When I overview a very ugly Windows laptop computer, I’ll usually consult with it as having a “laptop cart” look. If you have been a scholar at any level after the early 2000s, you most likely perceive why. The laptops that faculties present to elementary and center college youngsters are famously ugly, outdated, and horrible in all types of the way.

With the Surface Laptop SE, which is tailored for training and being bought solely to colleges, Microsoft is making an attempt a distinct tack. The Surface Laptop SE is a cute laptop computer. It appears like a miniature model of the corporate’s flagship Surface Laptop line, full with the recognizable brand on the lid and backside bezel. It’s fairly mild, at simply 2.45 kilos. Unlike many clunky college fashions on the market, this can be a system I can simply see interesting to adults within the shopper area.

If it weren’t so dang sluggish.

I’m not gonna maintain again right here: that is the slowest pc I’ve ever used. I’ve examined all types of Chromebooks, tablets, and funds Windows laptops in my tenure as a {hardware} reviewer, and man, this factor crawls. I do know Intel’s budget-oriented Celeron N4120 is mainly what’s out there at this worth level (my mannequin is $329, although I’m positive faculties can be negotiating bulk costs and such), however boy, it’s sluggish. It takes a stable whereas for pages to load and for home windows to resize to the place I want them to be. Hopping between the dozen or so Chrome tabs that I normally use was a ache, and typing in Google Docs was fairly laggy.

“Slow,” after all, is a relative and considerably subjective time period. The velocity expectations of an grownup laptop computer reviewer who sits on Zoom all day are most likely fairly totally different from these of the typical third grader. So I referred to as up just a few academics and requested what precisely their college students do on their school-issued gadgets and the way a lot energy they realistically require.

Whitney Rancourt, a Texas-based elementary college studying instructor, says her college students full lots of their assignments in Google Classroom, in addition to just a few different training softwares that I wasn’t in a position to obtain and check as a result of the Laptop SE doesn’t enable customers to obtain issues on their very own (good for faculties, a problem for me). Rancourt permits them to play background music whereas they work and to play math video games or take heed to audiobooks in the event that they end early. Her college students are usually doing one factor at a time and don’t want a number of tabs open.

For this sort of factor, the Laptop SE is definitely adequate. One tab or app, whereas not speedy, can be positive. And excellent news for college students: I did check out Prodigy, a math sport that Rancourt’s pupils wish to play. It ran simply positive, although my poor efficiency was a stark reminder of how lengthy it’s been since I took algebra.

For older youngsters, I’m a bit extra skeptical. British Columbia center college well being instructor Robert Puharich usually has his college students utilizing their laptops to do analysis on the web — studying articles, Googling, and so forth. They make frequent use of Microsoft Word as effectively and should sometimes edit photographs in Photoshop. They sometimes run as many as 5 browser tabs at a time throughout these analysis classes, Puharich says.

Five tabs can be pushing it on this laptop computer, I feel, particularly if in case you have restricted time to get your project executed earlier than it goes again on the cart. If I have been doing that degree of multitasking, I’d a lot fairly be on the $349 Lenovo Flex 3 Chromebook (additionally Celeron-powered), on which I used to be in a position to run over a dozen Chrome tabs with no drawback.

Microsoft’s personal apps, reminiscent of Word and Paint, are unsurprisingly a lot smoother on the Laptop SE than any of the browser-based G-Suite issues I used. Chrome normally took a number of seconds longer to open and cargo paperwork thant Word did.

The Laptop SE can be not nice for video calling, which Puharich’s college students typically need to do. During each Zoom name I ran on the SE, I sooner or later received a notification that its CPU was overloaded. Audio was crackly, and colleagues usually instructed me I used to be frozen.

When I’m reviewing a pc, I religiously use that pc for the whole lot I do throughout that testing interval, no matter how unhealthy that pc is. The SE is the primary time I’ve made an exception and executed some essential video calls on one other system as a result of I couldn’t belief this Celeron to not screw up. Students definitely don’t want excellent webcam high quality, however they need to reliably be capable of hear what their instructor is saying with out distortion.

So with regards to efficiency, the SE is a little bit of a blended bag. In different areas that Rancourt and Puharich really feel are essential, outcomes additionally diverse.

For instance: sturdiness. This is the standard that each educators marked as most essential for a scholar laptop computer to have. After all, these gadgets are used all day, day by day, by many alternative college students who might not be significantly invested of their longevity. “They need to be able to withstand a lot of drops and poor treatment,” says Rancourt, whose college students use Chromebooks in school. “Even when we teach and re-teach how to carry the laptop from one class to another, slips and drops happen.”

The Laptop SE is certainly sturdy. I used to be deliberately tough on it throughout my week of use, tossing it round, battering it in backpacks, and consuming and ingesting close by. (Sorry, Microsoft!). No scratches or dents.

I additionally respect that the SE is quite repairable as well, with seven screws on the underside which can be simple to entry and take away. Microsoft has stated that it’ll promote spare elements by way of its approved service suppliers, permitting IT directors to switch elements on website fairly than having to ship gadgets elsewhere for restore. This might be the most important profit the Laptop SE has over most gadgets of its dimension.

But that white keyboard deck… I don’t find out about that. It’s very fairly. But after only one week of my testing, it already had just a few seen stains on it. I can’t think about it received’t be visibly filthy with dozens of arms smudging it each week.

Both educators additionally talked about battery life. A scholar’s laptop computer dying in the course of class might be disruptive, and a tool exhibiting as much as a category lifeless as a result of it didn’t cost correctly on the cart leaves academics a unit quick. Unfortunately, the Surface Laptop SE didn’t reliably final a full college day of steady work — I typically noticed over six hours from one cost, however usually received nearer to 5 and a half.

Boot time additionally got here up just a few instances in my conversations with academics. Getting a classroom full of children arrange on laptops is sufficient of an endeavor already while not having to attend ages for these computer systems to activate. With Puharich’s college’s present Windows laptops (that are “horrible,” he says), “by the time you get the cart unloaded, start up the computer, and find all the problems, then you have to clean them up.” He added, “if you can get the thing loaded up as fast as possible, that would solve the majority of our problems.”

I’m positive that the SE boots quicker than the traditional machines Puharich is utilizing, however I nonetheless wasn’t blown away by the velocity. From power-down, the SE may take over 30 seconds to drag up the Windows login display screen and one other 15 seconds or so to get from there to the desktop. Even a funds Chromebook or an older iPad must be up and working in lower than half that point.

But the most important challenge I’ve with the Surface Laptop SE is its display screen dimension. Puharic and Rancourt acknowledge the worth of portability, however in addition they each really feel strongly that 11.6 inches is just too small. They’ve each labored with college students with visible impairments or studying disabilities who want textual content to be very giant. I continually needed to zoom out on the Laptop SE (making textual content small) so as to see the content material that I wanted to — a tool of this dimension would most likely not serve these college students effectively. (The display screen can be fairly low-resolution, at simply 1366 x 768.)

Ultimately, I feel the primary arguments for the Surface Laptop SE are its design and its repairability. It appears and feels a number of notches nicer than most clunky Windows laptops that faculties are presently handing out. It’s able to doing the work that an elementary college scholar could be doing. And I don’t wish to undersell the replacable elements — that’s large for IT departments, and it’s nice to see Microsoft committing to such a giant repairability effort.

But in evaluating this system, prospects might want to work out the way to steadiness the wants of its IT directors with the wants of its academics and college students. That calculus could look totally different for each college. But the older a child will get and the extra internet-savvy they grow to be, the extra their load could be pushing this processor. There are Chromebooks and iPads on the market with quicker efficiency, quicker boot time, and higher battery life which can be value taking a look at as effectively.

And on the finish of the day, I’d urge faculties to spend more cash on larger-screened, higher-resolution gadgets if they will, as a result of accessibility for all college students is value investing in.