Microsoft Surface Laptop (i5-7200U) Review

[Redaktion]

All screen and no substance. The new Surface Laptop sounds and looks more special than it really is. While the unique 3:2 touchscreen is bright, crisp, and colorful for graphic artists, almost everything else fails to impress.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Laptop-i5-7200U-Review.228176.0.html

[Bren]

"annoyingly, there is a split-second delay before finger motion is registered if tapping around the edges and corners of the trackpad whereas there is no such delay if tapping nearer its center."

This is pretty annoying but the delay can be adjusted in the settings app.

[ac]

Surprising they keep choosing some really slow SSD's. While waiting for a laptop that ticks by checkboxes I got the Swift 3 because it ticked atleast two:
-snappy enough Intel 600p SSD (full cold restart of windows was faster than other Windows laptops around and that's a pretty good bench to do in stores as to me that test reflects typical use scenarios such as installing apps - both involve ton of mixed small file IO, windows writes tons of logs during restart). It's actually TLC which I've avoided until now but part of it used as SLC, it's not like you rewrite the whole drive all the time so as long as there's enough SLC I can live with that. (Hard to say how much is enough, probably 2*RAM size is a good minimum of SLC in TLC drive). Quite bit of QC stuff in the Swift 3 so I probably end up having it repair twice.

Only thing I really don't like in the Swift 3 is the small up/down arrow keys. There are couple laptops that do the keyboard layout in the way I'd like but it doesn't extend to other things on those: Acer ao1-431-c4bb, Aspire_One_Cloudbook_14_AO1-431-C6QM

https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/Acer/Aspire_One_Cloudbook_14_AO1-431-C6QM/Acer_Aspire_Cloudbook_14_Eingabe.jpg

Though if i could have my way I'd add one more column of navigation keys and a spacing between the Enter and the navigation keys like on full size 84 key keyboard. So it would be a "90 key keyboard". Then you could have this:
Backspace User2 User3
EnterEnter Del User1
EnterEnter PageUp PageDn
RShift Home Up End
Rcontrol Left  Down Right

Those UserX keys should be unassigned and assignable only using registry file or from firmware, no software needed.

[ac]

A shopped image of what would my ideal laptop keyboard layout look...

Display AR could be 16:10 (as this is bit wider than typical 13-14")  and thus it won't be as "top heavy" as some have said the 3:2 are.

http://www.imagocentre.com/images/145/kbd_91keys_228.png

91-keys with carefully thought out millimeter-spacings where they should be like on full size keyboard , 5 user firmware-customizable keys.

Compaq used to have a 14" laptop layout almost like this (without the user-keys).

I tried to make this before but found that the spacings didn't align aesthetically if there were less than 91 keys because of the full size arrow keys I wanted.

[dthrp]

Most of those "Pros" I disagree with, while the rest are better suited for cons.

[Michael Zeng]

Considering the siginificant higher score that the Macbook 2017 achived, just wonder for what parts the Macbook is better. Moreover, the new Macbook air achives the same score as Surface laptop, are they really comparable in terms of user experience, especially considering the awful screen of Macbook air?

[Nicky Grover]

I feel like you were really nit picking with those cons at the end there.. Also I'm pretty sure the higher capacity ssd's have slightly faster read/write speeds.

[esgibt]

There is a sad trend by laptop keyboards in which one gets so small Up/Down arrowkeys. Meanwhile the Right-Shift is usually larger than the Left-Shift. The Arrowkeys' size is sacrificed even on keyboards that sacrificed numpads.