

That said, it is nice how sturdy the screen feels under your fingers, and I felt zero qualms about briskly tapping and swiping my way through Windows without worrying I’d accidentally knock the screen back. The Dell XPS 13’s incredibly slim bezels make it easy to see how much of a difference this kind of engineering work makes, and it would be nice to see Microsoft do the same for its flagship laptop. When I wasn’t focusing on specific tasks I caught myself staring at the black bars around the screen, wishing they were smaller so I could have a bit more screen space to play with. They just aren’t very attractive, and when I wasn’t focusing on specific tasks I caught myself staring at the black bars around the screen, wishing they were smaller so I could have a bit more screen space to play with. It’s a little harder to forget about the thick bezels surrounding the Surface Laptop 4’s 3:2 display. That makes the Surface Laptop 4 not quite as small as the M1 MacBook Air (12 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches, 2.8 pounds) or the Dell XPS 13 (11.7 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches, 2.9 pounds), but it’s plenty slim enough to slide into a backpack or briefcase and promptly forget about. In terms of dimensions, it's identical to the Surface Laptop 3, weighing in at 2.8 pounds and measuring just 12.1 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches. That said, I’ve always loved the slick, clean lines of the Surface devices, and the new Surface Laptop 4 offers more of the same. The latest Surface Laptop hews close to the minimalist design of its predecessors, which is both welcome and a little underwhelming I would have liked to see Microsoft attempt a more radical change with the Surface Laptop’s design, but for now, you’ll have to look inside to see what’s new.

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Our 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 4 review unit arrived decked in Microsoft’s new (to the Surface Laptop) Ice Blue color scheme with a Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, a configuration that retails for $1,699. Unlike its predecessors, both sizes of the Surface Laptop 4 can be configured with your choice of an Intel 11th Gen Core i5/i7 CPU or an AMD Ryzen 5/7 4000-series processor, though the 15-inch model is limited to the higher-end Core i7/Ryzen 7 chips. If you need more power you can configure the Surface Laptop 4 with beefier innards, potentially paying as much as $2,299 and $2,399 (respectively) for the two models if you kit them out with the top-tier components.
