I’ve reviewed many of the best laptops of 2024 so far, including all the available MacBooks. But my personal daily carry has been the Surface Laptop 7th Edition since the day I reviewed it. It’s everything I’d wanted Windows laptops to become — a true answer to the domination of Apple over the past four years.
The best part? As one of the best Cyber Monday deals I’ve seen, it’s on sale today for Buy at Amazon . This is the perfect configuration for this type of device too, coming with some extra storage. Even among the very best Cyber Monday laptop deals you’ll find this week, this Surface Laptop discount feels significant.
Amazon lets you configure it with the base 256GB of storage, but they’re only charging an extra $50 to upgrade to 512GB, which is definitely worth it. The configuration with the highest reduction in price, however, is the more powerful SnapdragonX Elite model, which is 29% off, down from $1,400 to just $999.
Here are the complete specs for the Surface laptop 7th Edition 13.8 that Amazon has on sale for Cyber Monday.
So, why’s this laptop such a big deal? Well, for years, Windows laptops seemed hopeless to compete against the MacBook. After the launch of Apple’s M1 chip in 2020, the entire PC ecosystem has been attempting to regain its footing. And as good as some of those laptops have been, they were hard to recommend when a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro had over double the battery life and, in many cases, better performance.
But in 2024, the tides began to turn. And the Surface Laptop 7th Edition is the cream of the crop of this new era for Windows laptops. It represents the best of what the Windows ecosystem can produce as a rebuttal to Apple.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always wanted to like this laptop. I love the 3:2 aspect ratio screen, the clean design, and great keyboard. Performance and battery life always suffered though, making it hard to recommend over a MacBook.
The key to this latest model’s success, of course, is the Snapdragon Elite X chip inside. Don’t let Windows on Arm scare you off, though — it’s amazing how power-efficient this little chip is. The result is fantastic performance and really impressive battery life. My own testing produced 22 hours of battery life in video playback, and while that’s not a normal workload, it’s still insanely long. It drops in battery life a little bit faster than a MacBook on heavier loads, but it’s still a huge leap over previous generations.
But really, the great performance and battery life was just a way of allowing me to really love all the other good things about this device. Very few laptops have stuck to using a taller 3:2 aspect ratio (compared to 16:10, which is what is commonly used), and whenever I come back to it, I find the extra vertical screen real estate really luxurious. I even really like the rounded corners of the screen and quality-of-life improvements like the haptic feedback trackpad and 120Hz refresh rate screen.
As someone who has options for what laptop I pick up and use — this is the one I kept coming back to time and time again through the year. $200 is a pretty big deal for a laptop of this caliber, so pick it up while it lasts.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.