My Surface Laptop 7 landed on my porch at 5 a.m. this morning, so I thought I'd report on a few things reviewers never verbalize that a blind user would likely want to know. This is the 13-inch X Plus version. I haven't done a battery test yet, so will come back to add that in, as well as longer-term usage observations. This is MAINLY FIRST IMPRESSIONS, although I've come back to revise some things.
Keys
The big things to note out of the box are these: 1. Where the Insert key should be, next to Delete, they've put the power button. This will be fun when I put my computer to sleep whenever I try to check the time. Hold for three seconds for a "swipe to power off" screen or 10 seconds to do a cold force shutdown. Windows users probably know you can change the power button to "do nothing," at which point the forced shutdown still works, but screen reader calamities are avoided. 2. There's no right control key. That's the Copilot key. I knew that was the case, but didn't realize remapping it to control wasn't an option in settings. 3. As usual, the native function key functions are hardware things like display brightness, etc. But on this machine, the Fn key locks to one set of functions or the other--hardware or standard function keys--so one doesn't use a key combination. That's a bad thing for NVDA, which doesn't say anything when you toggle the F-lock key, so you can lose the function keys accidentally without knowing it. Mac users will likely encounter this frequently until their (by which I mean my) motor memory adjusts. I still do it, but rarely. The good news is that, even after a reboot, the F-lock stays as you've left it. 4. With F-lock enabled, the Copilot key is the applications key, which is to say it opens the shift-F10 context menu. With F-lock off, it's Copilot and can't be remapped (PowerToys used to be able to do it, but not anymore). This is not specific to the Laptop 7. The key is so much maligned that surely Microsoft will relent, once it stops shoving its new toy in users' faces. And yes, I know, "Please don't call me Shirley." 5. Home/End/PageUp/down are FN+arrow key combinations, similar to Mac. This is what I prefer, because the alternative is always some weird crammed-in placement. Speaking of which, F9-F12 are dedicated versions of these keys when F-lock is off. So, it requires some tweaking and acclimation, but it's worth it.
I highly recommend downloading SharpKeys from the Microsoft store. It's a little run-once utility that adds registry entries to reassign keys. I remapped F12 to Insert, F11 to F12, and the Applications key to right control. Virtually every laptop keyboard I've used has benefitted from a little tweaking.
A few optimizationS
So far, I've lowered the display brightness to 0% (which is dim but not off), lowered the monitor refresh rate from 120 to 60 Hz, both of which should help battery life; and easily disabled the touch pad in settings. All these things remain where I set them after reboot, which is great. I mention them because that's often not the case on other computer's I've owned.
Hardware
It's a tiny bit thicker, half an inch deeper, and noticeably heavier than the Macbook Air. I have them both side by side. It doesn't taper as much in the front or have the contoured lid of the MBA. Because of these things, it feels bigger than it actually is. These are totally insignificant cosmetic differences. Plenty of ports! Two thunderbolts and a USB-A on the left, plus headphone jack. On the right, just the attachment slot for the proprietary magnetic charger, which is so similar to the old-school Mac magnetic charge cord that I'm surprised Apple didn't sue. The charger is a small brick, not particularly travel friendly. But I had it plugged in today into a random USB-c charger without issue. The best news is the speakers. I can't stand tinny sound for my screen readers. The Surface is better than any Windows laptop I've owned by a long shot. Believe it or not, I personally find it significantly better than my Mac. Here's one of those instances of my coming back to add this in. I streamed the same video simultaneously on both, and the Surface sounded more natural and could get louder without distortion. Regarding that last point, though, the caveat is that my M1 MBA has endured well over a dozen drops, which may well be a factor. Finally, while I'll catch flack for saying this, all my Apple devices have sounded like Apple achieves its sound quality through signal processing--in particular, dynamic compression and a smiley EQ curve. The exception is the iPhone 16E, which shares the Surface's rich, mid-range-focused sound signature. I'm in a sonic happy place these days. The keyboard may well be the best typing experience possible on an ultra portable. Keys are large, with good spacing and key travel. It's considerably more firm than the MBA. So much so that I'm dropping keystrokes from not hitting them with enough pressure. No one else has mentioned this, so I assume I'll quickly get used to it. All that having been said, I'd still trade it in a heartbeat for a thicker laptop with contoured keys. One missed opportunity is that the up/down arrows are half-height, sandwiched between left/right. Unlike laptops that cram in full-height keys with no spacing, I have no problem whatsoever with these arrow keys; but, by making all the arrow keys half-height, the Mac creates some tactile differentiation.
It takes my machine 30 seconds to restart, which is a really long time. This seems to be 15 sec to shut down and another to get to the login screen. I'm used to more like 5 seconds to start up.
My Set-up nightmare
Windows imported my settings from a OneDrive backup of my desktop. I didn't want it to, but wI think the option to decline was buried in a "more options" link. My public service announcement here is don't let it do this if you're moving from x86 to ARM. When Narrator picked up the transferred settings, it stopped speaking, which I later found out was because none of the transferred OneCore or SAPI voices are ARM-compatible. I had no sight assistance available. I made a portable NVDA copy on my desktop and managed to launch that on the Surface, but attempting to install that to the computer failed, possibly because I tried to copy my user config. Several things were unstable while using the portable copy. I made another portable copy without my settings, and that one installed. Then I got into Narrator and added some Natural voices, which got it speaking again. That's where my afternoon went.
NVDA is smooth and responsive. I originally wrote here that it is perhaps a tiny bit less responsive than on my 3-year-old AMD mini desktop, which has a 6-core laptop processor, but "responsiveness" is a trigger for us, as demonstrated in the comments, so I recanted. The only real problem is that NVDA has been choking on the search window of the start menu, which has become even more hideous with the latest Windows update. NVDA goes into browse mode randomly and, if you arrow up into the enhanced search window, it generally freezes and needs to be restarted. The log reports a freeze recovery in 13 seconds, but it isn't recovered. It hasn't happened on my AMD computer.
Also, I was happy to see that SAPI 5 is still going and my stand-alone Eloquence still works.
I'll update with other observations and battery tests after 10 days or so.
Comments
Timely Review
Thanks for the review. Hope you have the time and post us more on battery and heat. NVDA snappiness might be due to some background activity like Windows Updates. You know MS is notorious for random updates.
Keep us posted, please, with further observations.
Thanks again!
Yeah, really useful review…
Yeah, really useful review and I like the comparison to the MBA which is, really, the benchmark for what I want in a windows machine.
like the review
Hi,
Nice review. I wouldn't get this though for one small reason. I hate it when power buttons are part of the keyboard. But yeah the OneDrive thing and the random desktop icons, I had that too when I set up my new laptop and backed things up from a OneDrive back-up. I had to delete a load of shortcuts.
response
Hey. I've edited the review a bit. I'm always super-critical of products at first. As for Windows updates, I waited to setup speech until all that was done for several hours. NVDA doesn't actually lag at all. It's very responsive; just barely-perceptably less responsive than my AMD u-series mini desktop processor--which, again, is a laptop processor with 6 cores.
So far, my battery was at 98% after sleeping overnight, but now is at 89% with about an hour of usage. The system tray estimates 14 hours of life remaining. That's with all the battery optimizations. Still plenty good.
Some thoughts and a thank you
I think in windows setup, it prompts you to with a question: Do you want to setup this PC as a new PC, or, as one of your older ones. If you do select New PC, it doesn't pull any settings/icons from OneDrive. I might be wrong though, it has been a long time since I went through a full consumer version of Windows 11 setup process.
I fully agree about the worsening windows search experience. I might raise an issue in NVDA's Github repo on that. Microsoft should also get a feedback from all of it's screen reader users about it.
Power button beeing so close to general use keys is a big issue for me. Although what they did with 3 second long-press and even 10 secnod long-press is interesting. Does NVDA/Narrator tell you about this functionality when you press this key, or, you found out by experimentation? Also, what does a quick normal press of this power key do?
Lastly, thank you for taking the time and thought for writing this, and if possible, please do post about details on NVDA's performance on this laptop with Snapdragon Arm chip.
Hmmm! Battery!
The battery life is a huge urge for me to get one. But in your case with the battery optimisations 9% in an hour is pretty much. I get equivalent ton to that on my HP Intel laptop.
more responses
Regarding the power button, tap is standard Windows behavior set in "Change What The Power Buttons Do." Default is sleep. You can set it separately for battery and plugged in. I set mine to "do nothing" to avoid calamities. The three-second and 10-second behaviors still work, since that's at a lower level.
I think somebody asked about fans. The fan hasn't kicked on once, and I'd think all of that yesterday would have been a stress test. It got warm but nothing to write home about.
Regarding battery life, keep in mind that the 20-hour claim is for local video playback. Wi-fi adaptors drain the battery much more, and they claim only 12 hours on their continuous web browsing test, which is better than virtually all but not all Windows laptops.
Although I was fixated on battery life as well, I decided that it will be what it is. I've loved the Macbook battery life, but really only because I find it perversely fun to not charge it for like a week and leave it around anyplace so that I constantly have to ask Siri to find it. It's usually slipped down out of sight in the sofa or i left it on the porch. I have no reason not to charge it daily like my phone.
What I'm really watching out for is any impact from the fact that every single instruction by NVDA has to be translated into ARM instructions by Prism, which has to take at least a small toll. On the other hand, NVDA was already running through the Windows-On-Windows translator in order to run on 64-bit Windows, because it's a 32-bit app. They don't have the bandwidth to port it. Hopefully, it's not being double-emulated! I'll try working a couple of hours in Word using NVDA then switch to Narrator for a couple of hours as a casual test.
It's gone down 2% as I wrote this. So, yeah, definitely not out of the park relative to other laptops I've owned. I have no idea how Jessica from the other thread is getting 20 hours, except perhaps the fact that she's coding, which is probably all local, whereas I'm online talking to y'all. Even MS Word is online constantly updating to OneDrive.
I actually wanted to wait for the rumored smaller "X" model coming later this year or the X2 hypothetical Surface Laptop 8, supposedly by year's end. But my Ulysses stopped saving to iCloud and their tech support always just throws up their hands and says "golly, we don't know" whenever I have a problem. They say they're moving away from iCloud, but that doesn't help me right now, so it forced my already poised hand. Then, too, I'm seeing laptop prices going up because of you-know-what.
@Voracious P. Brain can you explain the translating thing?
I had no idea this was a thing.
I'm completely new to this idea but from what you're saying, NVDA is using another process on my computer to translate every key press, then fead it back to NVDA, then do the action?
Would this explain things like NVDA sometimes just not working and having to be reset, the translating tool could be lagging behind NVDA itself, or am I not understanding what this is all about?
Oh and as for settup.
I've not used a surface laptop but when setting up others, I've managed to go through the settup with no issues. I always choose to make a new computer, or however it's put,, then use ninite to download the tools I want.
Narrator can be a bit fiddly on the setup screen but it's doable with a bit of patience.
If you do make a github about this, let me and others know, we can chime in with our findings.
Although the NVDA people are very exacting about every single step you took and don't like hearing things like, it happens once in a while, they like bug report logs at the highest setting possible so they can get all the info possible.
Update to review
Honestly, I thought NVDA would be super snappy since Snapdragon processors are hyped up and seem faster in both single and multi-core than even Intel’s 14th gen chips. NVDA was actually really fast when I ran it on my MacBook M4 Pro using VMware Workstation. It was also super responsive when I sneakily tested it on my school computer, which was just a base model M1 MacBook Air. So clearly, the problem isn’t NVDA or ARM processors. One thing I’d recommend checking is the sound enhancements—disable them from Control Panel > Sound > Speaker Properties, from the enhancements tab. That made a huge speed boost in my experience, though your speakers might not sound as good. I would be happy to read about your later experiences with the device, so I hope you update the post!
more responses
@ brad: you can Google prism and windows on arm for more info. All applications not written specifically for arm go through the prism translator. A lot of people call it an emulator, but that's not what it is. You can also look up windows on windows 64 for my other comment.
I kind of wish I had never mentioned lag. It really doesn't at all. It's really smooth, both with one core and eloquence. It just didn't give me that wow factor I have on my AMD processor. A couple of times initially it paused for like a second when doing something potentially intensive. But I haven't had that happen again yet.
As for installing windows, I just missed a step and it didn't give me a moment to go back. i'm pretty sure the set up as new PC option was buried under a "more options" link, which seems like a dark pattern, if I'm correct about that and didn't just failed to notice the correct option. User error. but definitely don't restore from a back up! It may have run into more problems because it was moving from X 86 to arm. What's more, none of my settings in word, edge, or anything else were even transferred!
I'll come back in a week with more solid notes on battery. My experience is in line with a lot of other users you can Google. There's even been speculation that some batteries are just lemons. See y'all in a week.
@Voracious P. Brain thanks for letting me know.
Have fun with your new laptop.
Thanks for all the latest…
Thanks for all the latest info on this. While the snapdragon processor sound interesting, my HP with AMD processor is still too new, only about a year-old for me, so I am not in the market for a new laptop at this time. Still, when it comes to be that time again, I will definitely look into these new ARM processors.
Especially if, in a few years if not sooner, gaming support is more fleshed out.
Reset this PC
It does sound like you got off to a bad start, yeah, although I do think the whole backup to OneDrive thing is a hideous dark pattern that should be illegal. But if you could start over and this time set up as new, I fully expect you'd find things to be rather more lush because you won't have brought over some cruft.
Good luck and I look forward to next week's episode!
A question about cloud storage
At the risk of this becoming another PC vs Mac argument, which I really don't want, what is the difference between Windows backing up to OneDrive, and macOS backing up to iCloud Drive?
iCloud VS OneDrive
For the last few years, iCloud has had a feature called 'advanced data protection' (ADP), you have to turn this on, it's not enabled automatically. OneDrive doesn't have this as far as I know. So that's probably why people prefer iCloud over OneDrive, because iCloud has this ADP feature, and OneDrive doesn't. ADP is no longer available in the UK anyway.
Another difference between macOS and Windows cloud behavior
With macOS, while Desktop and Documents folder syncing is the default, it does not technically create a "Backup" of the Mac that a user can choose to restore from. The data, along with everything else stored in iCloud Drive, just appears when signing in during setup, however, apps, settings, and other files not in iCloud Drive are not carried over this way. When setting up a new Mac, the only data restoration options are to set up as new, migrate from another computer, or restore from a Time Machine backup.
Choices
Call me crazy, but I like the way OneDrive works. With their options for 2-factor authentication, and the Personal Vault feature, and Bit Locker integration.
Typically whenever I do a clean reset of Windows, I like to choose the 'start as new' option, but I do love the choice of being able to restore from a full back up from OneDrive.
Personal preferences, and all that jazz. 🤷🏻♂️
Desktop & Documents vs OneDrive Backup Push
As Tyler says, it's a bit apples and oranges, but the similarities are faintly discernible, in that your file storage in the cloud keeps copies of your files; it's just that on macOS you get a default-on but one-time prompt to enable the feature to sync just your Desktop and Documents folders, whereas on Windows it's your home folder and it's sold as backup in a very annoying and difficult-to-ignore persistent nag that's frankly deceptive about what it's doing so that far too many people are tricked into enabling it.
I have no objection to cloud-based file storage as such, even OneDrive, and indeed I can think of practical ways that it would have saved people I know in the past from horrible data loss. The issue I have is the persistent nagging to get you to turn it on, which is quite obviously designed to make you a future (and unhappy) paying client of their services. That's just not on, IMO. Play fair, give people a meaningful choice, explain the reality up front and, in time-honoured fashion of all marketing, be coy about the fact that the free storage is simply never going to be enough, without saying so explicitly. OneDrive really isn't a bad service, especially the 1 TB you get with your Office plan, so they have nothing to gain by being icky about it. And no, I'm not apologising for Apple's default-on either, but it is a one-time prompt, and you can opt out then and there if you want.
Rant ends. :)
Comparison
Someone should get a surface laptop seven and an M series MacBook and compare the to laptops
I have a MacBook Air M1, 16/512, and in the future wouldn’t mind an upgrade. Except that most stuff I do on macOS is music and audio editing, and music and audio editing is better on macOS than Windows, and there’s no way I’m making a macOS virtual machine on Windows, because for one, that’s just so damn difficult to do, even though I am very much tech savvy if I do say so myself,. Lots of packages, scripts, links, downloads, and still no guarantee it would work. Also not to mention, making a macOS virtual machine violates apples terms of service and and I’m trying to be a good little pro open source cookie I’m not trying to violate any of apples conditions
@ Blindxp Audio Editing
As a new Mac user, I’m curious about the ways audio editing is better on Mac. I don’t want to pay for Logic right now, so I don’t know much about it. I use Reaper, and aside from the unnoticeable audio lag on Mac, what are some other advantages Mac offers for audio editing?
I use Reaper, and in addition to basic audio editing, I want to work with MIDI as well. However, I haven’t done much research on instrument libraries. Are there any free, accessible libraries I can use? I was using Kontakt for free, but I don’t think there’s a cracked version of Kontakt available for Mac. Any suggestions? Is Garageband accessible enough and easy to use, I don't want to spend time trying learning it as it'd waste my time other wise.
GarageBand
Despite GarageBand being better for actual music production, I’ve used it for a few text to speech projects and it does well enough. It’s free, and unless you do a factory reset, comes standard with Max and iPhones now.
Also, if you have done a factory reset, it’s pretty easy to reinstall from the App Store.
And you don’t need to pay for logic, either. Well, that’s slightly true, anyway. Apple provides a free 90 day trial of logic pro on their website.
Re: Audio Editing
I've seen some videos on youtube from andre louis, doing music editing stuff on Mac, and honestly it seems like too much brain work. Routing your mouse curser to various places, interacting with things on the screen, complicated shortcuts for everything, half of it goes over my head.
Using Reaper on Windows is so strait forward. Just arrow, tab, alt, and enter is enough to navigate through the UI. Why complicate things.
I know what kind of good work blind folks with Macs are capable of, so, I suppose it works. That's the biggest thing which baffles me. Not that blind folks with Windows aren't doing impressive stuf, but, given complexity involved in using VO on Macs, I thought people would avoid it like anything.
SeasonKing
what app is Andre using though, does he tell that? Some commands are different depending on what app you use.
With GarageBand, it’s pretty simple. So simple in fact that I wrote a user guide on how to use it. I’m going to have to try and find a bit if I can find it I’ll definitely try and publish it here.
Desk Top
I just need the box. Have the flat screen conbo TV desk top view, wireless keyboard, and wireless headset. I will need to have 11 and able to connect my 3 external hard drives.
Desktop
I have a Del OptiPlex 7450 AI O, Intel core I five 7500 at 3.4 GHz, 8 GB of memory and 256 GB SSD, running windows 10 pro 64. It works pretty well, and is fast enough for what I do on windows, as most stuff that I do is on my MacBook Air m1.
I think in the future though, I might attempt, to upgrade the components and hardware of the desktop. Although seeing as it’s an all in one, that’s gonna be kind of tough, seeing as you don’t exactly have much room.
One thing I am interested in though. Can you sync iCloud Drive with windows?
Yes
You can get iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store, and that will let you see your iCloud Drive, with support for pinning folders if you want to keep them local.