Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 review: it’s too expensive

Microsoft offers two configurations of the Surface Laptop Go 3. The base model has an Intel Core i5-1235U CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 12.4-inch IPS display. Upgrade to 16GB of RAM and you’ll spend $1,000, which is expensive for just an upgrade in memory and only 256GB of storage.

There’s a lot of better competition for this much money, including the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED that’s $700 for an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 14.0-inch 2.8K (2,880 x 1,800) OLED touch display. Looking at the upgraded price of $1,000, the still-relevant and excellent Apple MacBook Air M1 becomes a dominant competitor.

At a time when manufacturers are going larger with their laptops, particularly introducing more 14-inch machines, Microsoft has maintained the Surface Laptop Go 3’s diminutive stature. It’s built around a 12.4-inch display, with reasonably small display bezels around the top and sides. That makes it very small in width and depth, which forces at least one compromise you’ll notice when you go to type. We’ll get more into that below.

The Surface Laptop Go 3 uses a last-gen Intel CPU, the Core i5-1235U. This 15-watt medium-power CPU has 10 cores (two Performance and eight Efficient) and 12 threads, promising decent productivity performance. This is not the processing power you expect at $800.

The Surface Laptop Go 3 has 41 watt-hours of battery capacity, which should be more than enough for a laptop with a small, low-resolution display and a 15-watt CPU. Microsoft advertises 15 hours of battery life under “normal usage,” but I wasn’t able to get anywhere close to that.

In our web-browsing test, the Surface lasted for just 6.5 hours, well below most other laptops in our comparison group. It lasted longer in our video-looping test at 13.5 hours. However, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED and Apple MacBook Air M1, which compete with the base and upgraded Surface Laptop Go 3, respectively, were both much stronger.

The Surface Laptop Go 3 has a 12.4-inch PixelSense IPS display in the very tall 3:2 aspect ratio and with a very low 1,536 x 1,024 resolution. That makes it less than 1080p, which will cause video to run at a low resolution and cramp other horizontal content. It’s also not terribly sharp at just 149 pixels per inch (PPI), and it pales compared to the 2.8K OLED display in the Asus ZenBook 14 OLED at 243 PPI. The display looked OK when I took it out of the box and fired it up, but suffice it to say that it wouldn’t serve as my primary (or even secondary) machine judging by the display alone.

According to my colorimeter, the Surface Laptop Go 3’s display provides plenty of brightness, average color width, and a good contrast ratio. Its colors weren’t very accurate, though. The Dell XPS 13 9315’s display was brighter, offered higher contrast, and had a similar color width with much better accuracy. The Asus ZenBook 14 OLED’s display was in a class by itself.

Overall, the Surface Laptop Go 3 has a display that’s good enough for typical productivity work in all but one important measurement. It’s held back by its low resolution, which is most noticeable when looking at pixelated text and 720p video.

Audio is provided by OmniSonic speakers that are located in the keyboard deck and pump sound out directly toward the user. I found the sound to be plenty loud, with crisp mids and highs and even a touch of bass. You can use the speakers for streaming media and listening to music, making audio a strength.

The Surface Laptop Go 3 suffers greatly from its price increase. As I’ve stressed throughout this review, you can get other laptops for the same price (or less) that offer a significantly better overall value. Microsoft’s offering is just too slow, with a middling build quality and low-resolution display, and is also behind the curve on too many components.

That leaves the Surface Laptop Go 3 in a difficult position. At its base price of $800, you can buy the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED and Dell XPS 13 9315, both much better laptops. At the upgraded price of $1,000, you can buy the Apple MacBook Air M1, which is also superior. At $550, the Surface Laptop Go 3 would be compelling. But at its new price, it’s impossible to recommend, even for staunch Surface fans.

Editors’ Recommendations