It’s a beautifully made laptop, with a lid and keyboard deck constructed from silky, matte-finish aluminium and minimal decoration for a refined, high-class appearance. The key to the Laptop Go 2’s appeal is its combination of low price, high build quality and stunning good looks. Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 review: Design and features One of our favourites is the Lenovo Flex 5i ( £480), a 2-in-1 laptop with a 360-degree hinge, a 1080p 13.3in touchscreen and 11th Gen Intel silicon.Īs for Windows alternatives, there’s nothing quite as lovely as Microsoft’s little machine at this price but at the time of writing, but the Huawei D14 delivers even more value with an 11th Gen Core i5, 8GB or RAM and an even bigger 512GB SSD for £450. Or, alternatively, you could purchase a premium Chromebook. Even the pricier models are weedier than the Laptop Go 2 and come with 10th Gen Intel Core i3 CPUs.įor less than £529 you could pick up an Apple iPad with a keyboard but you’d have to work around iPadOS’ quirks if you wanted to use that as a proper laptop.

However, the cheaper models suffer from a lack of power courtesy of Intel’s Pentium Gold CPUs and slow eMMC storage. It has a smaller 10.5in display but is just as well made and even more portable. Microsoft's own Surface Go 3 2-in-1 detachable springs immediately to mind, with prices starting at £369 sans keyboard.

If you want a great-looking, usable portable laptop with a decent screen there aren't many laptops that come close. These prices make the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 one of the most attractive £500 laptops around, so much so that I found it tough to come up with a list of credible alternatives. For my money, the base model is where the value is – if you want more storage, just add a fast, stubby USB drive like this one. The model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is £629 and, if you want 256GB of storage, you'll be paying £729. The trouble is, they’re also a lot more expensive. That's not the most generous of specifications but at least there's no underpowered Core i3 or Pentium spec to undermine the appeal of the cheapest models as there is with the weak Surface Go 3.Īll three available configurations come with a quad-core Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU and the only things that change from model to model are the RAM and storage. This base level Laptop Go 2 includes 4GB of RAM and comes with a 128GB of SSD storage. Prices start at £529, which is crazy for a laptop this well made. Best headphones 2023: Brilliant audio options to suit every budget

Microsoft 12.4