The Laptop Studio runs Windows 11, which like other Surface devices is free of trials for anti-virus programs and other unwanted software that can often cause problems, except a pre-installed trial of Microsoft Office. There are still a few rough patches and irritating niggles with Windows 11, but overall it complements the adaptable nature of the Laptop Studio well. More demanding work, such as advanced photo manipulation in studio mode, reduces the battery life to about three hours, while you could expect more than 10 hours of just watching video.

That’s longer than the 13.5in Surface Laptop 4, but miles behind the 14 hours of the 14in MacBook Pro. The Laptop Studio’s battery life is surprisingly good, lasting almost nine hours of light work, including lots of browsing, note taking, document and spreadsheet-editing and a short bit of image-editing. It can’t manage AAA games with anything greater than low graphics settings, either. For those looking to render or convert lots of video, process large 3D models or compile mountains of code the Surface comes up a bit short. While it can handle everything I would want to do, it is limited on raw power compared to workstation competitors of a similar price, which typically have more performant 6 or 8-core processors. As tested with its highest specification, including the Core i7-11370H quad-core processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics chip, it sails through every day work, complex image-editing and other fairly demanding general tasks, as expected. The performance of the Laptop Studio is a mixed bag. But its port selection is slim with only two Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 ports and a headphones socket for connecting peripherals. It takes 93 minutes to fully charge the battery using the supplied 120W power adaptor, hitting 50% in just over half an hour.

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