(case cracking) - My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. Honestly speaking, I was
afraid that Microsoft was just gonna let the
Surface lineup quietly die. I mean, years ago they made some nearly perfect devices and then just didn't fix
small issues for years, while all of the other Windows machines on the market leapfrogged them, until today. This is the all new Surface Laptop Studio. And for a lot of people, this might very well be the best Windows laptop on the market. - And today's video is brought
to you by AntLion Audio. Their ModMic Wireless Microphone delivers best in class audio quality, 12+ hours of battery life and it can magnetically mount
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at the link down below. (electronic music) - "But Linus," you might say, "after your investment in Framework, how can you possibly
declare something else to be the best Windows
laptop on the market?". Well, it starts with the display. This is the new benchmark for how displays on Windows
machines should work. It has a 120Hz refresh rate, so everything from
dragging around a window to just interacting with the machine feels snappier while also making you a better gamer, of course. It has the classic surface
three by two aspect ratio, and it can do this. Whoa, whoa, hold on a second. Okay, no. We're gonna talk about that
a little bit more later. So cool. My only real complaint about the screen is the rounded corners, and I don't mean rounded in software. Like, the display has rounded corners. It's got some pixels hacked off. This is something that
can make sense on a phone, where they have a super
high screen to body ratio and they're meant to sit comfortably in the Palm of your hand, which is round. Here, though, I don't get it. Like, the mouse even moves
all the way into the corner. So, I'm pretty sure
Windows is just treating this display like there's
some phantom pixels there. One problem that this gorgeous
high refresh rate screen brings to light though, is the polling rate of the track pad. According to Mouse Rate
Checker, this track pad is polling at... looks
like probably 144 Hz, which was totally fine
with a 60 Hz display, but now could result in nearly a frame between when you interact
with your touch pad and when that gets turned
into useful movement. Now, to be clear, I don't think that any
laptop makers out there have dealt with this yet, and it is a lot less
obvious on the Surface than it is on the HP Zbook. Review coming soon, make sure
you're subscribed by the way. But it seems like a really easy way for Microsoft to make this device truly feel way more responsive. Just like phone manufacturers are doing with their touchscreens, where you'll see that polling
rate of the touchscreen is usually double or more compared to the refresh rate of the display. - To demonstrate why this matters, we'll do a classic demo. Moving a mouse cursor back and forth across a dark background. You see those differences in
the spacing of the pointer? That's because sometimes
the frame gets refreshed immediately after the trackpad was polled, and other times there's that gap. And you can see the difference when you plug in an external device, like this Finalmouse
thousand Hertz (indistinct); I think that's what the model is called. By the way, thank you very much Dell for actually including this USB C to A and HTMI adaptor with your laptops. Microsoft didn't seem to
feel that was necessary in spite of the fact that the Surface has, I don't know what to call this IO, other than "surfacy"
headphone-microphone combo jack. Their proprietary bull-(beep) connector, and then "two", at least, thankfully Thunderbolt 4 ports. So, that's an improvement, but no USB type A as expected. Yeah, that's visible to the naked eye. I mean, it's not perfect. It's just that when you're
polling at a thousand Hertz those differences are much smaller. Don't get me wrong though. This track pad it's really good. Maybe even exceptional. The size is solid, tracking is accurate, and now instead of a click, they're using haptic feedback. So you can actually tune
the force to your liking. I do wish they gave us a
bit more tuning options like we had in the central software, but this is still an easy A+ track pad. Also an easy A+ keyboard. Surface devices have always had pretty solid keyboards, with the exceptions being the ones that you clipped onto them. Those were not...always great. Um... But this one feels good, even
compared to the good ones. The keys are snappier
than on the surface laptop and on the surface book, but there is still enough travel to prevent fatigue when
you're typing all day. Add in the exceptional chassis rigidity, and you've got one of the best mobile keyboards on the market. What we haven't discussed just yet though, is the performance. And the reason is that it is one of the low lights of the device. I mean, it's fine. It's fine. For most people, a Core i7-11370H and an RTX 3050 Ti will be powerful enough for anything they would want to do. But the problem is that it comes in at a very similar price to the XPS 15, which has an 8 Core Core i7-11800H. - Just to demonstrate this
point, we're gonna run Cinebench, but it shouldn't be surprising that when you have two processors using the same architecture, you could literally forget
to start the one of them that has twice as many
cores and it'll still win. So if you plan to do a fair bit of game-- (laughter) (beep) So if you plan to do a fair bit of gaming, this isn't gonna be the device for you. In fact, I'd recommend something
like the Zephyrus G 14. It's not only cheaper, but it has a much faster RTX 3060. Though, if you manage your expectations, it's not like the surface laptop studio can't be used for gaming. - This is hilarious. (laughter) - Totally off topic, but
can we just take a moment to appreciate how nice
the surface finishes Is that why they call them Surface? Ugh, man that soft touch though? Incredible. Know what else is incredible? 110 FPS, Forza Horizon 4 on a productivity laptop. - To be clear, it's not cranked This is medium and we had to turn the resolution down a little bit. But from a reasonable distance, laptop resolutions have gotten so high these days that you can turn them down a little bit and it's not just immediately
interpolation city. - This thing is fricking quiet. Like anyone else notice that
or rather not notice it? - [Man Behind Camera] Oh yeah. Super quiet. Hello? Hello? Anybody in there? - I should note, by the way, even though I complained
there's no type A ports on the surface laptop studio, there is one on the power brick. But that's just for charging. That's not for actually plugging any USB device and using it. So it's not like the Ethernet
jack on the iMac and one. - The point of all this though, is that quiet is worth nothing, unless it's also cool. And the Surface Laptop Studio
is not particularly cool. You can see that the Palm rests are up in the low thirties,
mid thirties on this side. Meaning they're not uncomfortable, but if you were gaming on a winter day, you'd have yourself a
nice little, little hand, little hand warmer here. Of course you're not buying this thing for gaming anyway, are you? Gaming's a bonus. You get it for this guy. Oh yeah. (unclipping) Man, those are strong
magnets, aren't they? I mean it's one thing to have a stylus that like clips onto your device, but that's really, really incredible, and I love the way that they've got it tucked away so that if
you're sliding the laptop into your bag or something like that, it's not gonna get caught
on something and fall off. Now obviously, if you guys
have ever seen my art, you'll know I'm not qualified
to evaluate the stylus. So, I handed it over to
the one and only Sarah Butt to try it out for a bit. She felt that the feel was a bit cheap compared to the apple pencil, but the responsiveness is great with the Surface Laptop
Studio being able to handle larger projects without slowing down. Something that can't be
said for the iPad Pro. - It wasn't all sunshine and roses though. While the pen itself is great, the problems she ran into
had more to do with Windows; having to regularly switch between laptop and folded mode depending on the task, and whether a real keyboard was required. I mean, this won't be a
problem if you're a student who's just taking notes
in OneDrive or Whiteboard, but if you're a professional
using Photoshop daily, their touch only support in Windows leaves much to be desired. And you're, you're
gonna, you're gonna want an external set up for referrals. And the same could probably
be said about the looks. It's got this kind of
chunky, two tiered vibe from the outside, and from the inside, it suffers a little bit from 2015 MacBook Pro clone syndrome, with the only distinctive feature being its gray keyboard, rather
than it having a black one. That is, until you do this. Now, this is far from the first two-in-one device on the market. In fact, they've been making these things for like 10 years now. But what makes this one unique is not just the fact that it
can be operated in laptop mode, I would call this something
akin to "easel mode", and then tablet mode-- - [Man Behind Camera]
Studio mode, not tablet. Studio Mode? Yeah studio mode. This? Yeah. This is a tablet. Not just that, but the fact that it can
switch between them so easily. One of the big problems with a device like this one from HP, is that when you want to
switch from tablet mode, because you just need to
type something for a second, you gotta unfold the whole thing, typity type type type, and then (imitates sounds of effort), wait around for Windows
to register...okay! You're back in tablet mode. With this; Okay, hey, touch screen? I need you out of the way for a sec. Boom. And you're back. It's really quick. It's pretty cool. What's less cool, is
Microsoft also sent us the Surface Ocean Plastic
for our consideration. It paired flawlessly with our laptop and that's all I can really say about it. It looks stupid, has a low polling rate, the ergonomics are terrible, and really the only
question I have about it is why didn't you buy a real mouse? - What you might not wish you bought, at least if Microsoft is
to be believed, however, is additional speakers. They apparently have a total of four downward firing drivers on this machine that are supposed to give
it really impressive sound. And it takes a lot to
impress us these days in a world where Apple's
latest MacBooks exist. And honorable mention for Dell,
honorable mention for Dell. - [Man Behind Camera]
We're gonna compare it to that right now. - Okay, let's hear a Dell. (music starts playing) That's not a Dell that's crab grade. Get it? 'Cause it's a Dell? Thanks Brandon. (music playing) - Not bad Okay. Way fuller sounding. Yeah. (music playing) - It's not close. - [Man Behind Camera] Yeah, wow. Wow. That is damn impressive. And what's also apparently impressive though I haven't tried
it yet, is the webcam. Now I've gone ahead and I've gotten some little smudgies on there. - Here we go. Windows, hello, ready? Set; hello, hi. How you doing? Boom. Signed in. Love it. - So this is, this is
Linus Central Station here. Very respectable. - [Man Behind Camera] Yeah? Without that unfair backlight behind it, that looks, you know, pretty good. I could do my morning makeup in there. - [Man Behind Camera]
It's 10 ADP, more than almost every other webcam can say. Yeah, like dang, not bad. - What's a little more bad is the price. The Surface Laptop Studios
technically starts at $1,600, but that one does not come with a dedicated graphics card. So the first laptop studio that
you actually want is $2,100; far from cheap. And that's even before you
pay for a memory upgrade. So if you bought this
version and realized, "You know what? I actually need 32 gigs
of RAM" are you screwed? Or is there any way to
upgrade it after the fact? Let's open it up and find out. We haven't actually
looked inside this yet, because although it's only
four screws on the corners of the chassis, they're
hidden by the rubber feet, making disassembly annoying
and the potential device looking kind of weird after pretty hot. - [Man Behind Camera] So,
what Microsoft says is "This device does not contain any user serviceable parts. Hard drive is only removable
by an authorized technician. Following Microsoft
provided instructions.". - Here's an idea Microsoft, if the provided instructions
are so important. why don't you provide them to anyone? This is... Have you removed rubber foot yet? No, I'm afraid I'm gonna screw it up! It's a pain in the butt. It's not going back on, right? No, big bummer. This does not want to come apart. That is not its plan. You are sure it's four or should I keep peeling this back-- - They told me four. There's more. I asked in the meeting. They told you a big fat lie. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined. All they had to do was
have four exposed screws to make it so that this
wouldn't have been necessary. I think this is glued down. Oh, I hate this so much. - So it looks like if I pry here, we get a bit of, oh, I
just broke some stuff. - I legit just don't get it. What are we missing here? Can't get a pick in there,
can't get a pry tool in there. - Sorry, Microsoft. I'm sorry, viewers. I'm sorry, Alex. I'm sorry, Brandon, that
you have to witness this. - [Man Behind Camera] Not sorry
Microsoft, it's their fault. Oh. - Sorry, everyone. Okay. What was it? It was a screw. It was a screw! Okay, well now we know. (laughter) There's a Fascia piece, like a like a plastic sticker. See this? There's a plastic sticker
that covers up a couple of more screw holes here. - [Man Behind Camera] Also
the battery came with that. Yeah, um... This is a really unusual
battery configurations. So it's actually a, good Lord, what is this? Like a six-piece soft-pack battery? - 56.3 watt hours. - [Man Behind Camera]
How did they get 11 hours of battery life out of that? Well, hold on. I can't tell-- Well, no, this, it can't be just this one. I was thinking maybe it's just this one and there's more capacity here, but no, that's really impressive. That would have have to be
the whole thing for sure. Unfortunately, we won't get a good
look at the motherboard without fully popping it off. But I think there's a
fair bit we can see here. We've got a one terabyte looks like customized SSD of some sort. They've at least done a fancy little Microsoft Kit Spread on it. Oh. Oh boy. Yep, standard M.2. Just got a nice little
Microsoft theme shield on it. We really wanted to know
the spec of this thing. We could use the software to look at that. This is cool, super flat heat pipe here, going from the CPU over
to an exhaust over here. So the intake is all along the side here, and then the exhaust is here. And then you see the same
thing on the other side, where there is... where the hell is the
heat pipe for this one? At any rate, there's another heat pipe that goes over to the GPU, which is right here. And then this is our
dedicated fan for that. So it looks like the two coolers do not share CPU and GPU
cooling duty in any way. Yeah, I like it. I like it. It's cool. You know what, Brandon,
we could go deeper, but I think we know
everything we need to know. If you don't order the
right amount of Ram, when you order, you are
plumbed out of luck. I think this is salvageable, Alex. If we just order, if we can get replacement parts, if we just order a new
base slash battery thing and plunk it on here. There is the issue of
the smile to sort out. You can see it's a bit of
a happy laptop right now, (laughter) or sad, depending on how you look at it. I think we could probably
mostly buff that out, if you know what I mean. Just kind of give it a little, you know what-- whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think I fixed it already. Yeah, it's pretty straight. Hold on, hold on. Just gotta-- I mean, that's the thing about these aluminum alloy chassis, right? You can just get and give
it a little...oh yeah. (laughter) Bottom line, great battery life, great track pad, amazing display, utterly unique form factor, very usable, probably one of the best
integrations of a stylus in a device that I've ever seen with those nice strong magnets, and all it costs you is that you will never, ever, ever open it up and hope to put it back together with upgraded components. And you will never ever hope to see a Linus Tech Tips video without this message from our sponsor. Do you think making a website it's hard? Well, it doesn't have to be. Use Squarespace and you'll have your website up and running
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you can get 10% off today. - If you guys are looking
for another video to watch, checkout or review of the Alienware x17. That is, that is one sick gaming laptop. Sick, like it has some problems. - [Man Behind Camera] No it doesn't. They fixed them and just didn't tell us. Oh, they fixed the problems and just...oh. Well that's good.
