Along with the Surface Pro 9 series, Microsoft has also shown off its new Surface Laptop 5. Having reviewed last year’s Surface Laptop 4, I was looking forward to seeing what the tech giant would do to improve upon its flagship laptop. However, it looks like other than a standard refresh of the processors under the hood, it’s mostly been an incremental upgrade rather than a major shift in design.
For starters, as usual Microsoft will be offering two different versions of the Surface Laptop 5, one with a 13.5-inch, 2256 x 1504p PixelSense Display along with a larger 15-inch, 2496 x 1664p PixelSense Display. Both will come in its iconic 3:2 aspect ratio, along with a 1300:1 contrast ratio, colour-calibrated panels and support for 10-point multitouch and Dolby Vision IQ. The larger Surface Laptop 5 has a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for scratch resistance, though oddly enough the 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 5 has Gorilla Glass 5 for models with a metal keyboard finish while those with an Alcantara finish will need to make do with Gorilla Glass 3.
As for the processor, the Surface Laptop 5 will only come with 12th Gen Intel Core options, with Microsoft seemingly dropping AMD silicon altogether, though it now has Intel Evo certification. The Surface Laptop 4 in contrast not only had both Intel and AMD, but AMD even customised their processors for the Surface Laptop 4. The 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 5 will come with either the Intel Core i5-1235U or the Intel Core i7-1255U, with the 15-inch version only coming with the latter. They all offer up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, up to 1TB of SSD storage along with Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. And of course, they’ll come out of the box with Windows 11 Home.
Microsoft rates the smaller Surface Laptop 5 for up to 18 hours of battery life, with the larger one getting up to 17 hours of use. You’ll also find a 720p front facing camera with Windows Hello, omnisonic stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos and a dual far-field studio microphone setup. As for I/O, you’ll find a 3.5mm audio jack, a Surface Connect port for charging, a USB-A 3.1 port and a USB-C 4.0 port. There’s also support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity.
The chassis of the Surface Laptop 5 is built of aluminum, and comes in either Matte Black, Platinum, Sage or Sandstone colourways. The smaller Surface Laptop 5 is also available with an Alcantara finish for the palm rest, but as mentioned earlier this swaps out the Gorilla Glass 5 for Gorilla Glass 3. There aren’t local pricing and availability details just yet, but globally the Surface Laptop 5 starts at USD999.99 (~RM4,691.45) for the 13.5-inch version, while the larger Surface Laptop 5 starts at USD1,299.99 (~RM6,098.90).
