Microsoft's latest top-end laptop sticks with its novel screen-flipping form, with upgrades on the inside aimed at keeping up with the powerhouse competition – but these improvements come with a very steep price increase. That takes it far away from the normal premium consumer range on which Microsoft has built its Surface reputation, and places it firmly in the creative workstation class of machine typically used by programmers and video and photo editors. It may have "laptop" in the name, but the Laptop Studio 2 is a bit of a beast, weighing almost 2kg in its top spec – heavier, slightly thicker and made of aluminium rather than the magnesium of its predecessor. The rest of the machine is very similar to the 2021-22 model. The good-looking 14.4in LCD screen is hinged in the middle, allowing it to pull forward to switch between stage, drawing and laptop modes. With the excellent Slim Pen 2 stylus (£120), this flexibility is the machine's big draw.

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Studio 2 is both an overpriced content-creation laptop and an underappreciated content-consumption device with a hidden turbo boost. Microsoft's Surface Laptop Studio 2 will probably be too expensive for what it can do, comparatively. But this creators' laptop still offers a nearly-unique opportunity to create movies, edit and watch them, then scribble notes all over the screen. Any criticism of its performance dies down once you remind them of Windows' performance slider, too. It arrives at an odd time, though. The Windows world is making waves about AI, and the Surface Laptop Studio 2 calls out the Intel AI chip inside in its specifications. But an even better Intel AI chip -- Intel's 14th-gen Core Ultra processor, known as Meteor Lake -- is just around the corner…though Microsoft's Windows Copilot AI chatbot won't use it, either. So this 14-inch laptop with a high-resolution (but not that high-resolution) screen, superb inking capabilities (but no pen in the box), AI (but only Microsoft's own basic AI apps, for now) and excellent performance potential (but only if you enable it) wants more than $3,000 from your wallet to bring it home. And much of it is the same as the original Surface Laptop Studio, too. This review will tell you how we unraveled it.