Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 12.4" Touchscreen 2023 Review

The Surface Laptop Go 3 is a one-trick pony, and that trick is being incredibly portable. It's light, it's small, and it looks good. But you have to be crystal clear about what you're buying: this is a machine for basic tasks and moving around, not for heavy lifting. The one thing to know is that its compact size and premium feel come with major compromises on performance and screen quality.

The Intel Core i5-1235U CPU lands in the 28th percentile, and that's exactly what it feels like. It's fine for web browsing, documents, and streaming, but ask it to do more than two things at once and you'll hear the fans spin up. The 8GB of RAM is a real bottleneck in 2024, and the screen's 1536x1024 resolution is shockingly low, putting it in the bottom 6% of all laptops. The only pleasant surprise is the integrated graphics, which are decent enough for its class, but don't even think about gaming.

At $650, it's a tough sell. You're paying a premium for the Microsoft brand and the sleek design, but you're getting specs that belong in a $400 laptop. If portability is your only concern, maybe. But for the same money, you can get a much more capable machine that's only slightly heavier.

Forget the gaming laptops on the competitor list; they're in a different universe. The real fight is against something like the ASUS Zenbook Duo if you want a premium ultraportable with way more power and a killer second screen, or a base model MacBook Air if you want better performance, a stunning screen, and insane battery life in a similar form factor. The Surface Laptop Go 3 wins on weight and Windows familiarity, but loses badly on everything else.

I can only recommend this to a very specific person: someone who needs the absolute lightest Windows laptop possible, only uses it for web and Office apps, and never plans to multitask. For everyone else, especially students or anyone on a budget, the 8GB RAM and terrible screen are immediate disqualifiers. Look at refurbished business laptops or a MacBook Air instead.