Hello there my fellow notebook afficionados and welcome back to the channel. Let’s look back almost exactly a year. Qualcomm just launched its Snapdragon SOC’s for Windows on ARM and the whole thing was heavily pushed by the good folks over at Microsoft. And for the time being if you want a Surface laptop or a Surface Pro, the new silicon was your only option. And why not? While it was not quite a revolution, Microsoft and Qualcomm promised for a firstg product, you got solid performance, great efficiency, and an overall very usable computing experience. On the other hand, well, it was a new platform. So, if you use a lot of very specialized software, you might have run into incompatibility problems. And while most Snapdragon powered devices did offer longer battery run times, the difference wasn’t night and day, and it also wasn’t a universal situation. Adding insult to injury, AMD is also making really good CPUs, and Intel launched Luna Lake later in 2024. And while they did have to sacrifice some CPU grunt with a classleading built-in GPU and impressive improvements in overall efficiency, the competition was very much alive. But why am I telling you this? Well, we got our hands on the Surface Pro and the Surface Laptop 7 15in for the business folks. And these two beauties are available with Luna Lake. And it could be that Microsoft themselves may have been betting on the wrong horse for their very own consumer lineup. But let’s get into factors, both Surface devices, but on the same internals, and instead of Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X1E8100, we get Team Blue’s Core Ultra 7268V with the integrated 140V and 32 gigs of speedy onboard memory. Add in a 1 TBTE drive and 120 Hz displays, OLED for the Surface Pro and IPS for the Surface Laptop, and you got everything you could ask for for all of your daily computing endeavors. I mentioned it already. These two are intended for business customers, which is a bummer, especially when it comes to prices since both are quite a bit more expensive than their siblings for the general public. Since nothing has changed regarding the overall chassis and I really want to focus on the inner workings and the comparison with the Snapdragon variants, let me give you a very quick rundown of what you get for these two individually. I added a links to our in-depth written reviews in the description below should you want more information. Since we are dealing with Surface devices here, we have absolutely no complaints about chassis and material quality. And with their clean styling, these are also the perfect business companions. The Surface Pro bets on an OLED with solid results in our measurements. And instead of two USBC 4s, you get a pair of Thunderbolt fours. And while the Snapdragon variant force available with a 5G module as an added option, you will have to rely on Wi-Fi for the Intel competition. For the Surface Laptop, the USBC’s get the same Thunderbolt 4 treatment, and the larger yet still incredibly sleek laptop also has an additional USBA, micro SD card reader, and HDMI for some added IO flexibility. The 15-in IPS panel is pretty solid for this particular display technology. But of course, when it comes to contrast and black levels, it’s no match for an OLED, but with equally good factory calibration, and higher average brightness, it is still a very good display. The keyboard also leaves little room for complaints with great tactility, decent travel, and a clean layout. Add in the haptic touchpad, and the Surface Laptop is a great overall daily computing companion. All right, that’s that. So, let’s see what Intel has in store against the Snapdragon powered Surface Puppies we already reviewed. As always, we are kicking things off with CPU performance, and that’s definitely the Achilles seal for the Intel powered models here, especially when looking at multi-core performance. The difference is big enough that Qualcomm even has enough headroom to offset any reduction in performance when dealing with emulated software and applications. Single core results are basically identical where Apple’s M4 is still out of reach for anything running Windows. System performance, which we measured with Crossmark in this case, shows a bigger delta between the Intel and Snapdragon models, which could already be a sign of the performance differences when it comes to the integrated GPUs. However, in all fairness, this will hardly be something you would really feel in the most common everyday use case scenarios like surfing the web or doing some light productivity. This changes somewhat drastically should you do anything that is GPU accelerated. And this holds true both for raw graphics grunt and general compatibility. In our synthetic test, the Luna Lake options basically mop the floor with the competition, especially anything with Qualcomm’s Adreno iGPU. And it’s actually quite impressive what Luna Lake brings to the table if you do something heavier every now and then that can utilize the 140V’s performance capabilities. Of course, the Surface devices hardly classify as gaming laptops, but then again, if you want to unwind with some virtual entertainment, the Interm models are your best bet, especially with the added benefit of XSS, which does work quite well in supported games. And should you want more information or are interested in the general Luna Lake gaming experience, please feel free to check out our MSI Claw 8 review from a few weeks ago. All right, that’s the performance side of things and it’s quite clear that while you will have to sacrifice some CPU performance, I would still say that Luna Lake is giving you the overall more flexible platform, even though the difference will only be really apparent in heavier use cases. So, how about fan noise and battery life since those aspects might be much more important to you in terms of your everyday experience? The Surface Pro with team blue silicon has the edge here when it comes to fan noise. It takes quite a long time before you even hear the fans at all. And the Snapdragon sibling needs help from its cooling solution quite a bit sooner. The situation is reversed though in the Surface Laptop, which is louder than its Qualcomm counterpart in our load average measurements. Under a prolonged use simulated, in this case with Cyberpunk and our stress test, both Surface Pros are on par and very audible, while the Snapdragon Surface Laptop is the quietest of them all. Away from the wall, the Surface laptop with the Luna Lake SOC has the edge and scores a very very impressive lead over its Snapdragon powered counterpart. While both of our Surface Pros neted us pretty much exactly the same runtimes. So any given CPU or SOC in this case does not automatically say a lot about what you can expect when it comes to your individual experience. And this actually makes it quite hard to get a final verdict here, especially since the Luna Surface devices are not really intended for the general consumer. You can still buy them, but you have to pay quite the premium. Still, I personally feel like the Team Blue powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop appear to be the more rounded and flexible products here. But given the general use case for these devices, the difference in performance will most likely not really affect too many users. When I have used Snapdragon devices in the past, for example, the Honor Magicbook Art 14 or when we did our ProArt Pad 13 video, I hardly had to deal with any problems, and I would guess that you will only run into problems with really specialized software, especially almost a year after launch. But please, folks, let me know what you think. If Microsoft were to offer its Surface lineup with Luna Lake and Snapdragon Silicon for roughly the same price, which one would you choose and why? Please sound off in the description below. I can’t wait to read what you have to say. Again, if you want more information about any of the devices I talked about today, please check out our written reviews. And for everything new about laptops, maybe watch some of our recent RTX 5000 laptop coverage on the channel. That’s it from my end today. Please leave your like and watching. My name is Alex. You have been fantastic and I’ll see you all in the next one. Take care.