Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world. Interestingly, in recent years, the hardware it produces started being synonymous with quality and innovation. Indeed, it can be viewed as the Apple of Windows laptops. Its entire range is made out of very interesting models, some of them including detachable convertibles like the Surface Book 3 (13.5) and (15), more conventional ones, like the Surface Laptop 3, or even tablets with full-blown Windows experience, like the Surface Pro X and Surface Go.
Today, however, we got a very basic unit on our hands. It is called the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go and can be simply described as the entry-level to the company’s hardware. Its affordable pricing makes it easy to reach for students or people that just need something on the go, yet desiring quality.
Indeed, you will give away some performance, because of the Core i5-1035G1, and its 12.4″ display seems a bit small to our likings. Also, Microsoft is selling a model of this laptop with 4GB of RAM and 64GB eMMC, which we advise strongly against. Initially, the system will come with Windows 10 Home S, with you being able to get the full Windows 10 experience free of charge. However, reverting back to S mode is a bit of a hassle, as you need to download a “Recovery drive” from Microsoft’s website.
Nevertheless, let’s leave the software stuff behind for a bit, and focus on what we have inside the package.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/microsoft-surface-laptop-go/
Contents
Specs Sheet
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go - Specs
All Microsoft Surface Laptop Go configurations
What’s in the box?
One thing can be said for sure – the Surface Laptop Go comes in a very fancy box. Once you open it, you will be greeted by the laptop, itself, and beneath it, you’ll find a stack of paperwork and a 39W power brick.
Design and construction
Despite the relatively low price, Microsoft stays true to its premium intentions with a solid build, featuring aluminum on the top, and plastic infused with glass fibers for the base. The entire thing has a profile of 15.7mm and weighs 1.11 kg, which is pretty much nothing in computer language.
The lid opens easily with a single hand, and once opened – we see a glass-covered touchscreen panel. Interestingly, the bezels have some round at the edges of the display, which indeed feels weird on a laptop. Thankfully, the structure of the lid and the base is very solid.
Moving to the keyboard, we see keycaps made from soft plastic, which has average key travel and a clicky, yet quiet feedback. This is one of the more comfortable keyboards out there. Slightly on the downside, it has no backlight and we noticed a minor deck flex when you press upon it.
Here, you also have a fingerprint reader, which is embedded in the Power button. How about the touchpad, though? Well, it is clear – no compromises have been made. It has an incredibly smooth texture, which delivers great gliding, while the tracking is very accurate.
If you look around, you won’t see any grills on the bottom meant for ventilation, nor speaker output. Instead, there is only one very slight heat exhaust grill in between the base and the lid hinge cover. By the way, we are pretty positive that the air ingestion here happens from the top right part of the keyboard, but we will observe it more clearly in the IR images later on.
Ports
Honestly, the port selection here looks sad. There is only one USB Type-A port, one USB Type-C port, and an audio jack. This is located on the left, while the right only houses the proprietory magnetic power plug.
Display quality
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go has a touchscreen IPS panel, model number LP125WX112403, with a 12.4″ (31.5 cm) diagonal and 1536 x 1024p resolution. Additionally, the screen ratio is 3:2, the pixel density – 149 ppi, their pitch – 0.17 x 0.17 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 58 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).
Its viewing angles are great. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.
The maximum measured brightness is 340 nits (cd/m2). The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at 140 nits luminance is 6480K (average) – basically matching the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective.
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the tablet for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is good – 1060:1.
To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.
Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is an essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream device.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.
The yellow dotted line shows Microsoft Surface Laptop Go’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers 96% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976. This is a prerequisite for a vibrant and punchy image.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. Below you can compare the scores of Microsoft Surface Go 2 compared to the sRGB standard.
Response time (Gaming capabilities)
We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 30 ms
PWM (Screen flickering)
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go’s display uses PWM for brightness adjustment up until 90 nits and with a relatively high frequency. This makes it comfortable for your eyes during long work periods in this aspect.
Conclusions
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go’s display has a touchscreen IPS panel with comfortable viewing angles and a good contrast ratio. It covers 96% of the sRGB color gamut and doesn’t use aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment. Thankfully, the color accuracy by default is very good, which is important for presenting and e-commerce retailers. And although the resolution isn’t high, it seems to fit well on the small display.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Microsoft Surface Laptop Go configurations with 12.4″ LP125WX112403 (1536 x 1024) 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.
Sound
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go’s speakers produce a sound with relatively good quality. Although the low, mid, and high tones have some deviations from clarity, we feel that it sounds very good for a notebook at this price range.
Drivers
All of the drivers and utilities can be downloaded from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=102261
Battery
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. This unit lasted for 9 hours and 42 minutes of Web browsing, and 8 hours and 55 minutes of video playback.
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.
For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.
We use F1 2017’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.
CPU options
There are no CPU options here, as you only get the notebook with the Intel Core i5-1035G1 – a 10nm quad-core processor.
Results are from the Cinebench 20 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Fritz chess benchmark (the higher the score, the better)
Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)
GPU options
Similarly, the graphics offering includes only the integrated Intel UHD Graphics.
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 3.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
| CS:GO | native, Low (Check settings) | native, Medium (Check settings) | native, MAX (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average fps | 59 fps | 40 fps | 27 fps |
| DOTA 2 | native, Low (Check settings) | native, Normal (Check settings) | native, High (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average fps | 75 fps | 42 fps | 25 fps |
Temperatures and comfort
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
| Intel Core i5-1035G1 (15W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Surface Laptop Go | 1.90 GHz (B+90%) @ 77°C | 1.89 GHz (B+89%) @ 89°C | 1.49 GHz (B+49%) @ 72°C |
| Dell Vostro 15 5501 | 2.37 GHz (B+137%) @ 99°C | 2.12 GHz (B+112%) @ 99°C | 1.65 GHz (B+65%) @ 78°C |
| Dell Inspiron 15 5501 | 2.47 GHz (B+147%) @ 99°C | 2.17 GHz (B+117%) @ 99°C | 1.62 GHz (B+62%) @ 74°C |
| ASUS ZenBook 13 UX325 | 2.35 GHz (B+135%) @ 97°C | 1.98 GHz (B+98%) @ 97°C | 1.37 GHz (B+37%) @ 68°C |
| Lenovo Ideapad Flex 5 (15) | 2.59 GHz (B+159%) @ 95°C | 2.15 GHz (B+115%) @ 95°C | 1.66 GHz (B+66%) @ 81°C |
| Lenovo Ideapad 5 (15) | 2.46 GHz (B+146%) @ 84°C | 1.95 GHz (B+95%) @ 76°C | 2.06 GHz (B+106%) @ 74°C |
| HP Pavilion 14 (14-ce3000) | 2.91 GHz (B+191%) @ 92°C | 1.82 GHz (B+82%) @ 73°C | 1.49 GHz (B+49%) @ 65°C |
| Dell Vostro 15 3591 | 2.09 GHz (B+109%) @ 75°C | 2.09 GHz (B+109%) @ 84°C | 1.77 GHz (B+77%) @ 85°C |
| Acer Aspire 5 (A515-55) | 1.98 GHz (B+98%) @ 79°C | 1.68 GHz (B+68%) @ 79°C | 1.52 GHz (B+52%) @ 79°C |
| Acer Swift 5 Pro (SF514-54GT) | 2.88 GHz (B+188%) @ 80°C | 1.62 GHz (B+62%) @ 64°C | 1.65 GHz (B+65%) @ 67°C |
| Dell Inspiron 5593 | 2.53 GHz (B+153%) @ 99°C | 2.14 GHz (B+114%) @ 94°C | 1.88 GHz (B+88%) @ 87°C |
Here, we saw the processor not limited by temperature but limited by power. The maximum TDP it was working at, was 20W. However, considering that this is an entry-level laptop, we can give it a pass. Especially for not dropping below the 1.00 GHz Base clock.
Comfort during full load
The laptop was not hot on the keyboard. And while it got a bit warm on the bottom, we don’t think that anyone is going to use it at such high loads for 15 minutes straight on their lap. On the other side, we feel that the tiny fan was producing too much noise for what it did.
Verdict
Before saying anything, we want to address something. The “Education” version of this notebook has a model, equipped with only 4GB of memory and 64GB of eMMC storage. If you want our advice – stay away from this configuration. 4GB is not nearly enough for a Windows 10 system, and you will be stuck with the S version, because of the lack of RAM upgradeability. Also, the eMMC storage is multiple times slower than the SSD inside of our unit, which reached Read/Write speeds of 2028/822 MB/s – something respectable for a laptop of this caliber.
Next, we want to talk about the Windows 10S environment. According to Microsoft, it delivers better security. In our view, it does it, because it limits the apps you can operate with, to the Microsoft Store only. And if you are not going for the 64GB “Education” version of the device, we can assure you that the laptop works perfectly with the non-S Windows 10. In fact, it works like a charm – it never hung on us, browsing the Web was swift, and the OS exploration was on point.
Putting the OS aside, this is a decent little notebook. And by little, we mean tiny. It not only weighs only 1.11 kg, but its 12.4-inch screen size makes it ideal for students.
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go’s display has a touchscreen IPS panel with comfortable viewing angles and a good contrast ratio. It covers 96% of the sRGB color gamut and doesn’t use aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment. Thankfully, the color accuracy by default is very good, which is important for presenting and e-commerce retailers. And although the resolution isn’t high, it seems to fit well on the small display.
We were happy with the quality of the build, its speed in light tasks, and the way it looks. However, the I/O is extremely scarce, providing only one USB Type-C port, one USB Type-A port, and an audio jack. Also, the performance in heavy tasks like 3D rendering was not ideal, even for the Core i5-1035G1. This is perhaps due to the thermal design, or more likely, because of the low TDP limit. In our opinion, the main reason for that is the 39W included charger brick. On some of the systems that we tested this CPU in, we saw it peak to more than 40W, which alone is more than what the entire bundled charger can offer.
But if you only need this device for Web browsing, movie marathons, or school, its battery will last you for more than 9 hours, which makes it a good companion.
Pros
- Good build quality
- Decent battery life
- Doesn’t use aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment
- Covers 96% of sRGB and has accurate-enough color representation with an Average dE of <2.0
- Has a fingerprint reader
Cons
- Modest I/O
- Not very powerful
- 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC variant is to be avoided
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/microsoft-surface-laptop-go/