New laptop or Microsoft Surface?

  • Thread starter Jezza819
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Jezza819

Jezza819

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United States
Alabamistan
My current laptop is from 2010. So I think it's way past due for a replacement. I mentioned this to a co-worker and he asked me what I used it for. My laptop is strictly for entertainment. It usually only gets used when I'm away on vacation to have something to keep me occupied at night or if it's raining.

I don't do any gaming with it. Just internet browsing, Youtube watching, ESPN streaming, other streaming, etc. He said since it's only an entertainment type of device that I would be better of with a Microsoft Surface tablet instead of a full blown laptop. He said the battery life is much better with the Surface (although that usually doesn't matter since I have it plugged in mostly).

My current laptop screen size is 15". From what I can tell the biggest screen on a Surface is 13". I know 2 inches doesn't sound like much but as I get older and my eyes are getting worse, I do like a big screen.

I am going to take a look at a Surface later next week but which one would be ideal for my usage?
 
I went from flagship Android tablets + gaming laptops to Surface Pros and a desktop and I've never once regretted it. They are expensive compared to some Wal-Mart laptop, but they are premium devices that are built well and if you're doing just YouTube and stuff an entry level Surface Pro would be great for that. Best Buy and Microsoft regularly bundles type covers and puts them on sale, too. too.
 
Tornado
I went from flagship Android tablets + gaming laptops to Surface Pros and a desktop and I've never once regretted it. They are expensive compared to some Wal-Mart laptop, but they are premium devices that are built well and if you're doing just YouTube and stuff an entry level Surface Pro would be great for that. Best Buy and Microsoft regularly bundles type covers and puts them on sale, too. too.
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Thanks. Best Buy is just down the street from me so I'm going to go down there after the holiday and take a look.
Hoani Tuati
Have you considered an iPad as well?
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No, I don't want anything from Apple.
 
I own two Surface devices but awesome battery life is definitely not one of their strengths. It’s been mediocre on both of them.

It’s a shame you don’t want an iPad because for your use case they are pretty much perfect and have really good battery life while being a lot lighter than a Surface.

If you are dead set on Windows, you could look at tablet competitors to the Surface, like the Lenovo stuff, but in the end they are similar rather than better. Or there is a Samsung Android tablet option (my experience with them is that Android is poor for tablets and the iPad is far better but hey).

Personally I own an M1 MacBook Air and an iPad Air combination which have relegated my Surface Pro and Surface Laptop to being unused. Apple battery life in the real world is just awesome. The MacBook is silent, fast and easily gets 16 hours per charge under normal use - something my Surface devices couldn’t match under any circumstances.
 
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skazz
I own two Surface devices but awesome battery life is definitely not one of their strengths. It’s been mediocre on both of them.

It’s a shame you don’t want an iPad because for your use case they are pretty much perfect and have really good battery life while being a lot lighter than a Surface.

If you are dead set on Windows, you could look at tablet competitors to the Surface, like the Lenovo stuff, but in the end they are similar rather than better. Or there is a Samsung Android tablet option (my experience with them is that Android is poor for tablets and the iPad is far better but hey).

Personally I own an M1 MacBook Air and an iPad Air combination which have relegated my Surface Pro and Surface Laptop to being unused. Apple battery life in the real world is just awesome. The MacBook is silent, fast and easily gets 16 hours per charge under normal use - something my Surface devices couldn’t match under any circumstances.
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Yeah the battery life thing doesn't really matter to me because I'm always plugged in when I'm away on vacation. Or even here at home on the rare occasion when my PC was in the repair shop for 3 weeks last year.
 
Well in that case I can't fault the choice for a Surface Pro. But I will point out that touchscreen Windows is not quite the full tablet experience. Even when you switch Windows to tablet mode (via a switch in the UI) you still find some apps have very small touch targets, and the on screen swipe gestures are a bit iffy at times.

Windows 11 is better than 10, and is mostly reasonable for touchscreen tablet-type devices, although the touch interface definitely isn't perfect.

If you want to use a Surface Pro in tablet mode you might find the web browser and on-screen keyboard a little annoying at times. But if you use it with the type cover most of the time it'll basically just be a small laptop which can be used as a tablet in a pinch. In that case, just pull off the keyboard cover, lean it on the kickstand and watch video on it. That will work great.
 
It's basically a small, very lightweight Windows laptop with a premium build that has the (far more frequently than you might expect before you have it) benefit of being able to just touch the screen if you need it. You're on Twitter or whatever or example and you can just flick down with a gesture to scroll and it's much more natural than using the trackpad to do the same.
 
How about a Chromebook? I've had one a couple of years, I honestly only use it for web browsing now (I did have Steam installed on it for a while but it was so limited (only 4GB RAM, a weak GPU and it wasn't proper Steam for ChromeOS either) I gave up on that ages ago) and the biggest pro of the whole Chromebook concept is that I don't need to use either Windows or MacOS while I'm on my own time - I use both for work and I hate them both for their own reasons. Also I'm assuming that as you don't want an iPad you don't have an iPhone, so odds are you have an Android phone, ChromeOS has some features that integrate with your phone (like the ability to unlock the laptop with your phone, automatic tethering, etc.) but the features available do vary from phone to phone.
 
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sesselpupser
How about a Chromebook? I've had one a couple of years, I honestly only use it for web browsing now (I did have Steam installed on it for a while but it was so limited (only 4GB RAM, a weak GPU and it wasn't proper Steam for ChromeOS either) I gave up on that ages ago) and the biggest pro of the whole Chromebook concept is that I don't need to use either Windows or MacOS while I'm on my own time - I use both for work and I hate them both for their own reasons. Also I'm assuming that as you don't want an iPad you don't have an iPhone, so odds are you have an Android phone, ChromeOS has some features that integrate with your phone (like the ability to unlock the laptop with your phone, automatic tethering, etc.) but the features available do vary from phone to phone.
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I'll take a look at all options. You are correct, I do not have an iPhone, it's a Samsung Galaxy S21 which is also due for replacement later this month I think.
 
And the winner is...........laptop

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Dell - Inspiron 16.0" 2-in-1 OLED Touch Laptop - 13th Gen Intel Evo i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce MX550 - 1TB SSD​

I figured I might as well get something that will do everything I want it to and if it's still going 13 years from now like the old one, then it would have been worth it. This has the screen size and resolution that I want, it can service as an emergency backup in case my PC has trouble.
 
Probably for the best, we've had 2 Surface devices in this house and both have had issues with retaining WiFi connections despite being totally different models. I won't ever buy another.
 
Microsoft used Marvell wifi chipsets for many years, and were indeed flakey (I've not had any real issues with my Surface Pro or Surface Laptop despite that). But thankfully in recent years they moved to Intel wifi chipsets and should be more solid now.

I do wonder how the Inspiron does with thermal throttling on the MX550. But you presumably won't be attempting to game seriously on it so probably fine.
 

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