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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So Microsoft launched their Surface laptop the other day, and I think it's a really cool product, I'm personally very interested in it, I think it looks awesome, I think they're going to sell lots of them, but I think there's some potential problems with this product, and I wanted to go through them with you in case you're interested in purchasing one.
00:20So the first thing is the design, I really like the design, I think a lot of the interest about this product comes from the fact that it looks as good as it does, because let's be honest, if this thing was super ugly, it would be a much less exciting product, but it's really good looking, so here we are.
00:33It's one hand openable, the keyboard and trackpad look really promising, but the most interesting thing about this product is the fact that they're using this Alcantara material on the keyboard deck, and if you're unfamiliar with it, it's this fabric type material, it's a synthetic fabric that Microsoft uses on their signature keyboard on the Surface Pro product, and it feels and looks really inviting to use, it's much more durable than what you would imagine a cloth type material to be, but that being said, it's not metal, it's not plastic, so there's going to be some wear over time.
01:02Now I've seen Alcantara keyboards that looked really good after six months, and I've also seen some that looked really worn down after six months, so I don't know, it's going to vary from person to person, but one thing's for sure, you can't just replace the keyboard the way that you could on the Surface Pro, because if you really wanted to and you had a gunky Surface Pro type cover, you could just buy a new one for a couple hundred bucks, this is built into the laptop, it's kind of like fused onto the keyboard deck, I don't think it'll be as easy to just replace that.
01:29Okay, let's talk about the operating system. These come with Windows 10 S, and if you want to, for the first year, you can upgrade it for free to Windows 10 Pro. After that first year, or after 2017, it's going to become a $50 upgrade.
01:41So the biggest difference between Windows 10 and Windows 10 S is that 10 S can't run any kind of executable program, so any kind of like .exe file, you can't run it, there's not even a command prompt.
01:52This is crippling to a lot of users, there's no Steam, there's no Chrome, you're going to be stuck with Microsoft Edge, and you're going to be running Bing for the search engine. It's streamlined, and it focuses on the core of Windows, and I think for system administrators, it's a lot easier to get something like this deployed, and for the user, you're getting better battery life, you're getting a faster experience, like a more optimized experience, but it's a very limited experience.
02:15So, if you're using just regular applications that you're used to, you're going to have to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.
02:21Okay, looking at the hardware, the base model comes with 4 gigs of RAM, and that is tight. I really feel like they should have put in 8 gigs, and the argument is that for most people that are interested in this base model, so like the university student that doesn't have a lot of heavy computer tasks, 4 gigs should be enough, especially if you're not using Chrome.
02:37So if you're just web browsing, editing PDF documents, typing up Word documents, just doing very productivity-focused tasks, then yes, 4 gigs should be enough, but the thing is, if you ever want to do something that's a little bit more RAM-intensive, you can't upgrade that.
02:53Now, I understand they had to do this to create the price structure that they wanted, but I'm just not a fan of that base configuration.
02:59In terms of USB ports, we're looking at a single USB-A and no USB-C ports, and the thought process behind that is that right now, their target demographic of students is a predominantly USB-A market.
03:10So, thumb drives, external hard drives, mice, they're just all Type-A, and I understand that, but this is a device that's supposed to last multiple years, so you won't be upgrading this thing, or you won't even think about upgrading this thing for like 2, 3, maybe 5 years.
03:24And in that amount of time, USB-C will be everywhere. Why not give it to them now, so that people have access to universal charging, to universal display outputs?
03:34It's so weird that they're using USB-A, and they even had USB-C ports on prototypes. We were so close!
03:41Okay, next up is pricing. Even the base Surface laptop isn't meant for high school or grade school kids.
03:46It's meant for university students and up, and when I'm looking at pricing, that base model feels a little expensive.
03:52And I understand there's a premium with the awesome build quality, the design, the amazing screen, the material choices, and it's very nice looking, but in 2017, you're just not getting good long-term value with 4GB of RAM.
04:04The mid- and top-tier models seem to be priced well, or at least in line with the competitors. It's just the base model that I'm concerned about.
04:10But one thing to note, if you are a student, you're able to apply your student discount to these. You're going to get about 10% off, so the base model is at $900 US.
04:18The display panels are awesome, with basically 100% sRGB gamut, and they're all individually calibrated at the factory for color accuracy.
04:26The 3x2 aspect ratio, I mean, this is great for tablets because you get a little bit more usable space vertically, but on a laptop-only device, I would prefer a 16x9 screen, just for consistency for other devices.
04:38More importantly, though, even though the screen supports the Surface Pen, writing or drawing on a vertical Surface, like a laptop screen, is not an enjoyable experience.
04:47During the presentation, Panos had to hold the screen to annotate on it, but I feel like this product wasn't designed around using it with the Surface Pen.
04:54If you want to write or draw frequently, I would get a Surface Book or a Surface Pro instead.
04:58So, I want to talk about some things that I think Microsoft did right, just to kind of close this off.
05:03They're running PCIe drives for storage, so those are going to be really fast, way faster than the ones on the Surface 3.
05:08The CPU selection is good. That top-end i7 actually has an Iris Plus graphics chip. I'm really glad they went with that instead of the more common 7500U.
05:17The battery looks promising. They're claiming 14.5 hours running Windows 10 S, I'm assuming, but the way that I use my computer, it's probably going to be 10, 11 hours, which is still really long.
05:26Overall, I think this is a great product. Despite having a couple concerns, I think Microsoft did a really good job on this thing.
05:32So, I will be doing a full review when I get the unit in. If there's stuff that you guys want me to kind of take a look at in particular, let me know.
05:39I'm going to be spending more time in the comments section of this video, just because I know a lot of you guys are students and you might have an opinion.
05:45I'd love to talk to you guys about it. Let me know. Questions, comments, I'm going to be down there for quite a bit in this video.
05:50Hope you guys enjoyed this. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. I'll see you guys next time.