60 PCWorld NOVEMBER 2020REVIEWS MICROSOFT SURFACE LAPTOP GO
though the dual Omnisonic
speakers are Dolby-
enhanced. Headphones are
still advised, but if you or
your child has to play back
video, listen to Spotify, or
some other audio file on the
Laptop Go’s internal
speakers, no one will
complain.
The Surface Laptop Go
includes a 720p user-facing
camera, a step down from
the excellent 1080p cameras
built into other Surface
devices (go.pcworld.com/scmr). To be fair, a
720p camera is par for the course in the
laptop space, and Microsoft’s cameras (RIP,
Lumia) still produce a decent, color-accurate
image. Your Zoom calls should look fine. Like
other Surfaces, however, Microsoft left out a
sliding camera shield or dedicated button to
turn off the laptop’s microphone. Two far-field
mics help pick up your voice.
Perhaps because of the default Windows
10 in S Mode operating system, the Surface
Laptop Go is spectacularly bloat-free: no
pre-installed Candy Crush or any of that
nonsense. Spotify is perhaps the only third-
party app on the machine. Microsoft includes
a 30-day trial of Microsoft 365 Family.
Microsoft has a new app for you, too: the
Surface Diagnostic Toolkit. While this appears
to be a utility for ferreting out potentialproblems with your Surface, it also sums up
the Surface Laptop Go’s general features and
provides a link to support and warranty
information. It even has a neat little battery
utility that can track how many charge cycles
your battery has gone through, along with
other basic information.WHAT WINDOWS 10 IN S
MODE MEANS FOR YOU
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go ships with
Windows 10 in S Mode (aka Windows 10 S
[go.pcworld.com/m10s]), a signal that
Microsoft wants the Surface Laptop Go to
compete with Chromebooks as simple,
managed devices. S Mode’s inherent tradeoff
is that to prevent an unauthorized application
or malware from attacking your PC, the
operating system limits app downloads onlyPart of the frustration of working with Windows 10 S is Microsoft’s
refusal to filter out apps that won’t run on its operating system. See
the tiny note to the lower right?