Are Microsoft PCs Worth It? A Review of the Surface Laptop 2

A picture of Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 in the snow.

When it comes to buying an Apple Mac Computer, you only have a selection of different levels of laptops and desktop versions. It doesn’t matter which one you get, they mostly are good enough. They are reliable, fast, and can last for years. I have an old iMac from 2013 that still works today without any hardware failures. That’s 9 years of owning that machine! Yes, it has slowed down for sure but it still works great for my kids. I’ve owned iMac, mac Mini, and MacBookPro, all on 8GB of memory. Those 8GB had no issue or major impact of my computer needs. Just recently I upgraded to the new iMac 24″ in Green. This thing is speced to use 16GB memory and 512GB SSD on the M1. Those 16GB of memory really made editing videos a breeze. I love this computer.

Windows based PCs are a different story…

Over the years I’ve probably owned over a dozen of them. That’s how poorly they are made and not reliable. I remember those days using Windows XP, Vista, 7 and I always had to reformat the damn hard drive because it either had a virus, blue screen of death, or hardware issues.

Owning a Windows based PC was frustrating

The PCs I owned were Dell, Toshiba, HP, CyberPowerPC, iBuyPower, and a couple of custom built ones I made. I remember buying a $800 Toshiba laptop all speced out, 8GB RAM, 512GB storage, supposedly gaming graphics card and it ran like a POS. You want a fast computer? Don’t buy a Dell those are so cheaply built and using obsolete hardware. I found most my needs met by building my own PC rig. Then again finding parts that are reliable and not years old is another jigsaw puzzle you must solve. Not all parts work with each other so you have to make sure your desired motherboard works with your selected CPU, RAM, graphics card, etc…

Installing crappy China hardware can make or break your whole PC rig

One of my colleagues purchased a CyberPowerPC, shelling out $1,299 thinking it had the latest hardware specs only to find they put in non branded power supply that is known to fail. The thing about power supplies is, if that goes out, there’s a 50-50 chance it could fry your motherboard and everything else. So, he lost his investment after it failed. Thankfully his house didn’t catch fire. It was a mess.

Microsoft’s Surface 2 Laptop…

*A picture of a closed Microsoft Surface Laptop 2.*

I made a risky investment and bought a used Surface 2 Laptop, sight unseen. I was blinded by the specs of 16GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD and was only $329. It had a crack on the laptop cover, no biggie. The cool feature is that surrounding the keyboard and mouse trackpad is a fabric texture which feels nice. The fabric makes it look like a luxory laptop as not any manufacturers are doing this.

I’ve spent $800 and up on PCs before only to be disappointed by their performance. However, upon using this Surface 2 laptop since last week, I’m really impressed. How is it that when I spend less I have a better working laptop then I did with all those other top “brands”?

Now it does have some cons, since it is using an Intel CPU (yuck), it gets hot after awhile. Made sure I have a tiny fan to help it cool down. The battery life on this device sucks but I’m mainly using it as a desktop so doesn’t really matter. Lastly the fabric is changing colors as it wears. Makes you wonder, what color will it turn into after a year or so, if this thing will even last that long?

Would I spend more for the latest Surface laptop? Yes, I will after this machine dies. I’m actually impressed by the Surface 2 laptop. But I’d have to go with at minimum 16GB of RAM and a 1 TB solid state drive. I think the reason for the other PCs being so slow is not having enough RAM and was using the hard disk drive. Could be other non branded cheap hardware chips from China as well but who knows.