NOVEMBER 2020 PCWorld 57what it’s like working on the
Surface Laptop Go.
While my eyes could never
discern an individual pixel,
there’s a palpable sense that
you’re looking at a cloud of
individual elements, like fog.
The lower resolution slightly
contradicts the smoothed
curves of antialiased fonts,
exposing their jagged edges.
The downgrade is most
apparent if you compare the
display to that of a Surface
Laptop or Surface Book.
Still, the Surface Laptop
Go’s resolution is close
enough to 1080p that the
differences never became
annoying, especially when
interacting with text. It’s when
you start throwing more pixels
at the display—higher-
resolution images, say, or
1080p video—that the
deficiencies become more
pronounced. (The Surface
Laptop Go’s display is rated at
330 nits, which is somewhat
above the brightness level we
consider comfortable for
working on a laptop and a mark in its favor.) In
part, that may be because a Surface display is
typically colorful and vibrant; it’s
color-calibrated at the factory. Our 4K/60-fps
YouTube test video looked good—though
YouTube was only sending down a 1536x864This is an image captured from the 14-inch HP Pavilion x360
Convertible 14, with a 14-inch, 1080p display.This is an image captured from the 14-inch HP Pavilion x360
Convertible 14, with a 14-inch, 1080p display.