Surface Laptop 5 hands-on: A bare minimum update

Today Microsoft announced its refreshed Surface Laptop 5, which just like before will be available in 13.5 and 15-inch models. The new notebooks will also feature 3:2 touchscreens with a very familiar brushed aluminum design. Actually, almost everything about the Surface Laptop 5 is the same as before, aside from the addition of new 12th-gen Intel CPUs and one Thunderbolt 4 port.

Video Transcript

SAM RUTHERFORD: A few minutes ago, Microsoft just finished up its live streaming announcing a bunch of new Surface devices. So now we're here at the Microsoft Store in New York City to take a look at the new Surface Laptop 5.

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Now, you're not going to notice a ton of exterior changes on the Surface Laptop 5. If you've seen the Surface 4, you've kind of seen this one again. That's because there's really three main upgrades. There's a new line of Intel 12th Gen CPUs. There's a new Thunderbolt 4 port. And there's a new sage green color. And I know that might not be sounding like a ton, and you're kind of right.

Some other new features is there's a new support for Dolby Vision IQ, which uses the ambient light to kind of adjust your display's color settings, which is nice, but once again, not a ton of major upgrades. We still have a 720 p camera, which Microsoft says has been tuned to make you look better on conference calls. And it's OK, but it's not really game changing. And you also get an IR camera for Windows Hello facial recognition.

For longtime service fans, I kind of like to see that Microsoft has kept at least one model with that fuzzy Alcantara deck. But for me, I kind of prefer the cleaner lines you get with that brushed aluminum finish all the way around.

That said, while I'm never going to complain about getting better performance and new CPUs, I just kind of wish Microsoft did a little bit more. We still only get two USB ports. There's that Thunderbolt 4 port, and one USB 3.1 Type-A port, and a headphone jack. But there's no SD card reader like you get on an XPS 15 or big MacBook. And that just really kind of sucks, because if I want to switch out a card for my camera and get some photo editing, I've got to grab a dongle, which is not ideal.

I also kind of wish Microsoft added a discrete GPU to the 15-inch model. It's fine to use integrated graphics on the 13-inch model. It's a lighter system. More portable. That's cool. But I've been using the Surface Laptop Studio for a while, and I would really like to get a little bit of more graphics horsepower. But I'm not a great artist, so I don't get the full value of that [? Pro ?] 4 display and the included surface pen that you get with the Surface Studio laptop.

But that said, from what I've used, the Surface Laptop is a totally fine machine. I still think it looks great. And if it's anything like the Surface Laptop 4, we're probably in for a little bit more of the same with some better performance.

One final other new addition is that Microsoft has included individualized wallpapers for Windows 11. That's based on the color system. So if you notice, you'll get a green wallpaper on the sage green one and a grayish black one on the black model, and so on. But that's kind of about it. And that's where I'm a little disappointed, because I just wish Microsoft did a little bit more.

But we should know more when we finally get a chance to check them out for real. So stay tuned for a review. The Surface Laptop 5 is available in 13.5 and 15-inch models starting at $1,000 and $1,200, respectively.

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