The Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 15-Inch Review: Refreshing Ryzen

Wireless

For years, Microsoft leveraged the Marvel AVASTAR wireless adapters, which were reasonable quick, but unreliable, and were really one of the most disappointing areas of any Surface device. Thankfully, they started to deviate away from Marvel last year, mostly thanks to the introduction of Wi-Fi 6, and Intel’s semi-integrated AX200 solution. But, on the previous generation AMD powered Surface Laptop 3, they instead chose a Qualcomm networking solution which was underwhelming, to say the least. The good news for 2021 and the Surface Laptop 4 is that Microsoft has righted this wrong and are now leveraging the Intel AX200 Wi-FI 6 solution even in the AMD powered Laptop 4.

Performance is excellent. The Intel Ice Lake / Tiger Lake powered notebooks have the CVNi connected AX201, which does offer a slightly higher maximum transfer rates, but even the more traditional AX200 does very well over Wi-Fi 6. As is usual for Intel network adapters, reliability was top-notch.

Audio / Video

Microsoft offers Omnisonic speakers with Dolby Atmos support, and they conveniently locate the speakers underneath the keyboard. This faces the speakers towards the listener, and the result is surprisingly good.

Audio separation is quite good for a laptop computer, and while they lack the low-end performance of all notebooks, the speakers sound good in the mid and high ranges, and get plenty loud, with 84-85 dB(A) measured an inch over the trackpad.

On the camera front, the Surface Laptop 4 offers just a 720p webcam, although it does include Windows Hello IR support for fast logins. The laptop includes dual far-field microphones as well.

Thermals

Packing in eight cores, sixteen threads, and 8 CUs of Vega integrated graphics, the Surface Laptop 4 is the most powerful Renoir powered laptop in its class. The Ryzen 7 4980U offers the highest peak frequency, at 4.4 GHz, of the Renoir U lineup, which is the 15-Watt range.

Sadly, the performance monitoring tools we use were not able to poll the processor for power usage data, so we can’t get a proper feel on what kind of sustained power draw the laptop achieves, but Renoir has been quite power efficient, so it is likely in the 15-20 Watt range. We were able to poll sustained frequencies though. The Surface Laptop 4, under 100% load, quickly hit its 4.4 GHz peak, and then ran at a sustained 3 GHz for the rest of the run. There was no frequency degradation over time which would indicate the laptop was overheating.

Cooling was also very impressive. Despite the performance, Microsoft has been able to tune the fans to keep very quiet. Under most conditions, the fans are not even active, but under full load, the fans only registered 44 dB(A) even after over an hour of sustained load. That is very impressive.

Software

One of the most refreshing points in Surface ownership is that the Surface team does not install any extra software on the notebook. You don’t need to worry about browser plug-ins, antivirus trials, or the like. The only app that is installed is the Surface App, where you can get information about the device, and configure accessories such as the pen.

The Surface App works well, but it would be nice to see Microsoft give it some love. It has not really changed much in the last several years. Some additional functionality would be appreciated. It offers only the most basic functionality and support access.

One such feature that would be appreciated is the ability to set the maximum battery charge level. If you are a person that normally docks the device, being able to set the maximum battery level to something other than 100% can help prolong the life of the battery, and is functionality that other manufacturers do add. The Surface device offers two color profiles, with sRGB and Enhanced, and would it not be nice to be able to choose that in the Surface app, where the Surface app could explain what the settings do, rather than just a drop-down in the display settings with no explanation? It feels like there is a lot more than can be done here to enhance ownership. The Surface app is easy to use, it looks great, and it could use a bit more functionality.