Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″) – Top 5 Pros and Cons

Power, portability, and luxury are the three words that accurately describe the Surface Laptop 4. Microsoft hasn’t really done anything to change it up on the outside, which is a neutral move. We really liked the Surface Laptop 3’s design, but as always, nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement.

However, the laptop remains good-looking, while bringing an upgrade on the hardware side, in the face of Tiger Lake UP3 and Zen 2. In short, it is a portable device that can handle heavy work but doesn’t excel at it, due to that same portability.

As for today, we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″).

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″): Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″)

1. Design and build quality

We still get the aluminum chassis that feels amazing to the touch and is plenty durable. Another plus is the matte black finish, which really takes the appearance to a whole another level. The notebook also has a weight of only 1.288 kg with this paint option, while having a profile of just 14.5 mm. The lid and the base come with rounded corners and sharp edges, with the lid also sporting a very glossy Microsoft logo.

The lid opens easily with one hand, with the hinges being very smooth. Doing so, reveals medium-sized bezels, a Webcam, keyboard, and touchpad. The keyboard has decent key travel, but the feedback lacks the clicky characteristic that we look for. The trackpad, on the other hand, is fantastic, with its glass surface, large size, smooth, gliding, and accurate tracking.


2. Battery life

The 47.4Wh battery unit isn’t the largest out there, but the components inside still manage to make it last for  11 hours of Web browsing, or 9 hours of video playback. Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


3. Display quality

The device comes with a 13.5-inch PixelSense display with a resolution of 2256 x 1504p. The panel has comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 390 nits in the middle of the screen, 388 nits average across the surface, a maximum deviation of 4%, and a contrast ratio of 1330:1. The brightness is very uniform across the entire display area, which is one of the first things to check if you’ll be using it for color-sensitive work.

The panel covers 95% of the sRGB color gamut.

In terms of accuracy, we tested the display with both the factory settings (left) and with our Design and Gaming profile applied (right). With our profile, the laptop reaches a dE value of 0.6.


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″) configurations with 13.5″ Sharp LQ135P1JX51 (SHP 14B3) (2256 × 1504) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


2 reasons NOT to buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″)

1. I/O

Ports on this thing are pretty scarce, offering only a single USB Type-A port, a single USB Type-C port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


2. Upgradeability

Upgradeability is also very limited, offering only soldered RAM, which does however work in quad-channel. The Storage is accessible through a single SSD slot, with Microsoft offering up to 1TB of SSD storage.


All Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (13.5″) configurations:

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