The Surface Laptop 4 Is a Great MacBook Alternative for the Microsoft-Curious

This year’s refresh is focused on internals, so it’s what’s on the inside that counts

Images courtesy of the author

For the last few years, Microsoft has been on a tear building some of the best laptops on the market alongside the most exciting developer tools available. For the last few weeks, I’ve been testing the company’s new 15-inch Surface Laptop 4, which is no exception.

From the outside, the Surface Laptop 4 looks and feels similar to the previous generation of laptops; it’s ultra-thin at 14.7 mm with a tall 3:2 display and comes in a slick set of colors to choose from as well as metal or Alcantara fabric finishes.

But this year’s refresh is focused on internals, so it’s what’s on the inside that counts: You can now choose from an 11th-gen Intel processor or a special AMD Ryzen 4000 “Surface Edition” option that sports a whopping eight cores.

That AMD Ryzen configuration, which I’ve been testing, is an absolute beast. It handles difficult workloads like my Chrome, Docker, and PhpStorm coding workflow with seeming ease while remaining…