Microsoft Surface Go 2

7owners with an opinion

80%of verdicts positive

3/1positive/negative since 2024

2 yrslongest happy owner

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and portability.

What people wrote

NeutralOwned 2 yearsStill going

That’s why I like my Surface Go 2: it lets me carry a real OS in a tiny tablet form factor. I take it everywhere and it has been my only travel laptop for a couple of years. I have even done local Rust development while on flights. If only it wasn’t so frigging slow… it’d be awesome.

Likes it

On the contrary it (faster Surface Go 2) was one of the most practical little machines I’ve ever used, and was really impressive in Windows 11. I am totally happy to lay the blame for the poor trackpad performance in Gnome/Wayland on the software, because the hardware was super. Absent that problem I would have used it for almost anything and I loved taking it on trains and to coffee shops; Apple has no equivalent machine at all. But you’re making the point for me. Success in Linux involves either tinkering or constrained hardware choices, even now. That’s fine but I think the Linux world pretends the situation is better.

Likes it

Kinda curious what model/when you tried it. I recently picked up a dirt-cheap Surface Go 2 and everything I've tried works great ootb including pen/touch, at least with Gnome, which was very surprising. Runs way smoother than the Win11 it came with too. From my limited understanding it seems like a few years ago you needed a separate kernel for at least that model but nowadays everything's upstreamed seemingly.

Doesn’t like it

A Surface Go 2. After a whole day of Windows Updates, I tried to use it to draw, as it was meant to replace my laptop and my notebook. I made a doodle and passed the tablet to my friend. When I was going through the file save dialog to save my drawing before closing the software, I decided to return it. I couldn’t imagine myself fiddling with that dialog again, nor using Windows Explorer to flip through my drawings. This device was everything I hate about computing made small enough to experience it everywhere. It gave me Windows Mobile flashbacks. Now I have a MacBook Air and an iPad Mini. Two of my best hardware purchases. Procreate and Notability are genuine notebook replacements.

Likes it

You could consider zram and get 50%+ more ram by compressing it. I use it on a 4gb ram surface go 2 and it works wonders. Not even noticing it in games like Divinity: Original Sin that requires at least 4gb.

Likes it

still waiting for apple to release a 11-12 inch macbook with an M processor, nice screen,keyboard and touchpad. I mean something the size of a surface go. It's not for everyday use for sure (maybe only if you use a bigger display). But too often I want to bring a laptop with me and even the M1 MBA feels too heavy compared to my Surface Go 2. Even with a slower processor, I would take the surface just because it's so light, eventually I can take a dongle/hub from anker/other brands to have both a lite 'laptop' and a ton of ports

Neutral

I've never ever run it on a $10K computer. It's quick enough on a Surface Go 2 (albeit in Linux, not on Windows). It's quick enough on an eight year old 2.7ghz i5 MacBook Pro. And it's even not shockingly awful on an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4B.

Doesn’t like it

By tablet stuff, I mean reading, taking notes and sketching. No app ecosystem does it like iPad OS'. The problem with the Surface Go isn't the hardware, but the fact that it runs Windows, a system that just isn't made for these things. The most ridiculous part was being forced to "save or discard" drawings before I could close an app. I had to painstakingly pick a location and name for each file. It felt like using Photoshop, not a notebook. Every app sucked in a different way. In contrast, most iOS ones are decent to great, and there are far more options for readers. That's on top of the regular Windows problems. I spent the first day just doing updates and disabling bloat. As a tablet OS, it's incredibly clunky. I didn't get to the part where it wakes itself up and fries itself to death in my laptop bag, but I heard that it's still an issue. The iPad was so much better at its task that it's not even funny. Now I take my iPad everywhere, and if I intend to do more work, I pack my Macbook. It's not heavy enough to make me consider Windows ever again. However, I'd consider an old 12" Macbook to shave a kilo off when I travel.

Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it

I saw that thread and could not relate. Both my desktop (5800x3d/64GB/4090/4K120) and laptop (M2 Pro/32GB/3K120) are just as snappy as that 600MHz machine. More importantly, my machines stay snappy under more demanding workloads which that old machine can't do. In the next tweet he compares it to a stock Surface Go 2 (quad-core i5 processor at 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM, SSD) and seems to be surprised that it performs like crap. His 600MHz CPU is sufficient to get decent input lag from NT 3.51 which lists a 25 MHz CPU as it's minimum spec just as my machines get decent input lag from Windows/macOS which list a 1.2 GHz CPU as the minimum spec. I know clock speed is a bad metric, but you get the point. Your hardware needs to be well above the minimum spec by an order of magnitude if you want acceptable latency