With the launch of the Surface Laptop 4 this week, as I have done with nearly every Surface device in my possession, I wanted to see if it was possible to game on the laptop. Even though Microsoft doesn’t pitch this device as a gaming laptop, it does have an 8 core, 16 thread, CPU.

If you are looking for a first impression post, you can find that here; the short version of this post is that despite the beefed-up CPU, the GPU is still pulling down the gaming experience. But the best way to showcase that is with video, which you can find below.

The GPU was by far the limiting factor with CPU usage rarely jumping above 50%. Also, while not heard in the video, when the fans do hit their peak output they are quite loud but that’s to be expected. That being said, the only time I have heard them spin up during my usage is when benchmarking and during normal usage, the machine is silent.

Still, a lot to test with this laptop but in the coming days and weeks, I’ll dive into the battery life as that’s the last remaining area that needed significant improvement from the Surface Laptop 3.

Tagged with Surface, Surface Laptop 4