Today Microsoft introduced the primary true Chromebook competitor we’ve seen with the $250 Surface Laptop SE, an affordable Windows 11 laptop computer with entry-level specs. It’s good for college students, and it’s precisely the form of machine Google and Chrome OS machine makers have been churning out for years. Why now?

Let’s again up for a second. The Surface Laptop SE sports activities a 11.6-inch show with a 1366 x 768 decision, with a measly 135 ppi. However, this can be a 16:9 laptop computer, which departs from the three:2 ratio sometimes prevalent on Microsoft’s tablet-like moveable PCs. The change in ratio appears to point this can be a laptop computer for getting issues executed. The keyboard and trackpad are the identical as Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go.

Unfortunately, the display screen appears too small to lose your self in your work. Compared to the crisp show on rival Chromebook laptops like Lenovo’s upgraded Chromebook Duet, it’s a comparatively low-resolution display screen. The Duet has a smaller 10.1-inch full-HD OLED show with a 1920 x 1200 show decision, with a better pixel density of 224 ppi.

The processor contained in the Surface Laptop SE is fairly underpowered, too. You can configure the SE with both an Intel Celeron N4020 or N4120 processor, coupled with 4GB or 8GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of eMMC storage. There’s additionally an embedded 720p front-facing digital camera to do on-line faculty (if anybody continues to be doing that).

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But that screen is still so small, which is why you might end up docking the little Surface Laptop SE. The device has a single USB-A port and one USB-C port, so you could hook up a hub with an HDMI connection to get the screen mirrored on a larger display. The laptop also takes a barrel-type DC connector, which feels a bit old-fashioned, especially as Microsoft’s been pushing its proprietary magnetic Surface Connect charging port.

Hopefully, the battery life makes up for the middling specs. Microsoft promises up to 16 hours of battery with typical device usage. The fine print in its press materials indicates that testing is done with 150 nits of screen brightness, which is much dimmer than our battery tests, which start at 200 nits. In reality, most people crank up that brightness when there are things to get done.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop SE is an affordable way to get a feel for Windows 11. The laptop ships with Windows 11 SE, which was developed based on feedback from teachers and school IT administration teams. Windows 11 SE will likely be rolled out on other education-oriented devices from manufacturers like Dell, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo.

Repairability was a top concern for those managing the wallop of laptops turned in at the end of each school year, so Microsoft made the Surface Laptop SE easier to update and take apart, down to the display, battery, keyboard, and motherboard components. This falls in line with Microsoft’s latest pledge to make more of its devices user-serviceable.

It’s an fascinating time for Microsoft to go after the education-focused laptop computer market, contemplating the slowdown of Chromebook sales. As vaccination charges enhance, the sale of those types of low-end units have began to plummet. However, the patterns appear primarily concentrated within the U.S. and Western Europe, the place Chromebooks saturate the market. Asia/Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa are nonetheless working up the demand for classroom-specific units. An reasonably priced, repairable Microsoft laptop computer and its counterparts working Windows 11 SE may see some gross sales success in these explicit areas.