The review says Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 8 is a strong premium Windows 11 laptop with fast everyday performance, long battery life, a very good keyboard and a notably improved haptic trackpad. Its main significance is that it shows Microsoft continuing to push ARM-based Windows laptops as serious rivals to thin-and-light machines such as Apple’s MacBook Air, though the reviewer suggests it still falls short of Apple on outright performance. A sharp price rise, however, weakens the value proposition despite the quality hardware.

The laptop replaces the 2024 Surface Laptop 7 and offers Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus or X2 Elite chips, with a starting price of £1,449, around £400 more than the previous model’s launch price. Externally it changes little, keeping the aluminium body, 13.8in or 15in 120Hz LCD display, and ports including USB-A and two USB4/C connections, while adding support for Windows 11’s new haptic signals through the touchpad. In testing, the X2 Elite model was roughly 16% to 20% faster in single-core performance and about 10% better in graphics than the previous generation, with quiet running and good battery life, although the glossy screen can suffer from office glare.