Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 Test: Performance and Autonomy to Challenge Apple MacBook Air

The 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 that Microsoft brings to us is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 processor. This model is equipped with 12 Oryon cores running at 3.4 GHz with a boost of up to 4 GHz on two cores. 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD complete the configuration.

Remember that Snapdragon is an ARM architecture processor and you should therefore use software (ARM, ARM64) specifically designed to take advantage of the best performance.

With the nose of the calf

In our collection of programs used to calculate the performance index DigitalCineBench R23, Adobe Premiere, and WinZip are not optimized for ARM processors and therefore use the built-in emulation in Windows 11 with up to 30% performance loss. Therefore, performance should increase as software designed for the ARM architecture is deployed.

Regardless, the vast majority of mainstream software has an ARM version for Snapdragon PCs, such as Chrome, Office suite, Photoshop, WhatsApp, Spotify, VLC, etc. The best way to get compatible apps is through the Microsoft Store.

In practice, the Surface Laptop 7 is particularly responsive when opening software, even slightly more efficient than Intel Core Ultra 7-powered computers when said software is native to ARM. And as with the Asus VivoBook S15 Oled, we didn't notice a noticeable drop in performance when the laptop was running on battery power.

We launched shadow of the tomb raider To evaluate the performance of the GPU part integrated into the processor. The latter does not work miracles with a rate of 21 fps for the very high preset at 1080p and 35 fps in the very low mode. By activating the AutoSR feature, which allows scaling to a lower definition on the processor's NPU, the number of fps increases (32 fps and 47 fps), but the display still does not look very smooth to the eye. The problem is probably due to Qualcomm's drivers. So, although launching games is possible, it is clearly not the Snapdragon X Elite's cup of tea.

A word about the built-in SSD… It's up to 3.5GB/s read and 2.5GB/s write. It's not huge, but it's more than enough to help the Surface Laptop's responsiveness. We didn't notice any slowdowns while transferring our test files.