Surface 4 13.5″ Touchscreen Laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 4680U
Platinum Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 (5PB-00001-DP) is a modern 13.5-inch PixelSense touchscreen laptop with a 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 4680U processor, Radeon RX Vega 6 graphics card, 256GB Solid State Drive, 8GB DDR4 memory, Windows 10 Home operating system, backlit keyboard, WiFi 6 wireless, USB-C port and comes with the Mytrix digital pen.
The 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 4680U ultra processor with SMT / Hyperthreading (12 threads) was specially designed for Microsoft Surface laptop. It runs at a base speed of 2.1GHz for basic daily tasks that goes up to the 4GHz turbo boost speed as needed by the more demanding tasks. It is pretty much like the older Ryzen 5 4600U with an average CPU Passmark benchmark score of 13750 and beats the tenth generation Intel i7-1065G7 and the previous generation Ryzen 7 3700U.
13.5-inch PixelSense premium touch display on the Surface 4 Laptop has the 2256 x 1504 (201 PPI) resolution, 3:2 aspect ratio and you can view the websites and documents nicely scaled with an 18% more display vertically. The maximum screen resolution supported is 3840×2160 pixels. You can write or draw easily and naturally without any lagging with the Mytrix digital pen that you get with your purchase. With the tilt support on this pen you can even shade your drawings just like with a graphite pencil.
The older AMD Radeon RX Vega 6 (2000-3000 series) built-in graphics card has the video card benchmark score of 1275 and this Radeon Vega 6 (4000) on the Ryzen 5 4680U performs much better (1.500 versus 1.100 MHz Boost). It benefits from the fast dual-channel DDR4-3200 RAM rather than the 2133MHz. It reaches the performance level of somewhere between the dedicated cards of GeForce MX150 and MX230. And the sound quality is quite good with the Dolby Atmos 7 through the double far-field Omnisonic Studio speakers.
The typical TDP- Thermal Design Power on the Ryzen 5 processor is 15 watts and has the enhanced all-day battery life of up to 19 hours. You can recharge the low battery to full charge with quick charge function- 80% in an hour. There is no Optical DVD Drive on this slim laptop and the connectivity options include 802.11ax wireless, Bluetooth 5, a USB Type-C port, a USB Type-A port, a Surface Connect port and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone jack. And you’ll need to use a dongle for additional USB ports, HDMI etc.
Surface Laptop 4 is very slim and lightweight and you can open the lid with one finger effortlessly, weighs 2.79 pounds and measures 12.1 x 8.8 x 0.57 inches and you can take it anywhere you go very easily, also with the long battery life. It comes with the TPM 2.0 chip for enhanced business security and privacy with the BitLocker support. So you have the enterprise level protection on this Surface 4 and you can sign in through fingerprint reader or facial recognition / authentication with Windows Hello. You have a 720p high definition f2.0 webcam at the front. Surface Laptop 4 is not a low cost machine but seems to offer decent value for money. It is currently rated an average of 4.3 out of 5 stars by 5 users, being released only recently on April 26, 2021.
