The Asus E403NA (Pentium N4200, 4GB RAM, 128GB eMMC) scored in between the two Surface Go devices with 3,849. Both of those scores beat the budget laptop average of 3,159.

On Geekbench 4, which measures overall performance, the 4GB Surface Go scored 3,749, while the 8GB model with its 128GB SSD hit 3,900. Overall, though, I was pleased with the Surface Go's performance, given its price. I noticed a bit of lag as I switched from one tab to another, and at one point the camera app froze and forced me to restart.

The Surface Go did an admirable job handling my typical workload, juggling 15 open tabs in Google Chrome and the Stride messaging app while streaming Spotify. But we also have the performance results from the more premium $548 model, which ups the RAM to 8GB and the storage to a 128GB SSD. The standard configuration I tested features a Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage. No, it's not as fast as the iPad on certain benchmarks, but the Surface Pro felt speedy in my everyday use. I handed the Surface Pen to our deputy photo director, Jef Castro, and he said it felt responsive and sensitive when he made a sketch in Paint 3D. After a few seconds, I could bypass the lock screen just by looking at the front of this tablet.

Logging in to the Surface Go is a cinch if you enable Windows Hello facial recognition. However, touching the right icon on the bottom of the screen proved difficult when I had multiple apps open, as the icons are tiny. The touch screen on the Surface Pro proved responsive as expected, whether I was scrolling or pinching-to-zoom on photos. The average budget laptop gets just 87 percent, and a 2-in-1 like the Lenovo Flex 6 11 mustered only 71 percent. The Surface Go surpassed on the iPad on color reproduction, registering 129.2 percent of the sRGB color gamut compared with 119 percent for Apple's tablet. The 10-inch PixelSense display on the Surface Go may be small, but it offers plenty of pop.

It averaged 415 nits of brightness, which is lower than the iPad but miles above the average budget laptop (245 nits). The Surface Go's screen delivered excellent results in our labs, too. While the panel on the 9.7-inch iPad is even higher-res at 2048 x 1536 pixels, I don't have any complaints about the Surface Go's canvas.

Microsoft laptop go review