The Spectre x360 was faster at 533.61 MBps, while the Prestige blew the rest of them out of the water at 999.29 MBps. Microsoft's clamshell hit a transfer rate of 372.49 MBps, which is not particularly speedy, though it was faster than the Dell’s 298 MBps. The Surface Laptop didn't fare particularly well on our file transfer test, in which it reads and writes 25GB worth of files. The HP Spectre x360 14, with a more mainstream i7-1165G7 had the lowest multi-core score of the bunch. The MSI Prestige 14, with an Intel Core i7-1185G7 'Tiger Lake' part followed a similar pattern, with a higher single-core result and a lower multi-core score. The Dell XPS 15, with a Core i7-10750H 'Comet Lake' chip and 32GB of RAM, had a higher single-core score (1,232) but a lower multi-core score (6,179). On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the Surface Laptop 4 achieved a single-core score of 1,173 and a multi-core score of 6,748. In our configuration, that chip was matched with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Microsoft also claims it worked with AMD to squeeze as much battery life as possible out of the laptop by tuning the bespoke silicon. That offers higher frequencies than the standard Ryzen 7 4800U (and in fact are closer to the Ryzen 7 5800U). This chip has 8 cores and 16 threads, 8 GPU cores, a 2.0-GHz base clock and a 4.4-GHz boost clock. That isn't to say it doesn't offer impressive performance. AMD and Microsoft worked on a custom processor for the Surface, and it seems that the time it took to make means that it's not based on the latest technology. It's Ryzen 4000, not the latest Ryzen 5000.

We reviewed the Surface Laptop 4 with an AMD chip, the AMD Ryzen 7 4980U, or, as Microsoft calls it, the Microsoft Surface Edition. Productivity Performance on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (15-inch, AMD) USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 3.5 mm headphone jack, Microsoft Surface Connect portġ3.4 x 9.6 x 0.58 inches / 339.5 x 244 x 14.7 mm AMD Ryzen 7 4980U (Microsoft Surface Edition)

Surface laptop 4 release date