Or at least that’s the theory, because having spent a few weeks testing out the company’s new Surface Laptop Go, I’m not sure that it’s not having a go at capturing the wider laptop market looking for a more affordable option. Like the existing (and equally more affordably priced) Surface Go lines, the Surface Laptop Go is a smaller laptop with a 12.4 inch display. It uses a 3:2 ratio, said by many to be better for working than the 16:9 ratio you get for more entertainment-based pursuits.

It’s not a terribly configurable laptop when it comes time to buy. At launch it only ships with a single Intel Core i5 processor, and either 4GB or 8GB of RAM. The cheapest model has only 64GB of storage — less when you consider it has to cram Windows 10 in there — while the top two tiers have either 128GB or 256GB of onboard storage. With side USB C and A type ports you could always add an external drive to boost the storage capacity of the Surface Laptop Go.

The Surface Laptop Go sells in three colours; there’s a rather standard “Platinum” silver and a more showy Ice Blue or Sandstone finish available. The one catch here is that the Platinum colour is the only one available in the cheapest 64GB/4GB configuration; if you want Ice Blue or Sandstone you’ve got to jump up to the 128GB/8GB model instead. That’s what I’ve been testing with, and it’s arguably a smart move anyway. Windows 10 can run on 4GB of RAM — but it’s never going to run terribly well, and like many laptops sold today, you can’t upgrade the RAM post-purchase if you work out it’s not enough.

That Core i5 processor is solidly a mid-range option in the ultrabook space, and that does peg the Surface Laptop Go as an everyday computing solution, best suited for students or folks who have to shuffle around a fair quantity of documents; while you can use it for more intensive processes like video editing, it’s going to struggle to handle more complex rendering tasks. That’s also true for gaming, where its integrated Intel UHD graphics chip can’t really fling too many polygons around.

Microsoft’s Surface devices have generally had good battery life for tablets and laptops in their class, but here the Surface Laptop Go slips slightly, at least comparatively. I managed a little over 9 hours of direct 1080p video looping on the Surface Laptop Go, where the smaller Surface Go managed over 15 on the same test. As with most Surface devices you get Microsoft’s magnetic “Surface Connect” charger to juice up the Surface Laptop Go, but it can also charge via its USB C port. That’s going to be slower, and not every charger will work, but it’s a nice bit of flexibility.

Microsoft’s bigger and fancier 2-in-1s and laptops typically tip the scale north of $2,000 and upwards, but this is where the Surface Laptop Go makes its pitch. That baseline 64GB/4GB model sells locally for $999, while the 128GB/8GB model will set you back $1,249 and the top tier 256GB/8GB model costs $1,549.

That’s certainly not the cheapest laptop you can get, but it’s fairly priced for both the underlying power and portability, as well as the build quality of Microsoft’s Surface lines.

The Iris Xe Max is designed for ultraportable laptops that need a little more graphics grunt than you’d get in a standard integrated GPU, so best suited for matters like video editing, rendering and gaming pursuits.

What’s interesting here is that Intel is claiming that the Iris Xe Max can handle 1080p gaming tasks with aplomb but also share its computing power with the standard CPU if you do hit an intense task.

You might not care about gaming per se, but it does represent a big leap forwards in terms of what can be done with an integrated graphics solution, because it really wasn’t that long ago that these units struggled to even shift a single column of excel data across a display.

When you buy a new computer – and most notably laptops although this can be true of desktops as well – there’s a choice to be made between integrated and dedicated graphics processing.

An integrated GPU means that the graphics handling is done in (essentially) the same chip as the actual computing, sharing memory resources and generally lowering energy usage. Conversely, a dedicated GPU can have its own memory and deliver superior performance when needed, but at a cost of power usage, which is why you typically don’t see them on ultralight notebooks, or for that matter low cost models either.

If your computing needs are modest – a little light web browsing, office documents and the like – then dedicated GPUs will be more than enough. It’s a little easier if you’re buying a PC based on Intel processors because Intel doesn’t make standalone graphics cards itself. Typically, what you’ll find on systems with Intel and standalone GPUs are cards using NVIDIA’s GeForce solutions.

Rival AMD makes both CPUs with integrated graphics and graphics cards in its own right, although in the laptop space that’s usually easily determined by the price sticker on the laptop.

While gamers are often cited as the core market for laptops with dedicated GPUs, and there’s an entire class of “gaming laptops” to suit their needs, it’s not the only scenario where a system like that makes sense.

If you do a lot of work involving graphics elements such as photo or video editing, most of the popular software can leverage the power of a good GPU to speed up your workflow. More recently, there was a bit of a run on actual graphics cards for desktops due to the whole cryptocurrency boom, because again their computing power could be leveraged that way – not that I’m advocating for that approach, but it’s another example of how computing power can be shifted around different computing architectures.

It’s also worth bearing in mind if you’re buying a laptop that upgrades beyond memory – and even then it can’t be assumed – are usually not a realistic proposal, and if you’re looking to need more power over time, a dedicated GPU should offer more performance than an integrated one. Every system that comes with a dedicated card can and will drop to the integrated GPU for low-intensity tasks, which means you get the best of both worlds that way.

That being said, for most everyday users, the integrated graphics you get will manage most tasks just fine, and there’s still very much a price differential between systems, and especially laptops, with decent dedicated GPUs.

Outside much older laptop stock – where you run the risk that integrated improvements like Intel’s Iris Xe Max may have outpaced dedicated GPUs anyway – you won’t typically see a dedicated GPU on any laptop under around $900, whereas anything under that price is extremely likely to be relying on an integrated GPU.

Many people would be cross shopping the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro – so what’s the difference between them? According to Anthony Hill, Head of Technology at Geeks2U, “The MacBook Pro has much higher performance specs than the Air, with a 9th-Gen 6 or 8 core Intel processor, 16GB of RAM and a dedicated AMD Radeon Pro GPU, opposed to an 8th-Gen dual core processor, 8GB RAM and integrated graphics in the Air. If you are looking to do video or graphics intensive work and want the most powerful MacBook ever produced, then the Pro is the way to go”.

PROS OF THE NEW 2019 MACBOOK PRO 16 INCH

You’d think the new 16-inch display would be the 2019 MacBook Pro’s main feature, but it’s the widespread criticism of the previous MacBook Pro’s keyboard that most people were waiting for Apple to respond to. After years of denial about the 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pro’s controversial “butterfly switch” keyboard that was notorious for being fragile, Apple has reverted back to a more traditional keyboard that has received widespread praise.

Apple refers to this new keyboard as a “Magic Keyboard”, which has more key travel depth and a robust switch mechanism. This means the new keyboard feels much nicer to type on with improved key feel, plus won’t stop working if a few crumbs get stuck under the keys. As a bonus, Apple also returned the physical Esc key and an inverted-T style setup for the arrow keys. This new keyboard is a dream to use compared to the previous MacBook Pros.

With the keyboard out of the way, now we can discuss the all new 16-inch screen. Apple has managed to increase the display size from 15.4-inch out to 16-inches. It packs a 3072×1920 resolution (up from 2880×1800) and has slimmer bezels. As usual for an Apple display, its one of the most colour accurate screens on the market, boasting support for the P3 wide colour gamut and 500 nits of brightness.

Internally there’s Intel’s latest 9th-generation i7 and i9 CPUs, with either 6 or 9 cores. The base model 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and can be selected with up to 64GB (for the usual hefty Apple price tag). These new CPUs combined with a huge 100Wh battery allow for excellent battery life, with over 11 hours of continuous use a realistic estimate.

Apple is also proud of the 2019 MacBook Pro’s internal speakers. There’s 6 of them in this 2019 MacBook Pro and according to reviewers, it sounds fantastic – arguably better than most portable Bluetooth speakers or smart voice assistants like an Amazon Echo or Google Home. Even the internal mic got upgraded with a 3-mic array that according to Apple has 40% less hiss. It still doesn’t replace a proper USB mic, but if you’re in a pinch, the internal mic is no longer a total garbage fire.

CONS OF THE NEW 2019 MACBOOK PRO 16 INCH

The cold war between Apple and Nvidia continues, with AMD’s Radeon Pro 5300M and 5500M GPUs available on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. They aren’t the best performers in the market (Nvidia’s latest GPUs are superior), but you haven’t got any other choice if you want a Mac laptop with a dedicated GPU. Gamers will probably look elsewhere anyway.

The packrats amongst us who need to store everything on their laptops will appreciate the new option for an 8TB SSD. That’s right, 8TB of super-fast solid-state storage in a MacBook Pro. Don’t get too excited though, as that’s a $3,520 option, almost the cost of the laptop itself!

That’s what’s new with the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, but many things remain the same. There’s still four USB-C ports that double as power inputs and Thunderbolt 3 ports. No microSD or SD card slot unfortunately. Dongle city lives another day. The novelty Touch Bar hasn’t changed either, still replacing the traditional function keys. Oddly, the front facing webcam also hasn’t changed, remaining at a low 720p. Considering the price of this laptop, couldn’t Apple spring for a 1080p webcam?

Overall, the MacBook Pro 2019 16 inch fixes most of the mistakes of the previous MacBook Pro. The keyboard is now back to normal, battery life is class leading, the display is better than ever, and performance keeps on ticking along. If you need the fastest mobile Mac around, the MacBook Pro 2019 16 inch is perfect.

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As such, it’s rather tempting to leave everything plugged in pretty much all of the time, so that when you do need to unplug, you’ve got the most battery power available to you. 100% is better than 90%, right?

Well… maybe. It’s certainly going to be true when you first get your shiny new laptop that its full battery capacity is going to be better in terms of lasting more minutes, but there’s a curious quirk with the way that the current generations of lithium ion batteries work that means that keeping them constantly topped up isn’t always the best way to ensure the longer term life and health of the battery itself.

The chemistry of lithium ion batteries always degrades over time, which is why you can have a laptop that’s never left an office desk for years fail to provide much power even though it might feel like you’ve never particularly taken it out for a fully mobile “drive” to speak of. Anecdotally, one ex-boss of mine had a laptop she never took off the power for more than 4 years of deskbound work, only to find that its battery life could only be measures in the minutes during which it plaintively beeped at her that the battery was about to fail.

Constantly keeping your battery at 100% all of the time, 24/7 can exacerbate this problem, leading to less overall battery capacity in a shorter period of time. All of a sudden, where you might expect a battery to have retained 90% of its charge over a year or so, it might struggle to get 70% — or worse.

Some mobile devices actually handle this internally with features that stop or slow charging at or above 90%, because that way you’re effectively putting less power push strain on the device itself. Apple’s recently announced that an upcoming update to its macOS Catalina operating system – macOS Catalina 10.15.5 to be specific – will also implement similar charging strategies for compatible MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops.

It’s a careful balancing act, of course; you could massively extend the battery life of a laptop by only charging it to, say, 20% in theory, but that wouldn’t leave you with much wriggle room for actual mobile usage when you needed it. Apple’s seemingly indicating that it’ll manage this kind of partial charging to properly balance the needs of battery life with the longer term goals of maximising battery longevity.

Some Windows 10 manufacturers have or do offer similar battery longevity apps to ensure the balance between battery life and longevity, typically maxing out battery charging at around 80%. For most new laptops, that should equate to around 6-8 hours of effective real world battery life, which would get you through most working days unless you’re very heavily on your laptop during the day and unable to charge it up in the meantime. There’s also an inbuilt battery function on Windows 10 laptops that can help you manage overall usage, but it’s more concerned with matters such as hibernation settings and showing you which apps you’re running that are currently chewing up your power.

For Mac users, if you’re running a MacBook Pro from 2016 or newer or a MacBook Air from 2018 or newer, the macOS Catalina update should land later this year at which point the new battery optimisation settings should be available to you. Apple hasn’t yet indicated if there’s much of an option in those settings if you did want to plough ahead with 100% charging regardless – but it’s generally not a good idea to do so.

Equally, it’s not a good idea to ignore the other classic signs of battery failure. Most laptops these days come with sealed batteries that you can’t easily replace, but if they do start to more critically fail, they’ll often warp and bulge in an alarming fashion. If you’re finding that your previously flat laptop – even if it’s a metal body model – doesn’t sit flush with the desk any more, that’s almost certainly a sign of a critical battery failure incoming – and a machine that isn’t really safe to use any more at all.

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Ask Microsoft the same question, and it would point to its Surface Go tablets, its more “affordable” version of its existing Surface, Surface Book and Surface Laptop devices.

Fully kitted out, either an iPad Pro 9.7 or Surface Go will cost around the same amount, so who’s right in this case?

Having tested out the Surface Go recently, and with considerable iPad Pro experience under my belt, I can confidently state that… it depends.

Now, if you just want a tablet to watch Netflix, browse the web and check in with social media, then Apple’s more entry-level iPad is an easy recommendation, because it’s surprisingly powerful for its price range, well built and has an excellent ecosystem of apps purpose built with touch input in mind. You can score cheap Android or Windows tablets at around the same price point, but I’m yet to hit one as well built, or for that matter with as much battery stamina.

In the productivity space, however, the iPad Pro vs Surface Go argument is a more complex one than you might think.

Apple’s tightly controlled iPad Pro has a much better grasp of working as a touch-enabled system, thanks to the fact that iOS was built from the ground up for touch. As such, the onscreen keyboard always comes up when you need it, icons are large and easy to touch, and for the most part, everything scales to a touch-friendly level. The Surface Go, running on Windows 10 can work with touch, but because it’s an operating system that was built with mouse and keyboard in mind, rather than touch.

That does mean that if you don’t want (or need) the extra expense of an external keyboard, the iPad Pro is undeniably a better bet. I’m still somewhat surprised that neither Apple or Microsoft absorbs the cost of the external keyboard with either device, because having a physical typing interface — even if you’re not a touch typist — makes a big difference to most people’s productivity.

Where the Surface Go scores over the iPad Pro is in the flexibility for proper multi-tasking and file access you get. It’s a full Windows 10 PC, which means you can run multiple apps in their own windows. The simple processor in the Surface Go means you can’t really push it hard for work like video editing or 3D modelling or the like, but it’s a long way ahead of the way that the iPad Pro sort-of manages a couple of apps at once. Likewise, you get full Windows Explorer for access to files locally, on your network and in the cloud, where Apple’s own Files app only offers a partial version of the same flexibility.

Ultimately, though, from a productivity perspective it has to come down to the applications you actually want and need. Microsoft produces Office for Windows (and has done for decades) but it’s also available and quite capable for the iPad Pro. You’ve got a wider choice of browsers and extensions on the Surface Go, but you’ve then also got the issues around running proper anti-virus software on it. The iPad Pro has, to date, remained essentially virus free.

That’s leaving aside, of course, any particular brand loyalty or philosophical objections you might have to either Microsoft or Apple. For my purposes, I like both company’s approaches equally, but then I also don’t feel as though they should be immune to criticism either.

It has been rumoured that Apple is going to announce new iPad Pro models as part of its launch even now confirmed for the 12th of September, so if you are keen, it’s certainly going to be worthwhile holding off until at least then before buying. The Surface Go, on the other hand, is just freshly launched, so it’s a safe purchase option now if you’re keen.

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A quick primer, as a tiny digression. If you look at the specifications of your computer, it’ll list two types of storage: the memory and the storage (sometimes just referred to as the hard drive). You might think the two are the same, but they’re not. Memory is (in human terms) short term memory active only when your computer is on. Think of it as a digital blackboard that gets wiped clean every time the power goes down, and may indeed be cleared progressively as you use different applications, while the storage is more your long-term memory, where anything you create, download or install is stored.

It’s feasible to upgrade the memory (or RAM) in many systems, especially desktops, although some thinner laptop designs used sealed memory compartments that can’t be upgraded. Storage is an easier solution, however, because you can add external devices such as thumb drives or full external hard drives to gain extra portable storage for any laptop or desktop with a spare UBS port.

For years, the external drives you increased your storage with weren’t that much different to the drives within your computer. They were mechanical drives with read heads, encased in enclosures that provided power and not much else, although many external drives used smaller physical size drives than their desktop counterparts. In recent years, there’s been a growth in the use of solid state drives, that use memory that’s not terribly dissimilar (at a basic level) to the memory used for RAM. Solid State Drives (SSDs) are quieter, thinner, and generally more power efficient, but their real benefit is in pure speed.

I’ve recently been testing out Samsung’s T5 SSD, the company’s latest generation of its external solid state drives. They’re very small, very lightweight and very fast indeed. Connectivity is via either of two cables provided in the box, covering both standard USB (USB-A) and the newer round USB-C standard, and the drives are available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes. Samsung also supplies a simple utility to encrypt the data on the drive if you’re thinking of using it for business purposes, or even if you just want to keep your family photos truly private.

Connecting up the 500GB T5 SSD to a 2016 MacBook Pro, I was able to hit an impressive 513.5Mbps real world read speed, and write speeds of up to 482.7Mbps. You’ll never see that kind of speed from an external mechanical drive, although if you do have a laptop or desktop with an internal SSD, it’ll be even faster again, because the realities of shifting data from an external interface will always introduce some overhead.

All well and good and robust, but there is a catch, and it’s one worth knowing about. SSDs have been favoured by speed freaks, but to date they’ve been the more costly option against standard mechanical drives. Samsung’s new drives start at $199 for the 250GB version, all the way up to a wallet-scaring $1,249 for the 2TB version. Considering you can pretty easily buy a 2TB mechanical drive for less than $199, you’ve got to balance your storage needs against your need for speed. That being said, when the first external SSDs emerged they were both slower than the T5 and much more expensive. That price and storage gap is shrinking, and as it does, expect to see more and better SSD bargains along the way.

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