The main thing that you need to know about the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is that it's way more powerful than its predecessor, but also that in order to get there, Microsoft made the chassis thicker and heavier. With that out of the way, it's still one of the best laptops on the market, at least in terms of the audience that it serves. It's made for video editors and gamers, and it serves them well. If you're looking for more of a productivity work flow, check out the standard Surface Laptop.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 has a 120Hz display, something that's still pretty rare in laptops. But more importantly, it has a unique convertible form factor that lets you use it as a drawing tablet. The Slim Pen 2 even has haptic feedback to make it feel more like you're writing on paper.

Along with some webcam issues that I'll get into later, the biggest drawback is just that it's bigger and heavier. Being thin and light just isn't part of the value proposition anymore.

Of course, that's been made up for with pure power.

About this review: Microsoft supplied XDA with a Surface Laptop Studio 2 for review. It had no input into its contents.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 pricing and availability

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 was announced on was announced on September 21, alongside the Surface Laptop Go 3. It was made available for preorder immediately, and began shipping on October 3, so it's available now.

It starts at $2,000, which is $400 more than the starting price of the original Surface Laptop Studio. Moreover, the Slim Pen 2 is sold separately for another $130.

That base model comes with an Intel Core i7-13700H, 16GB LPDDR5x RAM, and a 512GB SSD. If you want dedicated graphics, you'll need to go to the next tier, which bundles in an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 and comes in at $2,400. The model that Microsoft sent for review comes with 64GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an RTX 4060, and you can grab that one for $3,300.

Design

It's thicker, heavier, and made out of aluminum

While the Surface Laptop Studio 2 looks the same, this is a totally different chassis. The original was 0.746 inches thick, while the Laptop Studio 2 is 0.86 inches. Its predecessor was 4.00 pounds, and this one is 4.37 pounds. It's also made out of aluminum, making it among the last in the Surface lineup to be transitioned from magnesium, the lighter material that all Surface devices used to be made from.

In fact, if you put the two laptops next to each other, you can see differences in color. The magnesium Surface Laptop Studio was painted, and the aluminum one is anodized.

This change was done in the name of power, as I was repeatedly told by members of the team at the launch event. The goal here was to make the Surface Laptop Studio 2 as powerful as possible, and I'm not surprised. The 35W CPU in the original model wasn't well-received by some.

More power also means it runs hotter, so the fans are bigger (I'm told). The fans are placed at the front of the laptop, with the hot air blowing out the sides. It's such a strange phenomenon because the hot air blows on your hands while you're using a mouse. I feel like my dog when it sits by the heating vents in my apartment.

Microsoft also added a couple of ports with this generation. Alongside the two Thunderbolt ports on the left side, there's now a USB Type-A port. In fact, I think this is the first time I've seen a company actually go backward in terms of port selection. In most cases, when USB-A is removed, it doesn't return. After all, it's legacy technology.

On the other side, there's the Surface Connect port that's been on almost every Surface since the Pro 3, despite the fact that proprietary charging ports have been abandoned by every major laptop manufacturer, aside from Apple. There's a 3.5mm audio jack, and making its debut is a microSD card slot.

As far as my own personal preferences go, I don't like that the new design is thicker and heavier, or that Microsoft chose a heavier material in aluminum. I thought the original model had the perfect amount of power for editing video and such, while still maintaining a slim and light form factor. But like I said, this is all about power, so if that's what you need, Surface Laptop Studio 2 gets you there.

Display and keyboard

The 120Hz refresh rate is delightful

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 comes with a 14.4-inch 2400x1600 display, but the real draw is that it has a 120Hz refresh rate. In fact, two years ago when the first one shipped, I think we all thought 120Hz laptops would be more common, but this is still somewhat unique.

I still love that it has rounded corners, something that we need to see in more laptops. Unfortunately, Microsoft still can't seem to optimize Windows for it, but it is what it is.

Of course, the display folds down into a tablet orientation. Indeed, that's the whole 'Studio' aspect of it, allowing it to convert like a Surface Studio. Thanks to haptic feedback in the Slim Pen 2, it feels more natural to write, making it feel more like the friction of writing on paper. It does require app support, so it's not everywhere.

The haptic feedback in the Slim Pen 2 makes writing feel natural, like writing on paper.

When we talk about laptops converting into tablets, there are a variety of use cases. For something that's really thin and light, like a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga, you could download the Android version of the Kindle app and use it as an e-reader. The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is not that; it's simply too heavy and bulky. It makes sense for drawing and other pen-specific workflows, but for general consumption on a larger-screen device, you'll still want to carry your iPad.

Overall color gamut is pretty good, supporting 100% sRGB, 82% Adobe RGB, and 85% P3.

Contrast ratio maxed out at 1400:1, which is lower than the 1500:1 that was promised. Brightness maxed out at 452.5 nits, which is also well under what was in the spec sheet.

The keyboard is 1.3mm still, and it's still one of the best keyboards around. Microsoft actually changed the colors of the keys for some reason, not that that really matters to anyone.

The touchpad is awesome. It's a haptic touchpad that uses Sensel technology, and Microsoft says it's the most inclusive touchpad its ever made. At the launch event, the firm showed someone that had one hand using it, which was really cool to see. Obviously, with one hand, this person was used to having to use it for both typing and for the touchpad, so being able to use their other side for the touchpad was a total game-changer.

Someone from Microsoft told me a few years ago is that their goal for accessibility is to make it so that you don't have to ask for special accommodations. It should just be baked into the product.

The webcam (and the AI)

Windows Studio Effects debut on Intel

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 boasts the claim of being the first Intel-powered laptop to have an NPU. Specifically, that component is called the Intel Gen3 Movidius 3700VC VPU AI Accelerator. If you've paid attention to anything Microsoft has done over the last year, then you know that AI is front and center.

There were lots of AI features shown at the event, such as Copilot in Windows, and Generative Fill in Adobe Photoshop. It's not relevant to the product itself though, because those things run in the cloud. Anyone will be able to use them.

The main Windows 11 feature that uses an NPU is still Windows Studio Effects. This is where you can do things like blur your background, have the camera follow you around if you move, or make it look like you're looking at the camera.

I've seen these features on Intel laptops before, and it's always been pretty bad. If you ever tried to use more than one at once, they'd just stop working. Indeed, AI features have long been a strong suit of Qualcomm's Snapdragon platforms.

I can tell you that on the Surface Laptop Studio 2, they actually work with the Intel part. There's not a whole lot else to say, just because there aren't too many AI features in Windows that aren't cloud-based.

What's cool is that you can turn these things on in Settings, so you don't have to worry about individual apps supporting them. They all do.

The webcam isn't great though. I looked strangely yellow in calls, something I hope is an issue with my particular unit. Normally, I think Microsoft uses some of the best webcams out there. HP also crushes it with its Dragonfly, EliteBook, and Spectre laptops.

Performance

Microsoft brought the thunder

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is the most powerful Surface to date, and by a sizable margin. That includes desktops like the Surface Studio lineup (which includes laptop parts), and giant products like the Surface Hub.

Moreover, it's a lot more powerful than its predecessor, which in itself was a lot more powerful than its predecessor. You see, Surface Laptop Studio was the successor to the Surface Book 3. The problem with Surface Book was always that it needed to keep the CPU in the display, since it was detachable. This very much limited how powerful of a CPU could be included, so it always had a 15W processor (in the 15-inch model, the TDP was usually boosted a bit).

When the Surface Laptop Studio came out, it moved those parts to the base, where they'd be in any laptop, allowing for much better thermals and more powerful components. But instead of including the 45W processor you'd find in most powerful laptops, Microsoft used 35W processors, which not only had a lower TDP, but had fewer cores. Tiger Lake H35 was more like scaled up U-series processors. Still, it was a lot more powerful in a reasonably slim and light form factor.

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is all about more power.

That brings us to now. The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is properly powerful, packing the 14-core (6 P-cores and 8 E-cores) 45W Core i7-13700H, along with 80W graphics in the form of either an RTX 4050 or 4060. The model that Microsoft sent me includes the 4060.

As you can see from the benchmark scores, it's a lot more powerful, and it's more powerful than the latest Dell XPS 15. The XPS 15 might rock an RTX 4070, but the RTX 4060 in the Surface has double the TGP.

It's not just the CPU and GPU that are faster either. The SSD is a lot faster. Below are scores from CrystalDiskMark.

RAM is faster too, thanks to the upgrade from LPDDR4x to LPDDR5x. Below are results from MaxxMem2.

In the time that I used the Surface Laptop Studio 2, I focused on two things aside from my regular productivity workflow: photo editing and gaming. I edited all the photos for this review, as well as the photos of products that will be launching this week. More importantly, I did it all while the product wasn't connected to power. It was clear to me how powerful this machine is, so my next question is always how well it performs when it's just the battery powering it. To my surprise, I didn't notice a difference.

The same went for gaming. I specifically wanted to test gaming because Microsoft called that out as a use case. It's no stranger to making these claims, since it owns a giant gaming platform in Xbox and Windows.

I'd say it performed admirably. The presets for Starfield were 720p 16:9, so it wasn't anything that was too exciting. I also played a racing game that I can't talk about until tomorrow, and that did fine on medium settings.

Battery life was a mixed bag, although on average, I'd say it got about three hours. When gaming or editing photos in Lightroom Classic, it was under two hours, specifically 100 and 110 minutes. With a productivity-focused work flow and the power slider set to recommended, I was able to get up to 190 and 200 minutes of battery life.

I know none of that sounds great, but that's the kind of sacrifice you make to get something this powerful.

Should you buy the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2?

You should buy the Surface Laptop Studio 2 if:

• You edit photos and videos
• You casually play not-so-casual games
• You draw or do other work that benefits from pen usage

You should NOT buy the Surface Laptop Studio 2 if:

• Your workflow is productivity, or anything that doesn't require dedicated graphics
• You're a heavy gamer

When I say that the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is good for a casual gamer that plays not-so-casual games, I'm talking about people who play games occasionally in their spare time, but not games like Candy Crush Saga. I'm talking about people that play Forza Horizon 5, Halo, or something else along those lines.

But also, if you don't need dedicated graphics, this is not the laptop for you. It's why Microsoft has three tiers of Surface Laptop now. But if you want power, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is the way to go. It definitely punches well above its weight.