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The article represents the personal views of the author, and the minority has made only minor changes to the title and layout.
I remember the first time I saw surface Laptop Go was at a Shundian in Sanlitun, Beijing. I have long been aesthetically tired of my MacBook Pro, and to be honest, I have always appreciated the design of the Surface series. With a 3:2 12.4-inch screen ratio, a comfortable keyboard and trackpad, and a touchscreen — the Surface Laptop Go meets everything I've come to expect from a netbook. However, at that time, I simply appreciated it and did not have any desire to buy.
That has changed this year. First of all, I got out of the 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro that I had used for many years and replaced it with the M1's Mac mini as a Mac machine for daily use. That's because, despite the MacBook Pro's portability, its performance has long since fallen short of what I need. As for the need for a mobile workforce, the Dell Latitude 7390 issued by the unit is actually a decent experience, if it doesn't break down so quickly.
LOL, the line is too messy, don't mind
Today's thin and light notebooks, in fact, there are many choices. First, macBook Air has become powerful and has excellent battery life because it is equipped with an M1 processor; second, in the Windows camp, Lenovo Xiaoxin, Xiaomi, Huawei and other domestic brands have launched thin and light notebooks that are good in both performance and price. As for why I ended up choosing the Surface Laptop Go, the main reason is this: First, I've already mentioned that I love the design of this notebook. Considering the 12.4-inch 3:2 screen, it looks small and delicate, but it is also unambiguous in the display of content, which can display more content than the traditional ratio of 16:9 or 16:10. Second, the recent high demand for Excel has made it impossible for me to use a Mac computer to do all the work; coupled with the great possibility of macBook Air updating the design and processor in 2022, I am now afraid to act rashly. Finally, although the performance of notebooks from other manufacturers is much stronger, there are always some things that I feel uncomfortable in design. In short, there are many reasons to convince yourself to buy surface Laptop Go.
Price
Windows 11
When the machine arrives, it comes preinstalled with Windows 10, version 2004 (in S mode). It's early 2022, and I don't understand why this laptop shipped with a system that was still in early 2020 — maybe that's the problem with refurbishment? However, I immediately upgraded it to Windows 11.
A refreshed desktop experience for Windows 11
The main improvements to Windows 11, in addition to the new design and various frosted glass effects that can be seen on the "face", in fact, the most important thing for me is the improvement of the external display. Compared to the many problems with Windows 10 external screens, Windows 11 can remember the windows that open when the external display is connected, and supports different displays to use different wallpapers (yes, Windows 10 doesn't even support this) - so that when I need to remove the notebook and reconnect it to the monitor, it can smoothly return to its original state. In addition, for external monitors, Windows 11 seems to finally support independent operation of the monitor when the notebook is closed, and it can be operated with only an external mouse and keyboard.
Although the Experience of Windows 11 in terms of external displays has improved a lot compared to Windows 10, overall, Windows 11 still feels "needs to be optimized". Especially in terms of the response speed of the system, it may be because of the use of a lot of frosted glass elements and complex animations, Windows 11 feels much slower than Windows 10. Bugs are also one of windows 11. Take the example of the problem of different wallpapers on different monitors mentioned earlier – I ended up choosing "Next Wallpaper" on Monitor 1 and rotating one wallpaper on Display 2; and vice versa. The moment I first found out about this problem, I was really a little crying and laughing. It is not known when bugs on this type of software will be resolved with system updates.
Finally, Microsoft still showed its own "traditional arts" in Windows 11 - the problem of inconsistent design can be said to have been passed down from Windows 8 to the present. Although Windows Terminal has replaced Command Prompt as the default command-line app and Settings has been redesigned, many Windows interfaces and windows from the previous era can still be found in Windows 11. Maybe this is the so-called "historical baggage".
Windows Terminal has become the default command-line terminal performance
I'm actually not too demanding of performance, and being able to run office suites smoothly and occasionally open Photoshop is already in line with my personal expectations. However, the i5-1035G1 processor of Surface Laptop Go is still "pinching a sweat". 4 cores, 8 threads, 1.0GHz main frequency, coupled with THE UHD G1 core display, the processing performance itself is not strong at all.
In the process of daily operation, it is also obvious that the problem caused by insufficient hardware performance can be felt. 8GB of memory can be said to be the first to bear the brunt of it - chrome, such a large memory user opened, the daily memory occupation has soared to about 6GB, I have been long missing the phenomenon of tab overloading, on this computer "resurgence". Secondly, it can be felt that when the computer is not plugged in, the overall performance will be affected by frequency limitations - for example, the scrolling of WeChat chat history will begin to drop frames, Chrome web pages will load slowly, and program opening will slow down. Finally, GPU performance is also noticeably "out of step" – Windows 11's various animations are fluid, but the transparency is a bit tricky – especially when changing themes, and the entire PC may not be able to slow down for 1 minute. In the end, I also had to turn off the transparent switch.
In addition, under slightly heavier loads, the notebook's fan will begin to rotate, with a medium sound and a slightly heavier heat on the fuselage. But overall at a manageable level.
In terms of hard disks, surface Laptop Go uses an NVMe SSD from SK Hynix. Testing with the WinSAT command-line tool, which reads sequentially above 1300MB/s and writes around 600MB/s, is not a particularly good grade.
Disk performance test results using WinSAT
In other aspects, this notebook supports Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, is a standard configuration of a thin and light book released in 2021, and it is relatively stable in daily use, and I rarely encounter the phenomenon of disconnection at present. Since my wireless router only supports Wi-Fi 5, I haven't done much testing of this computer's wireless network speed.
Fortunately, I only use this notebook to do some lightweight text work, at most PowerPoint or Photoshop, although sometimes it is slower, but it does not affect my work efficiency overall. A significant portion of my work needs to be done in the browser, and Chrome browser is not much of a problem on this computer overall, and if the tabs are opened too much, it can cause stuttering or reloading of previous tabs.
Design and I/O
Although I have a lot of criticism of the performance of the Surface Laptop Go, I do like its design. The metallic A-side and C-side, and the skin-like D-side color are all light blues that make me feel quite dreamy, but they just emit different lusters of different materials; the colors of the keyboard and trackpad are also adjusted with the overall color, which can be said to complement each other.
The machine is small and the color is attractive
The "thinness" of the Surface Laptop Go is indeed reflected in the volume and weight of the fuselage. The 1.11 kg weight is indeed the lightest I've ever used (lighter than the 11-inch iPad Pro plus magic keyboard, of course), and the overall body size allows it to fit safely in my minority satchel. Despite its lightness, this computer is one of the few laptops that can open the lid with one hand, indicating that Microsoft has also put some effort into the details of body design such as hinges.
Compact design is not without cost. The surface Laptop Go has only 4 interfaces in its entire body: a USB-C, a USB-A, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left; only the Surface Connector charging port on the right, and I/O scalability is really a problem. Not only that, in order to make the fuselage look more compact, the side of these ports is not vertical, but a tilt in the direction, making it difficult to insert USB accessories, and the Surface Connector is also difficult to connect at once.
screen
As a traditional form of the product family, Surface Laptop's screen is also closer to the common screen size of traditional notebooks. Surface Laptop Go uses a 12.4-inch mirror multi-touch screen with a resolution of 1536 * 1024. This resolution can't be said to be very high — so I often feel that this screen is not sharp enough during my daily use, especially when compared to the Retina screen of the MacBook.
However, unlike most traditional notebooks, this laptop also features a nearly uniform 3:2 ratio of screens within the Surface family. After using the 16:9 and 16:10 screens before, I think the few lines that can be displayed on the 3:2 screen seem to be very effective. In particular, I mainly use this computer for text work, widescreen often means that there is a lot of blank space on both sides of the text, which is actually a waste of screen space.
Finally, because the style of rounded corner design is too popular now, the Surface Laptop Go screen is also surrounded by rounded corners, but the curvature of this rounded corner is not as exaggerated as the MacBook Pro. When the mouse moves to a fillet, the vertex of the mouse pointer does not follow the rounded corner, but is directly obscured by the rounded corner part - there is still a little problem with the details. However, with the rounded window of Windows 11, I feel that it is indeed "the right taste".
The rounded corner screen looks like it's just missing a few pixels for the keyboard and trackpad
The Surface Laptop family's keyboards and trackpads are inherently trustworthy. The keyboard on the Surface Laptop Go feels a bit longer than the Magic Keyboard on the MacBook Pro, so it's more comfortable and less straightforward to bounce back. I fell in love with the keyboard as soon as I got started anyway. When typing keys, the sound of this keyboard is not very loud at all, within the acceptable range. On the keyboard's power key, a fingerprint sensor that supports Windows Hello is integrated, allowing you to sign in to your PC directly with your fingerprint and verify your Microsoft account.
Fingerprint recognition is integrated in the power button
The Trackpad experience of surface Laptop Go is also a very good one in the Windows camp. The trackpad feels very comfortable to the touch, almost like the MacBook. The operation is also sensitive, and various polydacty gestures can be perfectly recognized. By default, the lower-right area of the trackpad is mapped with the Right Mouse Button, but can be turned off in settings. If there is something wrong with it, it may be that the whole trackpad feels stiff when pressed; and the edge of the touchpad cannot be pressed. But these are also common problems with the Windows camp trackpad. Overall, I can still get out of the mouse and use the trackpad directly to do most of the operations.
The trackpad supports multi-finger gesture battery, charging and battery life
Small machines also mean equipped with small batteries. Surface Laptop Go battery life is generally satisfactory to me, but for people who need to travel a lot and rely heavily on web browsers, battery life can be a big problem. In terms of my personal usage, using this computer at medium intensity (WeChat, Chrome, Feishu, etc. are all switching in the foreground or background), the battery life should be 4–6 hours.
Detailed information on battery life can be traced
Surface Laptop Go is equipped with a 39W power adapter using Surface Connector, and the charging speed is still quite fast. However, due to the design of this notebook, I often can't align it all at once when I am aligned and charging, and I always have to grope for a while. I don't have too many opinions about the Surface Connector - just like MagSafe, although it can't carry the big responsibility of data transmission, it is always an elegant way to charge. In addition, Surface Laptop Go also supports charging through the USB-C interface, if you are working outside, you do not need to bring extra special chargers, a slightly more powerful USB-C interface charger is enough.
brief summary
In the process of using it for half a month, I actually liked the Surface Laptop Go more and more. Although there are still many unsatisfactory places in terms of performance, the whole computer can still meet my personal expectations in terms of design and overall use experience. However, I always hate iron and steel for Microsoft - if you can make a good design of a computer, why can't you stuff better hardware?
The Surface Laptop Go may have satisfied me, but I must admit that, perhaps, there are better netbooks.
In the office, the desktop space is cramped, and the external monitors are placed vertically
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