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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

I cannot find clear information anywhere. But, is SSD 990 PRO NVMe M.2 4TB compatible with the laptop? I am hoping I can find 4TB on this laptop.

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.

My keyboard suddenly stopped working, and my Surface no longer recognizes it. Do you have any recommendations? Are there any alternative keyboards that can charge the Pencil ?

I saw a video a while back showing the Surface Laptop running some sort of CAD software. However, I haven't seen any other videos regarding it. I am thinking of purchasing the base ultra for solidworks and maybe MATLAB as well. Is this a good idea, or should I look for other alternatives, since the hardware of this laptop is really appealing compared to other Windows laptops out there?

Just watching all of these "reviewers" do their CPU/Battery efficiency and seeing them butcher this. For example, just running a 4K YouTube video and claiming the MBP 16 has 2x the battery to seeing a non-ARM 2024 Cinebench test as the way to measure CPU efficiency is crazy talk. Anyway, Just Josh posted the most interesting graphs at the point that are giving us some meaningful data that shows things are actually relatively close. Good for a first gen product and a step up from anything Ryzen/Intel but not MBP level performance/wattage.

Got a notification from the Surface YouTube channel for a Surface Laptop Pro ad. The video was private when I tried to view it? The thumbnail didn't give much context either from what I remember. I wish I would've opened the notification sooner...

I have an 8GB/256GB X Plus that I still use for work, but I was within the return period for my 16GB/512GB personal device, and swapped it to the X2 24GB/512GB.

Haven't seen much review or fanfare on the device as it's been eclipsed by the Ultra.

The price is steep for what it is, but the form factor and size is my absolute favorite, and the screen/performance upgrades are worth it to me.

Does anyone have anything they want tested on the X2 Plus 12"?

The extra 100 nits for brightness make me want to upgrade my 1st gen that I use for work. It makes a lot of difference in bright/outdoor environments.

Apparently the Surface Laptop Ultra for Business has an anti reflective coating on the screen that is missing on the consumer version of the Laptop Ultra. Why that is IDK but it is confirmed on their website and on Windows Central livestream about it.

Se me había caído el Surface Pen al suelo y eso aplastó la punta del lápiz así que decidí cambiarlo, luego de cambiar la punta por alguna razón la computadora detecta el puntero pero no interactua o escribe.