Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (15-inch) review: big performance gains, excellent battery life, and very light, but not many ports and no Thunderbolt support
Microsoft's newest Surface Laptop brings better battery life and a better chip — In look and feel, very little has changed from the last generation. Tweets: @scaryifliteral , @dcseifert , and @tomwarren Tweets: @scaryifliteral : Good God does that thing look nice in black https://twitter.com/... Dan Seifert / @dcseifert : believe it or not, i actually love it when a product defies expectations in a review. the Surface Laptop 4 AMD is such a product, it's a marked improvement over the last generation. here's @mcsquared96's review: https://www.theverge.com/... Tom Warren / @tomwarren : here's @mcsquared96's review of Microsoft's Surface Laptop 4. It has excellent battery life and big performance gains, but it doesn't beat Apple's M1 chips https://t.co/s2rszMykhg https://t.co/K71I7uS9Xs
Context & Ripple Effects
The Surface Laptop line has been an exercise in slow refinement: the previous generation was dinged for battery life despite an excellent keyboard and trackpad, per the earlier Surface Laptop 3 review. The Laptop 4 keeps the same look and feel but swaps in a better chip — notably an AMD option that Dan Seifert calls a marked improvement over the last generation.
That formula carries forward through the line's history: the follow-up Surface Laptop 5 kept the same thin-and-light shape while still drawing criticism for few ports and average battery life, before Microsoft eventually rebuilt the laptop around Snapdragon silicon in later editions.
First-order effects
- Buyers of the 15-inch model get a machine that fixes the battery-life complaint from the Laptop 3 era while staying very light, though they must live without Thunderbolt and accept a sparse port selection.
- Microsoft positions the AMD configuration as the standout value in the lineup, giving it a credible performance answer at the mainstream price point.
Second-order effects
- By shipping both Intel and AMD variants, Microsoft turns chip choice into a buying decision inside its own lineup — press attention concentrates on the AMD unit, pressuring Intel's share of the Surface bill of materials.
Third-order effects
- The iterative x86 refresh cycle this review sits in proved to be a waypoint: within a few generations Microsoft moved the Surface Laptop to ARM-based Snapdragon chips, trading raw compatibility for battery life and on-device AI features — a bet whose app-compatibility friction is visible in reviews of the newer models.
- The persistent port scarcity across generations signals Microsoft treating the Surface Laptop as a wireless-first companion device, pushing accessory makers and dock vendors to fill the connectivity gap Thunderbolt support would have covered.
The trend: PC flagship laptops are converging from incremental x86 refreshes toward ARM-based designs that trade compatibility for battery life and on-device AI, with Microsoft's Surface Laptop line as one of the clearest case studies.