Andrew Cunningham
Microsoft has been trying to make Windows-on-Arm processors a reality for so long that at one point I assumed it would never happen.
The first attempt was Windows RT, which ran well enough on the puny Arm hardware then available, but came with a confusing new interface and couldn’t run apps designed for regular Intel- and AMD-based Windows PCs. Windows RT failed, in part, because a version of Windows that couldn’t run Windows apps and didn’t use a familiar Windows interface ignored two important reasons why people keep using Windows.
Windows-on-Arm returned in the late 2010s, with improved performance and a translation layer for 32-bit Intel apps. Limited mostly to oddball Surface hardware and a handful of thinly promoted models from the major PC OEMs, this version of Windows quietly percolated for years, slowly and incrementally improving, much like the Qualcomm processors that powered those devices.
Which brings us to this year’s flagship hardware: the Surface Laptop (7th edition) and the Surface Pro (11th edition).
These devices are Microsoft’s first mainstream, flagship Surface devices to use Arm chips, while previous attempts were side projects or non-standard variants. Both the hardware and software have improved enough that I finally feel like I can recommend a Windows-on-Arm device to a lot of people without having to preface it with a bunch of exceptions.
Unfortunately, Microsoft chose to launch this impressive and capable Arm hardware and improved software alongside a bunch of generative AI features, including the Recall screen recorder, a feature that became so radioactively unpopular so quickly that Microsoft was forced to delay development to address major security concerns (and perception issues stemming from the security concerns).
The other AI features are so redundant that I’ll ignore them in this review and discuss them later when we take a closer look at Windows 11’s 24H2 update. This is good enough hardware not to need buzzy AI features to sell it. Windows on Arm continues to struggle, but the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop—and many of the other Arm-based Copilot+ PCs launched in recent weeks—are a lot better than Arm PCs were even a year or two ago.
Familiar from outside
Andrew Cunningham
When Apple released the first few Apple Silicon Macs in late 2020, the only thing the company explicitly did was not change was the external design. Apple didn’t comment much on it at the time, but the subliminal message was that these were just Macs, they looked the same as any other Mac, and there was nothing to worry about.
Microsoft’s new flagship Surface hardware, powered exclusively by Arm-based chips for the first time rather than a mix of Arm and Intel/AMD, takes a similar approach: internally overhauled, externally inconspicuous. These look very similar to the latest (and current) Intel-powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop designs – and in the case of the Surface Pro, they even look identical.
Both PCs still retain some of the defining elements of Surface hardware design. Both have 3:2 aspect ratio displays, making them taller than most typical laptop displays, which still use 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratios. Those displays also support touch input via fingers or the Surface Pen, and they still use softly rounded corners (which Windows doesn’t formally recognize in its software, so the corners of your windows will be cut off, but that’s never been an issue for me).