Let your ideas flow through your fingertips. Surface Laptop 2 features a vibrant, 13.5” interactive touchscreen for work, creative inspiration, or sharing photos with friends. Sleek and speedy with a stunning screen, the Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop continues Microsoft’s tradition of hardware excellence. Browse. Catch up with friends. Stream your favourite music and movies on Netflix, Spotify, and iTunes on the faster, more powerful Surface Laptop 2 — with up to 14.5 hours of all-day battery life. Discover more in Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop – platinum review.
Price and availability – Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop
The starting model of the Surface Laptop 2 will set you back $999 (£979, AU$1,499). This configuration comes with everything you see listed to the right, but with a limited 128GB of SSD storage.
The Surface Laptop 2’s $999 starting price isn’t shabby, but it’s lacking on storage. At that price, you get only a 128GB SSD (in addition to a Core i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM). Want the room to flex you get in a 256GB drive? You’ll need to spend $1,299, and you’ll get no other perks for that $300, aside from more color options.
The Spectre 13 starts at 256GB with its $1,149 model, and you can upgrade to 512GB with the $1,269 model. The XPS 13 includes a 256GB SSD at its $1,079 config, and Dell prices the 256GB to 512GB upgrade option at $150, but that only becomes available for its $1,309 model.
While Apple’s 8th-Gen Core i5 MacBook Pro starts at a higher $1,799, an upgrade to its 512GB SSD upgrade (from 256GB) costs $200, which is $100 less than what Microsoft charges. The Matebook X Pro provides 256GB of storage in its intro-level $1,199 model.
Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop – platinum specs
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 4.1 |
| Brand | Microsoft |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-8250U |
| Company Website | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-laptop-2/8XQJKK3DD91B?activetab=pivot:overviewtab |
| Display Size | 13.5 |
| Graphics Card | Integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 |
| Hard Drive Size | 256GB |
| Hard Drive Type | M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD |
| Highest Available Resolution | 2256 x 1504 |
| Native Resolution | 2256 x 1504 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Home |
| Ports (excluding USB) | USB 3.0, Surface Connect, Mini Display Port, Headphone |
| RAM | 8GB |
| RAM Upgradable to | 16GB |
| Size | 12.1 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches |
| Touchpad Size | 4.1 x 2.7 inches |
| USB Ports | 1 |
| Video Memory | Shared |
| Warranty/Support | 1-year limited hardware warranty |
| Weight | 2.7 pounds |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac |
| Wi-Fi Model | Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller |
Compare Microsoft Surface laptop 2 vs Microsoft Surface laptop 3 vs HP ENVY 13
| Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 13.5 Inch Laptop – (Platinum) | HP ENVY 13-aq0003na 13.3 Inch FHD Touch-Screen Laptop | Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 Ultra-Thin 13.5” Touchscreen Laptop (Platinum) | ASUS ZenBook UX333 Full HD 13.3 Inch Laptop | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computer Memory Size | 16 GB | 16 GB | 8 GB | 8192 MB |
| Connectivity Technology | Bluetooth; USB; Surface Connector | Bluetooth; USB; Wi-Fi | USB | USB; Bluetooth; Wi-Fi |
| Processor (CPU) Model | Core i7 | Core i7 | Core i5 Family | Core i7 |
| Processor (CPU) Manufacturer | Intel | Intel | Intel | Intel |
| Display Size | 34.29 cm | 13.3 in | 13.5 in | 13.3 in |
| Display Technology | PixelSense | — | — | — |
| Hard disk Description | SSD | Flash Memory Solid State | SSD | Flash Memory Solid State |
| Hard Disk Size | 1000 GB | 0 GB | 256 GB | 512 GB |
| Item Weight | 1.28 kg | 1.2 kg | 1.2 kg | 1.09 kg |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Home | Windows 10 Home | Windows 10 Home | Windows 10 |
| Processor Count | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| System RAM Type | DDR3 SDRAM | DDR4 SDRAM | — | DDR3 SDRAM |
Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop – platinum review
Design
At 2.7 pounds and 0.6 inches thick, the Surface Laptop 2 is similar in size to the Dell XPS 13 9370 (2.7 pounds, 0.5 inches), lighter than the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro (3 pounds, 0.6 inches) and the Huawei MateBook X Pro (2.9 pounds, 0.6 inches), but heavier and thicker than the HP Spectre 13 (2.4 pounds, 0.4 inches).
Build & color
I love the Surface Laptop 2’s lid, a fine piece of aluminium with tight corners and a chrome logo. The lid looks especially neat in our black test unit, though the Alcantara fabric-covered deck looks closer to gray, and I wish it were darker.
Microsoft doesn’t give the black option to anyone buying the intro-level $999 Surface Laptop 2 (Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD), so you need to spend more on storage, with the black option starting with the $1,299 (Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD) version. The same goes for the Cobalt Blue and Burgundy models.
Unfortunately, only the platinum color is offered on the Core i7, 16GB of RAM, 1TB model, which seems ludicrous. On top of all that, Microsoft’s selling a Blush Pink Surface Laptop that looks fantastic.
Display
As I watched 4K nature videos on YouTube, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 2’s brilliant picture quality left my jaw on the floor. Water registered in an incredibly tranquil blue, a snake appeared in a vivid, eye-popping shade of green, and I saw an insane amount of detail in its eyes, thanks to the notebook’s 2256 x 1504-pixel screen.
According to our colorimeter, the Surface Laptop 2 produces 176 percent of the sRGB spectrum, a rating that rockets past the 114 percent category average. The Surface Laptop 2’s screen also beats the panels in the XPS 13 (117 percent), the MacBook Pro (119 percent), the Spectre 13 (111 percent) and the MateBook X Pro (124 percent).
The Surface Laptop 2’s screen is also plenty bright, emitting up to 321 nits, which exceeds the 311 premium laptop average. We saw brighter displays in the 372-nit XPS 13, 439-nit MacBook Pro and 458-nit MateBook X Pro. Colors stayed bright, though, when viewed 45 degrees to the left.
Tapping, swiping and doodling on the Surface Laptop 2’s touch screen is speedy and responsive. I saw barely any lag as I drew in Paint 3D, and TweetDeck columns scrolled smoothly. Edge-swipes from the left and right sides of the screen activated the timeline and control center, respectively, without lag.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 – Screen brightness & contrast
The Surface Laptop 2’s screen is excellent. It’s a 13.5-inch LCD touchscreen, using the same PixelSense technology that you’ll find on the rest of the Surface range. It runs at a native resolution of 2256 x 1504, in 3:2 aspect ratio.
| Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 | Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13 | LG Gram 14Z980 | Apple MacBook Air 2018 | |
| Max brightness: | 379.33 nits | 388.25 nits | 292 nits | 304.48 nits |
| Black levels: | 0.27 nits | 0.27 nits | 0.3542 nits | 0.6 nits |
| Contrast ratio: | 1371:1 | 1428:1 | 823:1 | 501:1 |
| Colour temperature: | 6305K | 6490K | 6666K | 6404K |
This colour temperature is a little on the warm side. It’s 200K or so away from the sweet spot: 6500K if you’re keeping score. I’ve not noticed anything looking overly red during my time with it.
The brightness, black levels and contrast ratio paint a flattering picture. Anything that can give you over 300 nits is decent, and while the actual score of 379.33 nits is a fair distance from the 13-inch 2018 MacBook Pro, which smashed it out of the park with 514 nits, but it’s still a decent option. Note that Trusted Reviews recorded 304.48 nits of max brightness with the 2018 MacBook Air – you can see how it compares to laptops in a similar price range above.
With regards to colour gamut coverage, the Surface Laptop 2 tells a similar story, i.e. decent, if not record-breaking results:
| Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 | Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 | LG Gram 14Z980 | Apple MacBook Air 2018 | |
| sRGB | 93.1% | 90.7% | 94.9% | 93.3% |
| Adobe RGB | 66.5% | 62.7% | 67.5% | 68.2% |
| DCI P3 | 69.0% | 64.4% | 70.6% | 70.8% |
These results are solid, but they show a screen that’s great if you want to watch a movie, browse the internet or do some work on a high contrast screen without washing out the colours. I played The Return of The Obra Dinn and watched a good chunk of Daredevil S3 on the screen, and I’ve got no complaints.
However, the low Adobe and DCI scores here mean that you probably won’t want to use this screen for any serious media editing work, as it’s a real weakness in an otherwise solid laptop. As you can see, that’s par for the course for most laptops in this price range. If you want a laptop with higher Adobe and DCI P3 coverage, you should look at the MacBook Pro 2018 or Dell XPS 15 2-in-1.
Interestingly, the figures are very close to what the new Surface Laptop 3 offers. It looks like Microsoft didn’t alter the screen at all when upgrading.
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 offers a degree of protection on the Surface Laptop 2, but it can’t help but reflect ambient light.
Graphics
The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 chip in the Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 pushed it to a 71,647 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited test. That’s below our 90,387 premium notebook average, which also contains scores from laptops with discrete graphics, such as the 2GB Nvidia MX150-based MateBook X Pro (116,359). The XPS 13 (77,584) and the Spectre 13 (75,114) got similar scores to the Surface Laptop 2, as both pack the same Intel UHD Graphics 620 chip.
The Surface Laptop 2 fared well on the Dirt 3 racing game, running the modestly demanding racer at a brisk 82 frames per second, which is higher than the 77 fps premium laptop average. We saw lower (but still playable) speeds from the XPS 13 (57 fps), the MacBook Pro (47 fps) and the Spectre 13 (57 fps). The MateBook X Pro (117 fps) ran the game at an even smoother pace.
Ports
On its left, you’ll find a USB 3.0 port, a Mini DisplayPort (words that take me back to the mid-aughts) and a headphone jack.
Want to use a modern, reversible Type-C port? Microsoft has a $79.99 adapter cable to sell you, which you plug into its proprietary Surface Connector, on the right side of the laptop. This is disappointing, as the Matebook X Pro includes both Type-C and USB 3.0 Type-A ports, while the MacBook Pro, Spectre 13 and XPS 13 are all Type-C, with no Type-A ports.
One point for Microsoft, though, is that its Surface Connector power cable uses magnets to attach, similar to the MagSafe technology that Apple used to offer, and no longer does. This kind of port comes in handy if the cord is accidentally tugged on, and doesn’t pull the laptop away with the cable onto the floor. This port isn’t new — it first arrived in the Surface Pro — but it’s still something that helps Microsoft’s notebook stand out.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 – Audio
The speakers appear to be mounted under the keyboard, and while I didn’t encounter any issues streaming Netflix with the laptop, the sound isn’t particularly inspiring. If audio quality is important to you, it’s recommended you plug in some cans or external speakers. There’s no real problem, it’s just that the sounds can be a little flat, even though they’re plenty loud – enough for you to comfortably blast music over the typical levels of office noise, to the delight/chagrin of your colleagues.
Skinny laptops tend to be light on ports, and the Surface Laptop 2 is no exception.
Keyboard and touchpad
I’ve already mentioned the alcantara cladding on the keyboard and how much I like it. The rest of the keyboard is pretty decent too. It feels like there’s some travel to the keys, which is good – there’s a satisfying crunch with every keypress which helps with accuracy.
There’s not much in the way of audible clicking either. The well-spaced keys rattle softly, even when you type at speed which is great. Your colleagues will appreciate not being annoyed. It’s a long way ahead of the new-era butterfly switched keyboards of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Again, it’s not the best there is, but it’s close.
If you want to talk about the best there is, though, a lot of manufacturers could learn something from the slick glass-covered trackpad on the Surface Laptop 2. It feels really nice under-hand, it picks up multi-fingered gestures easily, and there’s plenty of space: if you’re looking to edit photos or work with media you really should be using a mouse, but the size of the trackpad will make things a little easier for quick resizing and cropping-type work, as well as general web browsing.
The keycaps have a nice spongey feel, but also spring back nicely.
Webcam
The 0.9 megapixel webcam in the Surface Laptop 2 is decent. Sure, it captured accurate tones in my face and shirt, but there’s a grainy pixelation throughout the image and the natural light from the window behind me is blown out, even though there’s a window shade in front of it.
Heat
The Surface Laptop 2 gets a little warm down under. After we streamed 15 minutes of HD video on it, the laptop’s underside got as warm as 100 degrees Fahrenheit, exceeding our 95-degree comfort threshold. Its touchpad (85 degrees) and keyboard (90 degrees) stay cool.
Software
Microsoft’s vision of Windows, as seen on the Surface Laptop 2, feels a little like Google’s vision of Android on the Pixel 3, as in there’s nothing extra junking up this notebook. The Start Menu has its usual entries for freeware apps and games, such as Hidden City: Hidden Object Adventure, but that’s not considered bloatware by Microsoft’s standards.
Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop – platinum performance review
The Surface Laptop 2’s specs are about standard for its price category. The CPU is a quad core 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-8250U, with 8GB of DDR3 RAM. The Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated GPU is a little disappointing – you won’t be playing any AAA PC games on Ultra or doing any heavy video editing on the Surface Laptop 2. The best way to put these figures in context is with some benchmarks:
| Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 (i5-8250U) | Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13 (i5-1035G7) | LG Gram 14Z980 (i5-8250U) | Apple MacBook Air 2018 (i5-8210Y) | |
| PC Mark 10 | 2216 | 3919 | 3170 | n/a |
| Geekbench 4 single-core | 3050 | N/A | 4085 | 4248 |
| Geekbench 4 multi-core | 10873 | N/A | 11888 | 7820 |
| CrystalDiskMark read | 1637.5 MB/sec | 2344.2 MB/s | 550.6 MB/sec | 2036.2 MB/sec |
| CrystalDiskMark write | 776.0 MB/sec | 1582.6 MB/s | 504.9 MB/sec | 1091.9 MB/sec |
| Cinebench OpenGL | 37.93 fps | TBC | TBC | 34.08fps |
| Cinebench cb | 485 cb | TBC | TBC | 252cb |
The performance is the main reason to tempt you to go for the Surface Laptop 3 instead, with an improved CPU and integrated GPU performance, as well as seeing faster read and write speeds on the SSD. The Surface Laptop 2 benchmarks are solid though, and should still easily handle day-to-day productivity tasks.
The Surface Laptop 2’s lightweight and slender frame houses a seriously beefy battery.
Battery life
Anecdotally, I’ve been very content with the battery life on the Surface 2. Take this out for a day’s work, and it’ll usually survive until lunch without too many issues.
I’m a multitasker too, jumping frequently between several different office apps and browsers, while Spotify pumps out music in the background. I got about eight hours of use before getting spooked and scurrying off to charge the battery, but I’ve regularly used it for 6-7 hours without plugging it in – often because I’ve forgotten to bring my charger into to work. If you were to knock the screen brightness down and turned off some non-essential features like Bluetooth, you might be able to get longer, but I’d say anything past 9 hours is a bit brown trouser.
Our benchmarks reflect this, making it an impressive 10 hours and 11 minutes in Powermark before conking out. That’s an excellent result, on par with the MacBook Air 2018’s 9-10 hours, and a little below that of the LG Gram’s 12-ish hours.
When we use Powermark to test laptops, we use it to simulate 10 minutes of browsing and 5 minutes of video streaming, with the screen brightness set to 150 nits, about halfway on the Surface Laptop 2.
To round out the Powermark result and my anecdotal observations, I looped a locally-stored 4K video sample with the brightness kept at 150 nits, to measure how quickly the battery would fall. Microsoft quotes you 14.5 hours of video playback in similar conditions – everything set ti default, auto brightness disabled, connected to Wi-Fi – but in my experience this doesn’t stand up.
Power levels dropped to 88% after one hour. After two hours the Surface Laptop 2 dropped to 75%, and hit the 50% mark at four and a half hours. As I found when using the Surface Laptop 2 day to day, I noted that the battery hit 10% at 9 hours. Still, you’re getting just over ten hours of use with the Surface Laptop 2, which is excellent.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 lasts long enough that you won’t worry about battery life every time you unplug to leave the house. The notebook lasted 9 hours and 22 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test (web surfing at 150 nits), which is more than an hour above the 8:14 premium laptop average, and slightly above the 8:43 time from the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The MateBook X Pro (9:55) and the XPS 13 (11:59) lasted longer, and the Spectre 13 (5:16) posted an unfortunately short time.
Microsoft Surface laptop 2 13.5-inch i5/8GB/256GB laptop – platinum customer review
Good Quality – Premium Laptop
I work in IT so what I look for in a laptop may not be what everyone looks for, but these are my thoughts after using this for about a week.
1. Looks – it’s a very good looking piece of kit, the ascetic is very similar to apple products. There is a Windows logo slap bang in the middle of the lid. Mine is the Platinum one and it looks like it’s been carved out of a slab of aluminium.
2. Build quality – when you get hold of it out of the box, it feels well made . However when you use it you can see where some corners have been cut to remove weight. The keyboard has quite a bit of motion in the middle when being used i.e. when you press the keys in the centre of the keyboard you can see the surface of the laptop depresses. Now I have a similar spec laptop provided by work, it’s not a Microsoft one but the keyboard doesn’t have any travel when in use. The rest of it is fine, it’s just the central part of the keyboard that is an issue.
3. Screen quality – really, really good. The screen runs at 2256×1505 resolution (higher than HD TV) and to be honest the resolution is crystal clear. By default the text is set to be 150% of normal size and it’s easy enough to read. The only complaint I have against the screen is that it might be a bit too reflective, but that’s more a comment on the lighting where I have been using it. It’s a touch screen laptop, just be careful not to press it too hard!
4. Audio – It’s a laptop…they don’t get points for audio, even the ones with expensive branded speakers fitted still aren’t very good, it’s definitely listenable to but it’s not audiophile quality.
5. Operating system/Applications – It comes with Windows 10 Home Edition, and precious little else. It’s perhaps the only laptop you will ever purchase that only comes with software from the vendor and not lots of 3rd party rubbish. I’ve been using Windows 10 since before it’s official release and I’m perfectly happy with it. The only other thing on there is a trial version of Office 365, it’s free for one month then it’s subscription based…I already have a license for Office 2016, once I logged in using my Microsoft Account my persistent Office license was applied. Apart from that there is nothing – obviously you have the Windows Store where you can get access to Applications from the store, or you can install your own software.
6. Performance – It’s very, very quick. The latest Intel i5 series processors (8th Generation) are really good. So you have 4 physical cores, hyper threading is enabled by default so you see 8 logical cores. The 8GB Ram is perfectly fine, if you are looking at Web Browsing/Productivity/Office based work then this is generously speced. You could say that the 256 Solid State Drive is a bit on the small size, but that’s only really the case if you install LOTS of software or have a massive media library and you aren’t storing that online.
7. Graphical Performance – The new gen Intel Processors also include the new gen Intel Integrated Graphics (620 UHD). Now whilst this is significantly faster that the previous gen HD 620 (which is in my work laptop). It’s still not going to be running the latest games, but it does play some older games at decent performance (I ran Darksiders Warmastered Edition on pretty much maxed out settings and it played pretty well). It’s not a laptop aimed at gaming, but it will do some gaming if you need it to.
8. Connectivity – Now this is where it starts to fall down a bit. You have 1 x USB 3, 1 x Mini Display Port, 1 x 3.5mm headphone socket, WiFi, Bluetooth and nothing else. If you don’t have WiFi then you won’t be able to network this without getting a USB network card. If you only have a cabled mouse you need to think about getting a bluetooth mouse (not a wifi one a Bluetooth one) so that you can still access the USB port. WiFi has been solid on my house and one of the interesting features is the ability to screen cast to my Smart TV. Why it doesn’t have a USB C connection is anyone’s guess, it’s pretty standard in modern laptops and would have enabled access to a USB C Hub, most of which contain HDMI, 3.5mm headhones, ethernet etc
9. Noise – to be honest in normal operation this is whisper quiet. The CPU fan only becomes audible as the CPU hits 45/50 C, before that there is nothing (or at least nothing I can hear). If you continue to increase the CPU load then the fan does become obviously audible at 60+ C. Cooling is provided by two heat pipes and a CPU fan, once the load decrease the CPU core temperatures do drop quite dramatically. If you are only using this to do some web browsing/office based apps/stream some films then you will probably never place enough load on the laptop for the fans to become audible.
There are no possible ways of upgrading this laptop. The entire case is sealed, memory is soldered onto the motherboard. The SSD is inaccessible so can’t be upgraded. The stated battery life of 14.5 hours is ridiculously low in real life use, I got about 4 hours of actual use, lots of web browsing and some email.
Anyway, it’s a good workhorse laptop. It looks good, performs well but has limited connectivity options.