Mine arrived this morning (October 5, 2021), along with the Slim Pen 2. I got a middle-tier device: 16GB RAM, i7, 512GB storage.
No excitement here. Standard packing inside an attractive but standard Microsoft laptop box. Device was mostly charged right out of the box and I attached my old Surface Connect power cord to complete charging the battery. People hate on the Surface Connect but I love it. I haven't yet taken the Surface Laptop Studio's own power cord out of the box. After all, I might return this thing and it's always a pain to stuff the cord back into the little box.
SPOILER ALERT: Odds I'll return this? Not zero. But very low.
I cannot say anything about the battery. Have not had the device long enough, and I've had it plugged in most of the time since I unboxed it.
.
As I expected, the Surface Laptop Studio comes with Windows 11 installed (but not updated!). That's okay.
There are a LOT of OS updates to install and that has been extremely slow. Perhaps the Microsoft servers are overwhelmed. The machine's setup wizard — the thing that runs when you first setup a new Windows computer — tried to install updates and failed, with a message saying something like "Can't complete the updates. Will try again from your desktop." I should have taken a picture of that. Never seen that alert before. I was nervous at first: It looked for a sec like I wasn't going to get into the computer at all. Nah. It just stopped updating and logged me in. That was a couple of hours ago. I have now managed to get all the updates installed.
I don't know whether it's improvements to Windows Hello in Windows 11 or the camera on the Surface Laptop Studio or both, but when I restart this computer, I log back in so quickly I scarcely get a chance to see the startup screen. Actually, I have to fix that because I like those photos! Still, this is noticeably quicker than any other Windows computer I've used.
.
One of the main things I've been worried about is that the Surface Laptop Studio would feel too small, since it has a 14.4" display and not the 15" display I am used to from my Surface Book 2. I really like the Book 2's display!
Now, the Surface Laptop Studio is definitely smaller overall. I set the Surface Laptop Studio on top of the Surface Book and aligned on the back corners: the Book is a good half inch or more wider (side to side) and deeper (front to back). So I don't have that nice empty space on the deck of the device to the left and right of the keyboard. Too bad. I like that about the 15" Book. The display of the Surface Laptop Studio is naturally smaller too, but not by as much as I expected.
I will have to use the devices over the next week or so to confirm this, but at the moment, I think the size of the device is not going to be a problem for me.
.
Wow. The keyboard is very good. Better than the Surface Book 2. And I liked the Book 2. Keys have a degree of resistance that I like — a Goldilocks "just right" balance between easy typing and enough resistance to keep me from getting sloppy. The Book 2's keyboard was fairly different from my ThinkPad P1 Gen2's keyboard, which has a great, classic ThinkPad keyboard. The feel of the Laptop Studio keyboard is perhaps half way between the ThinkPad P1 and the Book 2. I just perhaps wait before saying this, but what the heck: To my taste, this may be the best laptop keyboard I have ever typed on.
.
As many people have noted the Surface Laptop Studio has an unusual base design: the top of the keyboard deck is wider and deeper than the part of the device that sits on your desk. This design creates an overhang that has a couple of advantages: It provides a place where I can stick my pen; and it also makes the device easy to pick up. (Of course, it wasn't all that hard to pick up the Surface Book even without this overhang.) I think I also read that it helps with cooling the device; not sure about that. What worried me about the pedestal most was that it would cause the device to sit too high, and that is not the case. Actually I'm typing right now with the device on a laptop holder that I like to use.
.
The Surface Laptop Studio has capability that sets it apart from most other Windows laptops: the display can be pulled out and forward so it's easier to ink on. That works very well. To "open" the display and pull it forward, at first I thought I should grab the bottom of the display (near the top of the keyboard) and separate it from its back support — the reverse of opening the kickstand on a Surface Pro. But that doesn't work. Instead, I grab at the top right of the display and push on both sides. I'm a little worried about the way that stresses the back of the device but I don't see any other way to do this.
You're not going to pull the display out unless you want to ink on it. The rest of the time, it snaps into place and the device looks and feels like a standard (well, standard but premium) laptop.
When the Surface Laptop Studio is closed and sitting on my desk, the "seam" on the outside of the display part makes it look like a Surface Pro device (which has a seam for the kickstand). But the Surface Laptop Studio doesn't have a camera on the outside like the Surface Pro does.
.
I was worried that the lower-resolution display might be disappointing. I need to put the Surface Laptop Studio and the Surface Book side by side and look at some photos side by side. But I just launched Flickr and looked at some of my best photos and they look really nice on the Surface Laptop Studio. They're high-res enough that they also look good on the Surface Studio 2's big 28" display. Have not done the math but I would be surprised if the pixel density on the Surface Laptop Studio isn't better than on the Studio 2.
And of course there's that lovely 3:2 aspect ratio. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to live without this aspect ratio again.
.
Somebody on reddit said that Windows 11 does a better job with inking than Windows 10. I have been editing screenshots and doing some "drawing" on my Surface devices for several years but not on a regular basis, and I'm not an artist, so I don't have a strong sense of how this ought to work. I did have the feeling that writing on my Surface devices with Microsoft pens worked better than writing on my Lenovo ThinkPads (either my ThinkPad X1 Yoga with its stylus or on my ThinkPad P1 with a Lenovo ThinkPad Pro pen). But beyond that, I never had any complaints about the old Microsoft pens and how they worked on my Book 2 or Surface Pro devices.
Nevertheless, I did get a Slim Pen 2 with this Surface Laptop Studio and I have now played with it briefly. Works fine. I like the pen. What I like most at the moment about this "feature" is fact that the Slim Pen 2 can be squirreled away right under the front of the Surface Laptop Studio. That is brilliant. I think I have three or four Surface pens around here somewhere because I kept losing them and ordering replacements, then I'd find the ones I lost. Maybe I'll be able to hang on to this one.
.
I'm a music lover but not an audiophile. I mostly listen to classical music. Right now I'm listening to the wonderful Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olaffson play Bach. Works for me. I'd still rather hear him perform in person, especially if it were in Reykjavik.
.
I'm fascinated by the use of magnets on this device. Probably just because it's novel. Magnets hold the Slim Pen 2 under the lip of the device's base. They also hold the display firmly in place on its back support. And when the display is unfolded from that back support and pulled forward to cover the keyboard, magnets hold the bottom of the display firmly in place on the device's "deck". And these are strong magnets! When I place the Slim Pen 2 under the lip of the pedestal in front, that sucker snaps into place with a noice that would attract attention if I were working in a library.
.
What are the differences? I always found detaching the Book's display awkward and I didn't do it often. Sometimes when I'd detached it, I had trouble re-attaching it, which is bad. And that 15" Book display makes for a pretty hefty "tablet". I doodle, and I do now and then draw diagrams on the Book's display. Since I didn't much like detaching that display, drawing on the Book wasn't very different from drawing on my wife's Surface Laptop, which is to say, not ideal.
I think the Surface Laptop Studio will change my feeling about touching the display — in fact, I feel that happening already in the five hours I've been using it. The way the display folds forward rather than detaching is brilliant. It's easy enough that I have already pulled the display forward to mark up some screen captures and then I fold it back.
I did fold the Surface Laptop Studio's display down all the way so the device becomes a very thick tablet. I don't think you would buy a tablet this thick if it wasn't also a laptop. But this is a hybrid device and I think I will use it in all three of its modes regularly.
.
When I was first getting to know the Surface line of products, I read a comment somewhere that explained that Microsoft's goal with the Surface devices was to showcase Windows 10's support for touchscreens and touch interfaces. In retrospect it's obvious, but at the time, coming from Mac OS, it struck me as insightful.
I own and work daily on a Studio 2, a Book 2, and I've owned the last several generations of the Pro devices. I also have several ThinkPads with touchscreens. The ThinkPad touchscreens for some reason just don't invite touch as much as the Surface devices do. Maybe it's the 3:2 displays on the Surface devices vs the 16:9 aspect ratio on all my ThinkPads. In terms of overall usability, the Surface Laptop Studio seems to me the best touchscreen device ever made, by anybody. The Surface Studio is a magnificent desktop computer but you aren't going to be carrying it around. The Surface Pro is a great device for inking or artwork (as well as watching media) but it's a smaller screen and not easy to hold in your lap. The Surface Book, as I said earlier, was nice but it was top-heavy, not to mention just plain heavy, and as I said above, the awkwardness of detaching the display was a bit inhibiting. The Surface Laptop Studio seems to be a near perfect compromise. I don't think you have to be an artist to be happy with the Surface Laptop Studio, but it would be a waste to buy this thing if you don't like to reach out and touch (or draw on) your device's screen.
Personally, I like touchscreens. I find them useful. They stress my fingers less than the mouse, too. I am already quite sure that I will be using my pen on the Surface Laptop Studio much more than I ever did on the Surface Book 2.