OCTOBER 2019 • TECH ADVISOR 85BUYING GUIDEfasterthanitspredecessor.That’snotwhatwe’ve
found,butthere’sstilla sizablejumpin Geekbench
4 and 3DMark.
InPCMark10,thescoreis decent(we’ve
includedsomerivalstocompareaswellasthe
SurfacePro6),butourscorein PCMark8 is oddly
low,showing almost no improvement.
Battery life
We were blown away with the battery life on offer
with the original Surface Laptop. It lasted a whopping
16 hours, which was more than Microsoft’s claim of
14 and a half hours, and the best we’d seen from any
laptop. This time, the battery life claim is exactly the
same despite a change in hardware. In our identical
test – looping a 720p video at 120cdm^2 (50 percent
brightness) – the Surface Laptop 2 lasted a more
modest 12 hours and 41 minutes.
A dropis obviouslynotwhatwewanttosee,but
thisis still a decent result and we’ll take it considering
the boost in computing performance.
Connectivity
There’s more to the Surface Laptop 2 that is the same
as last year’s model. You get the same 720p webcam,
stereo microphones and ‘Omnisonic’ speakers with
Dolby Audio Premium. It also offers the same array
of ports, of which there are not many beyond the
proprietary Surface Connect port used for charging.
There’sstillnoUSB-CorSDcardslotwhichis a
shame.Instead, you get a headphone jack, Mini
DisplayPort and a lone USB 3.0 socket.