Surface Laptop Go
I had seen these things in shops and quite liked them. Nice keyboard, nice touchpad, slim, light, relatively inexpensive. And supposedly well supported by Linux. And then they have a aspect ratio of 4:3, much more suited for a work related Notebook than 16:9. In my opinion.
And then i got a good offer, which i took. Runs really well with Linux. Except for the fingerprint reader. But whatever. It had a German keyboard layout, got stickers, fixed. Otherwise, the Microsoft proprietary port on the right side is a bit meh. But ach well, its also has USB Type C which supports PD and alternate mode DP. Very nice.
The internal speakers are actually quite good. Good enough to watch Videos or even listening to some music if one has to. The power supply is small and light too. Its a bit hard to find fitting sleeves or such (downside of the form factor).
Anyway, i like.
4:3? But 16:9!
I consider 4:3 very useful for a mobile device. The more width in screen estate is mostly only useful for videos and games, while the wider physical width quite often is just that inch to wide to cram it nicely _there_. For me the physical is just more practical, while the screen size is for most thinks where i really care its just as good. Ymmw, though.
And yes, i use it to watch videos too. Black borders where a staple of TV for the longest time anyway :D
Performance
Is quite good, really. Nothing fancy, a low power mid-range CPU, just enough bock standard ram and a small but modestly fast NVMe as storage. The CPU has a pretty low base clock of only 1.0 Ghz, but a quite high Turbo clock of up to 3.6 Ghz. That's a neat combination. Many "normal" desktop work feels rather snappy: usually, load is rather low except for relatively short bursts of activity whereas quite often the cpu can clock rather high long enough. Anything creating high load for a longer period of time certainly feels less snappy. Actually, even low priority, high load background processes can make the whole system feel much slower: the cpu is all the time at its thermal maximum and the turbo is effectively gone.
Still, its light and slim and yet can run for quite a while and still feels usually pretty snappy. Thats ok for me.
System
- Microsoft Surface Laptop Go, 2021 12.4" Laptop, 1110g
- UEFI Boot ✓
- ACPI events ✓, ACPI keys ✓
- S2R ✓, S2D ?
- power consumption 2.8W
- Intel 495
- Intel Core i5-10351G1 SOC (4 Cores, 1.0GHz, 15W TDP)
- cpufreq ✓ # via pstates
- turbo ✓ # up to 3.6GHz
- 8GB LPDDR4 1866 MHz # 4 and 16GB also available
- Intel UHD G1 ✓
- 1 M.2 Slots # small (42mm)
- PCI Express ✓ / NVMe ✓
- SATA ?
- USB ?
- KIOXIA KBG40ZNS128G # others have SK hynix. 64 and 256GB also available
- 1 USB 3.2 Type C Port ✓ + DP ✓
- 1 USB 3.2 Type A Port ✓
- Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax) ✓ # only g and n tested
- Managed Mode ?
- Bluetooth 5.1 ✓
- Realtek ALC3274 ✓
- Headset connector ✓
- Speakers ✓ # Sound pretty good
- Microphone ?
- 12.4" 4:3 glossy 1536x1024 IPS 96% RGB, Touch # bright and pretty colours
- Brightness control ✓
- Fingerprint reader ✘ # not supported
- Webcam 720p ✓
- Touchpad ✓ # very smooth, i like
- Keyboard ✓ # quite good, but half-height cursor keys some shared F-keys
- Battery 39Wh ✓ # internal, replaceable