puget benchmark in Adobe Premiere Pro. It ran middle of the pack exactly what we'd expect from a 30-50 TI. So, like, the short end of this is you're paying a lot of money for this performance. And you're paid because, like, you can buy a razor blade. 15 advance for like $400 or $500 less and smoke this thing all day in performance. You could get the Blade 14 that has an AMD processor and AMD GPU and all day long smoke this thing in performance.

But you're not going to have the flexibility. You're not going to quite have as nice to build quality. The design isn't quite as nice. You don't have the pen if you were interested in that, things like that. You don't have the square windows logo on the back of it. You don't have the square windows logo. You don't have the corners cutting off your windows in the whole other windows weirdness. But it's like if you're buying machine for gaming on it, buy something else.

If you're buying a computer that you like occasionally want to run the occasional game on and you only want to have one device, this can do it. It can fill in for that. But you really just should temper your expectations. What's the downside that you hinted at? Yeah. So aside from the cost, the battery life is really not good. No. No, it's bad.

Like I just, there's no other way to cut this. See, the Surface Books battery life was so good. Yeah. And there's a couple reasons for that, right? right? Like there was a battery... It had two batteries. In the display, and there was a battery in the base. And frankly, the battery in the laptop studio is like 40 to 50 or 40% smaller.

I think it's like 58 watt hours versus 80 watt hours or whatever that percentage is. Someone better at math community to do it. But it's a noticeable size difference. And that, you know, as we've learned with our, you know, Deeter, your iPhone reviews, the thing that matters the most with battery life is how big the battery is in the thing. And this just has a smaller battery. And so when you pair that with a relatively powerful processor, a discrete GPU, a 120 hertz screen without dynamic refresh, as we mentioned, I get like five hours of battery life. High resolution screen too, right?

Yeah, it's high resolution. It's three by two. It's very nice to look at. It's bright. But, you know, off the plug, I'm getting five hours on average. If I turn the display down to 60 hertz through the manual settings, I might get six. But like, that's pretty bad. And especially bad compared to the book three, which could, Monica, you know that thing.

could last like 10, 11, 12 hours if you needed it too. So really, to me, the way that it means for this is that this is not a great travel portable laptop. This is like, it mostly lives at your desk. Maybe it's docked into another display and you're using the screen in one of its other modes. Maybe you're using different keyboard and mouse with it. And then like, oh, you want to go to the couch to write an email. You can do that with this. You can, you know, on the train commute or whatever, you can write a few emails. But you shouldn't expect it to last through a cross-country flight. I mean, my dream is to have this thing be the trackpad and secondary display next to my main monitor and then, you know, just a keyboard. That would be great. That's like, that's an expensive track pad. I mean, it's a $2,700 track pad. But like, you know, it's your whole computer. But like, it could absolutely do that. But the way that you should look at this is like, you know, with gaming laptops, we don't expect them to usually last very long with battery life. And that's kind of how the expectations you should set with this as well. Intel gaming laptops specifically. Yeah, Intel gaming labs specifically. Yeah, it's really. interesting that, you know, there's no AMD options with this because what we've seen and Monica

knows through all of her testing is that, you know, the AMD processors and AMD GPUs are doing really well in laptops. And this has got an Intel one that's not even the top tier Intel and things like that. So the performance is good, but the battery life is not. And so that's kind of the compromise now. Speaking of going with an Intel processor when maybe you necessarily shouldn't, I have a very brief thing to say about the Surface Go3, which is, I'm disappointed. They designed exactly the same. It's like they didn't get the cool refreshes that, you know, the pro got. They updated the processors.

There's a new Y series. There's a new Core I3. Battery life is worse than it was last year. It's like notably worse. I'm lucky to get five hours. It's averaging four to four and a half at best. If I go outside and have to crank the screen brightness way up, like it can be three. I get why low-end computers don't get refreshed every year.

This thing got a refreshed last year with a slightly bigger screen. you know, the iPad hasn't, the base iPad hasn't been changed in eternity. But yeah, I don't understand why they don't put an arm processor in this thing. Because if you're going to make the tradeoff of spending a lot of money for a tiny computer, because that's fundamentally what you're doing with the Surface Go. You're spending quite a lot of money to get a tiny computer. You should get something out of it beyond the fact that it's small. And that thing, it's either speed, which, you know, they can't really do,

or it should be battery life. And this just doesn't provide either of those things. That's embarrassing. What's interesting is that, like, you mentioned the speed performance. You can get it with a core I3 or whatever. But realistically, would the performance be that different if it had an arm chip? It's not like that is a fast processor. You're not getting either of what you want out of a small computer here.

My assumption is, like, they want this for kids, sure. But this is for, like, IT workers that go to server farms, right? They need a thing that they can, like, carry in and, like, hook in and do stuff with. And arm chips presumably, like, are a problem in that for software compatibility. But, yeah, an ultra-portable computer should have really, really, good battery life or at least like respectable battery life and this doesn't hit it. I think the problem with going arm though is they would just be expensive. Like all the windows on arm stuff is just so expensive.

Well, they did introduce a slightly cheaper version of the Surface Proax. I think you can get it down to like 900 bucks now. Yeah, but it's still up there. I don't feel like they would have the chip and all the licensing and stuff that they have for it available. I guess this is the place to end the stravaganza, which is to talk about the elephant in the room, which is Apple's about to have new MacBook pros, we assume, with M1X, chips, the M1 chips on the MacBook Air and the base MacBook Pro and the IMAQ are all very good, incredible consumer chips.

Do you think that Microsoft is right to continue to like focus mostly on Intel instead of leaning a little bit more on AMD or trying harder with Arm and dealing with all of the hassles that exist there with Qualcomm and et cetera, et cetera? Like what do you think of their overall sort of chip strategy? So OEMs will always, because I always ask, OEMs, that's about creative laptops that have Intel in them and gaming laptops. And what they will say, and obviously how true this is a question, is that Intel just gives a few more features that are what these creative power users want. So Thunderbolt is a big one, and QuickSink is a big one.

And, you know, you get a little bit more raw power from some of these chips than you will from, like a cheaper AMD chip. Which I think there is some merit to that. But I think for most people, it is probably a worst purchase. Why do we think this is your Microsoft got religion on Thunderbolt? Yeah, I think they're explaining it a way that they can finally do the security aspects of it because that was obviously the thing before. And to be fair, like on their surface devices, they do enable every single security thing that you can possibly enable on Windows.

A lot of OEMs just don't. So I think that's probably why. But it's also like they did refresh the Surface Pro 7 with the Surface Pro 7 plus, which everyone kind of forgot about because it was just business only. But they refresh that. So it lets like, you know, you guys can go and use that if you want the old sort of design and stuff and you don't need Funderb. So like they had that.

I think it's kind of a thing like if you look at, like if you look at gaming laptops, if you look at what ASUS did this year when they put out the Zephyrus G15, which is an AMD system, and the Zephyrus M16, which is an Intel system. And the Zephyrus M16 is much more expensive, but it also has more display options for creators. and it's sort of very clearly being pitched at a more specific, more like power user, more like professional audience, whereas the G15, which is AMD powered, is much more of a big mainstream consumer purchase for people who just want to play a lot of games. I think that's kind of – the studio is, I think, clearly more of an M16 than it is a G15. Well, the one surface we did not get to stravagan's eyes, I don't know, is the Surface Duo 2, the Surface Duo over, as we did it last year when we were expecting this stuff.

come. That will come when it arrives and when it does, you can be sure that we'll talk about it on the Vergecast. The Vergecast will also be back this Friday with the regular chat show, and then we'll have more of these Tuesday episodes going forward. Really hope you're able to listen. I want to thank you all for coming on. If you want to follow us on Twitter, you should. I'm Backlon. Thomas, Tom Warren. Dan is D.C. Sefert. Monica is MC squared 96. And get a shot. Thanks for listening.