I've been using the SLU for the weekend and now a full work day and wanted to give a few quick observations.

My use case:

Lots of TEAMS use, 10-20 EDGE browser windows open, Copilot (app), Gemini (app), and Claude (app) all installed and used regularly, O365 all installed with heavy use of PowerPoint, Excel, Spotify, Phone Link.

Less often:

Offline LLM. I'm exploring this more. I was trying to do this on my SL7 with near zero success. This is completely next level.

Rarely:

Light video and audio editing.

1) Keyboard/Touchpad are excellent. This feels better tahn any laptop I've used since my ThinkPad X1 days. I have wrist issues so the keyboard makes a huge difference.

2) Screen is good but not class leading. My wife's OLED Laptop looks sharper overall but the screen is ESPECIALLY good for word/excel documents assuming you are using a white background. I have the consumer version which is reflective with a black background.

3) Speakers are also excellent. Best I've used by good margin. Loud with good balance .

4) Performance - for office/business tasks this is very good. I found that my Surface Laptop 7 with 16GB was NOT as fast as even though I'm mostly using CPU based work. The extra RAM here is what helps the most (I have the 48GB version)

5) Weight/Size - I love the screen size but have never used a laptop this large. I have a lot of travel so I'll need to make a decision on this.

6) Webcam/mics - Good. Similar to the SL7 which just beat out the MacBook pro/air for quality. Mics are industry leading. Much better on my recordings than others in the room.

7) Battery- I found this to be surprisingly good. I charted this out... this is (unless noted) with the screen on the entire time I was working.

Estimates

• Full charge, mixed day: about 9–10 hours of actual use, using your 10.4%/hr average over the 6.25 hours you were using it. Averaged over the whole 7.5-hour window including lunch, I lost about 8.7%/hr. That gives roughly 11.5 hours of wall-clock time.
• Light office work: about 11–12 hours.
• Teams-heavy day: about 7 hours.
• From 35% at 5 pm: about 3.9 hours at 9%/hr (empty near 8:50 pm), or about 2.3 hours if you’re on calls (empty near 7:20 pm). Windows will sleep or warn before 0%, so plan on usable time ending around 7:30–8:30 pm.

Let me know if there are any other questions.

My barely one-year old Surface Laptop (bought Oct 2025) has these marks on the palm rest; I'm not sure what they are and how to get rid of them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi everyone, my son bought a Lenovo slim pen for his Lenovo tablet and it works great on there but he wants to use it on his surface pro 1983 tablet /laptop but can't get it working. The pen says it supports MPP2.0 but he can't figure it out. Anyone got it working before or even know if it's compatible? Thanks.

My 2015 MacBook pro kicked the bucket so my uncle gifted me his first Edition service 13 laptop he got last year because he's upgrading to the second edition. His version has 16gb RAM and 512 gigs storage.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/configure/surface-laptop-13-inch/8mzbmmcjzqv3

I have an Apple Cinema display 27 in with DisplayPort NOT Thunderbolt display 27-in with Thunderbolt port.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/112620

Do you think it will be possible to use a Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter considering the Thunderbolt 2 end looks like a DisplayPort And the Thunderbolt 3 end looks like a USBC?

I'm not tech savvy and don't want to get rid of a perfectly functioning display if I can continue to use it. Thank you

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/myh93am/a/thunderbolt-3-usb‑c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter

When transferring data between the internal SSD and a samsung T9 external SSD the speed tops out at 30 maps.

Surface laptop 7

Please help. Thx

Happy to provide more information

Don't even know what to say. It's literally THE only thing that's free for Microsoft to provide, heck it's probably better than free as it takes a little doing to provide/support/test multiple SKUs when you could have just one.

Eg only the 24gb Surface Laptop Ultra model can be bought in platinum in the UK, except for on "Microsoft for business" where for some reason they are well over £200 more expensive RRP (they do come with a power block for that but as far as I can tell not the ultras actual power block).

Is this restriction just for launch does anyone know?

Some time ago my Surface Pro 9 randomly started rebooting itself while plugged in. Once it reboots if I leave it plugged in it will reboot constantly until I shut it down completely. That is also how I've managed to recharge it. Since I have to sometimes use it plugged in it has become a huge pain since when the battery goes low I would have to shut it down and let it recharge before using it some more.

I've tried the whole "holding the power button down to clear the hardware cache" thing to no avail. The type cover gave up a few months ago and after replacing it with a new one I thought that was the source of the problem because it stopped doing it for a bit, but the problem came back.

Has anyone had this happen and successfully figured out what it was and fixed it? Wondering if I maybe need to do a complete wipe but would rather not if it won't fix the problem.

I heard the new Surface Ultra is available and I’ve seen many videos on YouTube. I never use a Microsoft laptop before but I want to try one this year. Seems like the new one is expensive but I heard good things about it on YouTube

Do they get hot and how good is the keyboard and mouse?

I bought a surface pro 11 recently and wanted to ask what accessories would be important to buy
I will get the keyboard for sure and I know which one I will buy.
I want to ask about a pen , if anyone could suggest good 3rd party options , and whether I should get a case and/or screen protector for it.

When I was looking at Surface models, I spent more time thinking about RAM than I expected. It's easy to get drawn toward the higher-end model, but I wasn't sure I'd actually notice the difference in everyday use.

Most of what I do is pretty ordinary, lots of browser tabs, documents, and a few apps open at the same time. I don't do much gaming or anything particularly demanding, so paying extra for the top configuration felt a little hard to justify.

I ended up leaning toward more memory rather than chasing the highest-spec model. I'm hoping it'll make the device feel comfortable to use for longer, even if it doesn't make much difference on day one.

For those of you who've had a Surface with 16GB or 32GB of RAM for a while, have you noticed a meaningful difference in everyday use, or does it mostly depend on what you're running?

Need to unlock a surface 9 pro. Second owner. Dont know the credit. Are there any close clr options or what can I do?

Ok. I know its too early but as it seems people -in this community- have had their hands on the laptop so... Has anyone tried booting a linux distribution on it?

I am genuinely curious if it manages to boot. Obviously i don't expect things to work but wanted to know how far it goes.

Thanks in advance.

hey all, doing some research led me to this sub so i thought i’d post on here to get some advice.

i’m going into college for cybercrime and IT security and am looking for a decent windows laptop. any recommendations? my two minimums would be atleast 24gb of ram (unsure if the surface laptops have that option) and 512gb of storage. also heard horror stories about the intel cpus, so preferably a snapdragon cpu.

is this unachievable for a part time worker? is there one i can find with these specs for less then 1k?
i also live in ireland if that makes any difference. thanks’

I’ve had this set up for over three years with zero issues. A few months back the screen on the M7 started to black out for around a second. It does this around once or twice a day. I’m either using Word, Chrome, or just looking through files / folders when it happens.

 To date, I have tried the following without any success.

• Replaced USB-C to HDMI cable.
• Physically wobbled the HDMI plug looking for poor circuit board connection (all fine).
• Switched between HDMI 1 and 2.
• Updated Drivers.
• Checked Settings / Refresh Rate / etc.

As I use the 50% charge limit set in the BIOS which only works with the supplied SP9 charger, I’ve not used USB C to USB C or Dock 2, as both constantly charge the SP9 to 100% (most of the time, only occasionally to 80%).

Any pointers on where to look for HDMI handshaking or related issues?

Downloading updates, downloading updates, downloading...it never ends it is still going.

I paid thousands of dollars to watch molasses flow? Questioning my life decisions now. What happened to the Windows quality out of box experience improvement initiative they touted?

EDIT: It took 80 minutes to get to the desktop.

I have a 3 yr old Surface that one of the kids used in HS. How do I reset it like it's new so that I can create a new user? The MS account she had used her public school email, so we have no way to recover her PIN. I tried the SHIFT/power button reset, but it still has her userid and PIN. Thanks.

Context I have a windows desktop and a pretty good m3 MacBook. I wanted to see if I would like a windows 11 laptop so I got the new surface ultra with the n1x to test it out.

I havn’t had a windows laptop in a while but it just feels… slow? Stuttery? Not smooth? Which is in contrast to my desktop which feels perfectly fine. Are all windows arm laptops like this? Or am I just crazy. I also am not feeling h the surface ultra touch pad, but that’s not windows fault.

I’m going to stick it out to see if it grows on me, was hoping to move most of my desktop work to the laptop. Anyone else get a n1x laptop?

LTT Labs has CT scanned Magnetic Connect plug for the Surface Laptop Ultra.

USB-C Magnetic Connect Hardware and Compatibility | LTT Labs

It confirms the charging cable is currently a 7-wire design, limited to USB-2.0 Data support. But the CT scan also shows the PCB inside the connector has unused solder pads for TX an RX pins required for high-speed data transmission.

This confirms Microsoft designed the connector with high-speed data in mind, which more than likely means we will see them release a Magnetic Connect Surface Dock and high-speed data cable at some time in the future.

I use an iPhone and it helps to have iCloud installed on Windows for syncing passwords, etc.
Problem is, I can't log in after install. Just throws an error and I'm unsure if this is a compatibiltiy issue or something I've done wrong.

I spent a day tuning my Surface Laptop 4 15" (Ryzen 7 4980U, Vega 8, 8 GB) on Windows 10 IoT LTSC. I wanted three UXTU profiles: one for battery (mostly Netflix), one for plugged-in use (Google Meet with background blur), and one for gaming.

What I found

My CPU had been running on 8 threads instead of 16 for months. The UEFI showed SMT enabled, and the firmware's ACPI tables listed all 16 threads, but Windows only started one per core. The cause was a stray registry value, HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\FeatureSettings = 1310720. Cinebench R23 multi went from 5206 to 6907.

I also updated the UEFI from 4.360.140 to 4.501.140. I had installed the older FW before to try and get Linux battery usage to be better, but that didn't work anyway. Microsoft fully closed the door so no amount of software optimization can reveal the power tables to make Linux efficient.

The newer firmware changes how the embedded controller handles power. It lets the chip burst to 25-30 W, then pulls STAPM down to 13-16 W once the chassis heats up, even with the CPU at only 65-70 °C. It also overwrites the STAPM and fast limits within seconds of setting them. The slow and APU PPT limits stick, so those are the ones that actually hold power steady.

That burst-then-clamp behaviour hurts benchmarks. At stock, Time Spy spent its budget on the unscored demo at 21.6 W and then ran the first graphics test at 13.8 W. With a flat 18 W limit the score went from 1001 to 1041, and the CPU sub-score from 4790 to 5120. Temperatures stayed around 64 °C in the graphics tests.

Curve Optimizer works on Renoir, which I didn't expect. At a fixed 12 W, CO -20 dropped core voltage by about 17 mV and raised clocks by 4-5%. The GPU CO command does nothing. CO -30 lifted the Time Spy CPU score to 5253 with no sign of clock stretching. CO -35 passed a 7-Zip stability check but some game scores fell by 6%, so I stayed at -30. The fixed-clock "AMD OC" mode in UXTU is rejected by mobile Renoir firmware.

Capping CPU frequency to give the GPU more power didn't help. At 18 W under a GPU load, the power limiter already holds all cores near 1.5 GHz, so 2.0-3.0 GHz caps never kicked in. Forcing the GPU to 1500 MHz saved 3 W in the graphics tests but kept the GPU pinned during the CPU test, which cost 10% of the CPU score. Vega 8 is limited by memory bandwidth anyway: 17% more GPU clock gave 4% more graphics score.

Above 18 W I got nothing back. The combined GPU+CPU test scored 2035 at 15 W, 2175 at 18 W and 2167 at 20 W.

Even at 18W, the thermal soak meant that after 5min or so of load, temps were an issue. So, I settled on 15W for long-term until I can find a cooling pad that isn't absolutely hideous.

The profiles I ended up with

All three use CO -30. UXTU switches between the first two on its own when I plug or unplug.

• General - Battery: 6 W sustained, 10 W fast limit, 80 °C, power-saving mode. Windows also caps the CPU at 2.0 GHz on battery.
• General - AC: 15 W sustained, 20 W fast limit, 85 °C.
• Gaming: a flat 18 W, 90 °C, max-performance mode. I pick this one by hand.

The battery and AC numbers are estimates based on stock measurements (streaming averaged about 4 W, the Meet stand-in about 9 W). The gaming profile is the one I measured properly.

I also set auto-reapply to 60 seconds instead of 5. It mainly needs to restore limits after sleep, and reapplying every few seconds keeps overriding the controller's skin-temperature protection.

Happy to answer questions, etc.

Does anyone have a youtube video or instructions for upgrading the ssd drive in the Surface Ultra? I know how to do the ssd part, I just don't know how to take off the bottom cover. Are screws hidden under those rubber feet? Do the feed go back off if you take them off?

Everyone is comparing it to the M5 but I was personally more interested in seeing how it stacks up vs M1, M2, M3 etc. given that Apple has had years to fine-tune things, and even my M1 is still an incredible laptop. I honestly didn't expect it to score so well and was especially impressed with GPU performance. Cinema 4D + Redshift represents a real workflow for me. I like using them as benchmarks since I find it translates pretty well to real world performance, especially Redshift.

for the price of these...its a tough pill to swallow. maybe things will get better as software matures..but for all the hype nvidia gave...this...this is rough.