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Where it falls down slightly is in its lack of ports, with only one USB-C and one USB-A port, along with plugging into power using the magnetic Surface Connect port. The Omnisonic speakers with Dolby Atmos 7 work really well in a professional setting too, rendering speech on Zoom calls clearly enough to make video-conferencing effortless. It performed well in various different lighting situations and the built-in mic picked up all speech, even from across the room. I used the webcam for VCs and team meetings, with several cameras and screens loading without any lag on the laptop’s behalf, and benchmark testing confirmed it reached its advertised 60 FPS frame rate without a hitch. The webcam is a 720p HD f2.0 camera, and while those aren’t exactly dizzying specs, they form the core of one of the laptop’s best features video-conferencing.
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There is the Windows Hello face authentication feature, which works well and managed to easily unlock the laptop for me both with and without my glasses, while staying locked when faced with my child’s mug, however similar to me it might be some days…Īnd that relatively lean package may be no bad thing, as Microsoft has focused on doing the basics really well here. It’s clearly made with writers in mind, and caters brilliantly to them.Īpart from the touchscreen, and the accompanying table mode, there aren’t too many bells and whistles on this laptop. Word processing is a breeze, and the 3:2 screen ratio is ideal for spreadsheet work and presentation prep. (Image credit: Future/Erlingur Einarsson) Microsoft Surface Laptop 4: FeaturesĪs a Microsoft-made laptop, it’s no surprise to find that Office apps perform extremely slickly on here. Obviously a stylus is needed here to prevent turning your screen into fingerprint city, but even using my stubby, clumsy fingers, the robust build quality and the great stability of the monitor hinge means it stayed put in my desired position, so I didn’t have to constantly adjust the screen back into place. Using the touchscreen feels nice and responsive, and although you’ll never get the same accuracy here as with a dedicated graphics tablet, I could well see the Surface Laptop 4 coming in useful for visual design students or people who would like to use the touchscreen to perform simple graphics work.
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Blacks look reassuringly black and contrast is nice and clear with the brightness ramped up. HD streaming video looks really nice and sharp, which makes up for the relatively small screen size, and the high PPI allows for nicely detailed Photoshop and graphic design work. Both are 10-point touchscreens, with max resolution of 2256 x 1504 pixels for the smaller unit and 2496 x 1664 pixels for the larger.
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This model has two display options: a 15-inch PixelSense or a 13.5-inch one, which is the display we had for our test.
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