It’s been 6 months since I bought Microsoft’s new Surface laptop, and I keep coming back to the question: Has Microsoft finally created a Windows laptop that can truly compete with the MacBook Air? After spending half a year with this device, I think I know the answer, and it might surprise you. The first major highlight of this laptop is its build quality and design. Microsoft has created something that feels very much like a MacBook Air that runs Windows, especially with that premium feel you get thanks to its aluminum unibody construction, and yes, it weighs about the same as a MacBook Air. The trackpad is another standout feature – it’s probably the best I’ve ever used outside of a Mac. It has excellent precision, supports multi-finger gestures, great haptics, just like the Mac. The display is also impressive, featuring a 120Hz refresh rate, which is actually better than the MacBook Air’s 60 Hz screen, and yes, it’s a touchscreen. Now, if you’ve never had a laptop with a touchscreen before, you might be wondering, "Well, what is the point of having a touchscreen in a laptop?" For some, you might find it more convenient to use your laptop like your phone, and Windows is pretty well optimized nowadays for touch capability. But given the Surface laptop’s conventional design, where the screen only bends so far, I find having that functionality a bit limiting. If it were more like the Surface Pro where you could detach the screen from the keyboard or flip the screen around where it would act more like a tablet, I’d probably use the touchscreen more. The only slight downside to the display I found is its anti-reflective coating isn’t as good as on other laptops like the MacBook Air. If there’s a trade-off between these two things, I’d rather not have a touchscreen and have a better anti-reflective coating. Battery life is another major highlight – this laptop is rated for up to 20 hours of video playback, and in my experience, it easily lasts an entire workday and then some. However, apps that are not optimized for the ARM processor might drain the battery faster. What’s even more impressive is its standby battery – I’ve had this thing closed for like a period of about 2 weeks, and I barely noticed it dip in charge, which is impressive. Regarding performance, I got the version with the Snapdragon X+ processor, and that’s been totally fine for my needs. I mainly have used this laptop for work, so writing in Google Docs, editing our website via WordPress, checking emails, surfing the web, and other similar activities. Now, what about games? Well, because of its ARM architecture, don’t expect it to be able to run all of the games that you could run on a traditional Windows laptop with the same level of performance. I did try some gaming on it – Manor Lords, which uses Unreal Engine 5, runs okay on medium settings, like it’s playable but only barely. I’d probably give it a 3 out of 10 for playability. Now, Cities: Skylines, that’s another game I play regularly, and it’s a CPU-intensive game that’s almost 10 years old now, and surprisingly did load after a 3-minute wait on this laptop, and it’s actually playable, though I did crash the game when trying to set textures to medium. So overall, I’d probably give it a 5 out of 10 for playability. Just keep in mind not every game will run on an ARM-based Windows laptop, and of the games that can run on it, not all of them may run well. The speakers are another impressive feature – they get quite loud, quite a bit louder than the MacBook Air’s. The MacBook Air seems to top out at around the 75% volume mark on the Surface laptop. They sound decent; however, don’t expect fantastic well-rounded audio with good bass. For that, you’ll be much better off connecting a good set of headphones like the Sonos Ace, which I recently reviewed, or the Sony WH-1000XM5s, which I’ve also reviewed. Another thing I like about this laptop’s design is the charger that Microsoft provided – it magnetically attaches to the laptop, so if someone trips over the cord while it’s charging, the laptop will not go flying across the room, just like the MacBook Air’s MagSafe charger. Now, you might be wondering why I keep comparing this laptop to the MacBook Air, and that’s because that’s the laptop that Microsoft really benchmarked this one against and wants this one to be able to beat because the MacBook Air is still like the best-selling laptop in the world at the time of recording, at least. I’ve also come to really appreciate the customizability of this laptop and its Windows operating system, especially with Microsoft PowerToys. You can do things like enable Alt + Spacebar to search across your computer, peek into files before opening them, and even remap shortcuts to match the Mac’s more ergonomic layout for copy and paste if you want. Windows Phone Link is another standout feature – you can connect your Android or iPhone to your laptop, though Android users get more features. Android phones allow you to mirror your entire screen, receive notifications, text people, pin apps from your phone to your desktop, take calls, access photos, and control media playback. So what features have I found myself not using? The first is Windows Recall, which was only recently rolled out after Microsoft had to pull the feature over safety concerns earlier in the year. This feature lets the operating system take screenshots of what you do on your laptop and then uses AI to analyze those screenshots to help you find things later. It works similarly to the Pixel Screenshots app I discussed in my video about the new Pixel 9 this year, except with Recall, you don’t have to remember to take a screenshot – the OS just automatically remembers what’s been shown on your screen. Microsoft Copilot is another feature I rarely use, even though it has its own key on the keyboard, and Microsoft has made a huge deal about the new Surface laptop and other Windows laptops being rebranded as Copilot Plus PCs. I think a lot of it is going to feel like AI overhype to the average user. Now, that’s not to say I’m an AI skeptic or think the technology isn’t useful. On the contrary, I’ve used Claude and ChatGPT to help me generate a few thousand lines of code for new functionality on 6MonthsLater.net, something I probably would have had to pay a web developer a couple grand to actually build. The main challenge with Copilot is to a lot of people, it might not seem very useful, especially for providing reliable information since these models are prone to hallucinating and just making things up, and as of this recording, Copilot can’t do things for you on your PC like adjust settings, for example. Now let’s discuss the downsides I’ve encountered with this laptop. The first is annoyances with Windows. Windows is like incredibly hostile if you want to download Chrome onto this laptop – there must have been like five different popups trying to get me to or convince me to use Microsoft’s browser, which is called Edge now, and honestly, all of that just made me want to try Edge even less. The news feed that’s enabled by default in the widgets panel just shows clickbait headlines so Microsoft can probably run ads against it – it just kind of cheapens the feel of Windows and the Surface laptop overall. Another downside I found is with the auto-brightness – the adjustments on occasion aren’t smooth, and they can be a bit jarring. This example is a bit dramatic; sometimes it’s a little bit more subtle than this, but it just doesn’t fade, it just kind of goes to whatever the next brightness setting is, which is weird. The last downside is the legacy keys that you can find on the keyboard function row. Having Home, End, and Page Up and Down keys seems a bit dated, to be honest. I think three of these would be better used as Play/Pause, Skip Forward, and Skip Back keys like you have on other laptops, including the MacBook Air. So do I recommend the Surface laptop? Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time with it and can easily recommend it to anyone looking for a general-purpose laptop with a sleek design, good build quality, excellent battery life, and typing experience that runs Windows. I’ve actually struggled to find many major flaws with this laptop – Microsoft has just done a very good job at building a solid Windows laptop that feels great, and now that you can get them for, you know, a couple hundred off their list price now, like it’s just a very compelling laptop overall. Now, has Microsoft actually created a laptop that can compete with the MacBook Air’s performance? Depending on what benchmarks you look at and what chip you configure with the Surface laptop, yes and no. But did Microsoft create a beautifully designed laptop that compares well to the MacBook Air, has excellent battery life, a good display, and overall decent software experience? Yes. The only area where you’ll really still want to stick with a Mac, though, is if you have an iPhone or a bunch of other Apple devices, and you can see why and more of my thoughts on how Macs compare to Windows machines in my comparison between Macs and Windows, and you can get to that by clicking on the comparison video in the card above. As for which configuration to get, they come standard with 16 GB of RAM, which has been fine for me, but if you want to try gaming on ARM, you probably should bump up the RAM, though remember that the ARM processor is going to limit your choices of what games you can run on it. For most people, you’re probably fine with a version with the Snapdragon X Plus chip, which is a 10-core CPU, unless there’s a sale that brings the Elite version of the chip closer to it in price. You can check the prices for different configurations of the Surface laptop and find links to multiple retailers for comparison shopping in our blog post at 6MonthsLater.net – link to that in the description. And you can also see all of the products we recommend, check their prices, and filter for deals at any time by visiting 6MonthsLater.net/shop. To see more of my reviews on laptops and computers, you can click here, and then you can click here to see my comparison between Windows versus Mac if you’re really stuck between choosing a Surface laptop or a MacBook Air. If you like this video and found it helpful, make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel for more, and if you have a Surface laptop, let me know what you think of it – would you buy it again? For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder. Thanks for watching!