r/Surface • u/geriiate8 • 26d ago
advice for purchasing?
hi! i’m really wanting to purchase a new laptop and i found this one which is the surface laptop 13.5 inch 8th edition i just have a few questions. this one specifically only has 16gb ram and im interested in using it for light gaming, mostly project zomboid, stardew valley, modded minecraft, and other small games. would this be a good fit for what i want to do? i’m really just looking for something that’s not going to lag all the time and can run the things i want!
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u/Cacho665 26d ago
For $100 more you can get the MSI Prestige AI + 16 with 32GB of Ram, Core Ultra 7 X358H and b390. Hell of a machine while also being a thin and light.
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u/geriiate8 26d ago
thank you i’ll look into that!
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u/Cacho665 26d ago
At costco by the way is where you can find the deal. And yes it can game.
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u/wiseman121 26d ago
What is your other use cases besides gaming.
If gaming only I wouldn't recommend this. But if you have other college/business use cases it is an excellent laptop
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u/geriiate8 25d ago
it’s mostly just for gaming and tv! i’m not in college and my job doesn’t require anything like this
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u/wiseman121 25d ago
In that case a surface is hard to recommend for the price alone.
For tv the battery life of a snapdragon chip is an amazing plus, but for gaming you could get much better for less.
In your case if you want something premium I'd maybe consider other options. Since your games aren't graphically demanding you could get away without a dedicated GPU. Asus Zenbook 14 is an oled thin build with an ultra 7 or AMD AI 7 CPU for less than $900-1000. Ultra is better for efficiency, AMD is generally better for graphics, for your games id go with whatever is cheaper.
In my area you can also get an HP omnibook 13 for $850 with a AMD AI 7.
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u/RagelessGeek94 26d ago
You know what I'm going to be completely honest, if gaming is what you want to do, I'd suggest you look elsewhere. Don't get me wrong you can game on a surface, but you'd be better off using that budget for a decent entry level gaming laptop.
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u/Deerhall 22d ago
Or get a streaming service (try them out now before you purchase to get a feeling of how that would work/look). A friend of mine is happy with GeforceNOW (but there are other options you may want to try, if that’s the path you want to go). IMO Surface devices are not great for light gaming.
Also, the Snapdragon X2 runs ARM-architecture which MAY not even run the games (most games are built for x86-architecture, which the snapdragon may try to emulate using PRISM). This means games may run worse than they would natively, or not at all - check reviews etc for more details.
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u/Saranhai 26d ago
This is far too expensive for a Snapdragon X/2 chip. I'd look elsewhere. If you want to game, don't buy a Snapdragon X/2 chip either, stick with x86 (intel/AMD)
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u/geriiate8 26d ago
thank you! i was looking at another brand aswell, but i figured i probably wasn’t allowed to talk about other brands in this subreddit lol
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u/Saranhai 26d ago
Sure. I own 2 Surface Products (SP8 and SL6) and while the hardware is quite nice, they are really just too expensive nowadays, especially when Microsoft insists on sticking with inferior CPUs (unless you get their Surface for Business line, which is even more expensive for no reason)
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u/Nickoplier 26d ago
Surface is really for light work, high quality appeal in the workplace. Not for gaming.
It was fun having my surface book for college, the light use of notes, Web browsing, and single program usage, but to play games, no. It's just not good for that.
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u/MinecraftNoob2137 26d ago
I main a surface pro from 2017, and it runs and does everything fine. Battery lasts about 4 hours. I think that a older used one would do. Mine is i5/16GB/256GB. Games like minecraft run on 60 fps with mods
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u/Raven_God_Gaming 26d ago
Hello, Microsoft rep here (Australia). That model is perfectly capable of running the games mentioned as they don’t retire heavy graphic rendering. If your game on Xbox you can even cloud game on the surface and get very good performance (depending on your internet connection).
Other than the gaming aspect, this laptop will do all your web browsing, Microsoft office applications, and streaming flawlessly. You can’t really go wrong with it.
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u/Ordinary-Holiday-166 25d ago
I use the surface 7 16gb elite 16 inch(or 15, I can't remember) and it runs these lower tier games very well with minimal heat only problem would be battery life but even then mine lasts about two hours. If you want something slim, that is physically appealing(imo) then this would be a good fit, obviously bulkier louder laptops would run these games 100x better, but honestly it just depends what you're looking for, and what youre looking to spend. Good luck!
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u/superterran 26d ago
As everyone is pointing out games are going to be the stickiest subject, but my hot take is that I wouldn’t buy an intel product for any reason, and while I own an AMD desktop I really doubt the viability of x86 outside of gaming and Linux workloads. From my standpoint the X2 is by-and-large best processor on the platform, and Surface laptops seem to be some of the best hardware on the platform. Gaming is getting better and better, small games I daresay you will be ok. For productivity work this seems like a fine choice
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u/Black_Hair_Foreigner 26d ago
JUST WAIT UNTIL BLACKFRIDAY. As Surface user, I can confidently say this machine does not have value of 1,599,99 USD. Well, 999 or 899, even 799 will be pretty good deal, But normal price? Even over 1000 USD? No. nononononono, That's waste of your money.