Both the Surface Laptop 5 and the Surface Studio 2 Plus seem to have been updated with enterprise buyers in mind, where product buying gets approved for specific configurations and a change that may increase the price means another round of approvals, but IT departments want the laptops it distributes to be as homogeneous as possible for easier accessorizing, support and deployment. At least, it wasn't for the $1,700 top-end model we reviewed.Īge always shows in the screen bezels, which dates the design. The Surface Laptop 5 is a fine notebook, just as it's always been, but it's not as up-to-date or high performing as a lot of similarly priced (or cheaper) models - the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, Lenovo Yoga 7i, HP Spectre x360 or even the MacBook Air if you swing that way. Microsoft has stuck with the same essential design for years, doing the least to keep it current. Conversely, the Surface Laptop 4 took just 11 seconds.The Surface Laptop line reminds me so much of an older generation of MacBooks.

When it comes to editing photos, it took the Surface Laptop 5 only 15 seconds to complete the task. The Surface Laptop 4 crushed its successor with a score of 88. On the HDXPRT 4 test, a benchmark that analyzes how well it handles commercial apps like Photoshop, the Surface Laptop 5 delivered a score of 78. The Surface Laptop 4, on the other hand, finished at much faster rate of 8 minutes and 21 seconds.

It took the Surface Laptop 5 8 minutes and 53 seconds to complete the task. We also ran the Handbrake video editing benchmark, tasking both laptops with transcoding a 4K video to 1080p.

In other words, the numbers are telling us that the Surface Laptop 4 is a better performer than the Surface Laptop 4. The Surface Laptop 5 staggered behind its predecessor with a score of 6,560. According to the Geekbench 5.4 overall performance test, the AMD Ryzen 7 4980U CPU inside the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 achieved a score of 6,748. However, one would think the Surface Laptop 5 would be a better performer than the Surface Laptop 4, but imagine our surprise when we discovered that it's not.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 5 (Image credit: Microsoft)

Surface laptop 4 ryzen 5 16gb