Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio Review - The Perfect 2 in 1?

What's up everyone? Jossie here. I'm really excited because in today's video, we're going to get a chance to take a look at Microsoft's new Surface Laptop Studio. I want to thank Microsoft for sending over the Surface Laptop Studio to me. I've been using it the past few days. Microsoft did not pay me for this video, so all the opinions about this device are mine. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up. It helps out with the YouTube algorithm and subscribe for more content like this. The Surface Laptop Studio that I've been using the past few days has the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphics in the Platinum colorway. At first glance, the Surface Laptop Studio looks pretty similar to the other products in the Microsoft Surface lineup, especially the Surface Book 3 with its very minimal profile and design and that same Platinum colorway. This device is actually meant to replace the Surface Book 3, so it only makes sense to compare the two. One of the first things I noticed was the platform that the laptop is sitting on. This acts as not only a platform, but also has the vents for the cooling system, which makes sense from a functionality standpoint, but does feel a bit awkward at first when holding the device. The platform also acts as a storage for the Surface Pen, which is great because I always thought the profile of the Surface Book 3 with the Surface Pen attached to the side fell out of place, but now you can easily hide the Surface Pen 2 underneath the second layer of the laptop. Another thing I noticed right away was the new keyboard design and larger trackpad. You'll also notice that the laptop looks very similar to the MacBook Pro. The bezels are pretty thin and they added some curvature to the corners of the display. Now let's take a moment to talk about the trackpad, something that I feel like Windows computers didn't do a great job in the past when it came to designing the actual size of the trackpad along with just the overall experience. So Windows devices have historically been known to have pretty terrible small trackpads that were not super functional. I definitely often right-clicked when I was trying to left-click. Even the Surface Book 3 has a trackpad that, in my opinion, was way too small considering how large the device is. When you buy a 15 or 16 inch laptop, I definitely expect that you should be able to use the laptop comfortably without needing peripherals like an external mouse or keyboard. The good news about Microsoft's Surface Laptop Studio trackpad is that they made a few upgrades to make the trackpad experience a lot better. The trackpad, for one, comes with haptics. If you're a Mac user, you shouldn't have a hard time transitioning to the Surface Laptop Studio. I remember when I first switched over to PC, one of the more difficult things about transitioning from Mac to PC was the trackpad experience. Luckily, the Surface Laptop Studio trackpad is much larger than its predecessor and I found myself not reaching for my mouse as often as I usually do when using a Windows device. Even with video editing in Premiere Pro, where I usually like to use at least an external Bluetooth mouse like the MX Master 3, I found myself not necessarily needing to do that and having a comfortable workflow and experience using the keyboard and trackpad. Surface Laptop Studio comes with two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, a Surface Connect port which I'll definitely be using a lot. Now let's talk about the display. Arguably the most innovative part of the Surface Laptop Studio. The display is bright and there's that true-to-life color contrast. You'll also notice that scrolling feels so much more natural and smooth because the Surface Laptop Studio display refreshes at 120Hz. Now I know some of you are probably asking, is that variable 120Hz? Is it always at 120Hz? Basically the laptop will decrease in refresh rate to save battery. This is the most innovative part of the laptop. Everything else is pretty standard even though one can argue it's hard to find a really powerful device that also has dedicated graphics and Microsoft is definitely offering that with the Surface Laptop Studio. The display can rotate freely because of the versatile screen that creates multiple modes. You can put the laptop in the regular laptop mode. You can also put it in studio mode which is when the screen is flipped down and then there's another mode called stage mode which is really just in between studio and laptop mode. I definitely do think this new hinge is more practical. It not only makes the laptop lighter. It has a 13.3 inch chassis. So you might be asking, who is this laptop for? As someone who does a bit of everything, I work as a full-time software engineer, I also do content creation on the side that varies from photography work, video work, and obviously YouTube content. I really do think this laptop is great for pretty much anybody, especially if you're someone who wants to have a laptop that does everything. You may want to have a more minimal setup where you don't have an iPad and you just have one laptop that does it all. All in all, I think that this is really a great device. I do think people are going to be on both sides of the fence when it comes to the design of the platform layer. I personally like the profile of this new device. The bezels are thin enough. It's a larger display than it seems and I find it really comfortable to consume content through. I'll definitely be using this laptop for a ton of content creation work. I'll definitely be using it for programming through Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. If you're a developer, you should have no problem programming through Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code using this device. The base model is configured with 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage. I definitely recommend upgrading to at least 512 gigabytes of storage, especially if you expect to use this laptop for multiple years as your main device. So that's the Surface Laptop Studio. I think this hinge and platform layer is really innovative and really challenges the way we think about how a laptop should look and function. With all that being said, I hope you all enjoyed this video. I definitely want you all to comment down below. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this laptop. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel for more content like this. And if you want to see a Windows 11 video, so many things to talk about when it comes to Windows 11, I have to make a fully dedicated video. As always, thank you all for watching this video. I greatly appreciate it and have a blessed rest of your week. I'll see you all soon. Peace.