What's there even to say? The Surface Laptop Go is a smaller version of the 13-inch Laptop 3, which is a smaller version of the 15-inch Laptop 3 I reviewed last year. If you like small gadgets and you like them to be as minimal as possible — there's no gimmicky flippy hinges or tacky materials here — you'll like the Laptop Go.
The Laptop Go comes with Windows 10 S Mode turned on. I recommend turning it off and upgrading to Windows 10 Home for free. S Mode may be good for security (it only allows you to install apps from the Microsoft Store) and battery life, but it also limits what you can do with your computer.
I didn't mince words when I said the Surface Go was "a terrible iPad and a bad laptop." The Laptop Go is miles better and that's mainly due to its 10th-gen Intel Core i5 CPU. I've been testing the $899 model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD and performance is so much faster than the sluggish Surface Go. The $699 should perform exactly the same since it's also got 8GB of RAM.
It sounds silly, but you can actually run Chrome with a half dozen tabs and juggle multiple apps without Windows 10 having a meltdown. Of course, you don't get very powerful graphics so gaming of any kind beyond casual games like Solitaire is out of the question. But, oh thank god, regular laptop stuff works well!
As Apple is all too familiar with, a good keyboard is central to a good laptop. Thankfully, the keyboard on the Laptop Go is excellent. It's full size, there's a row of function keys instead of a gimmicky Touch Bar, and there's a solid amount of travel. It's a smidge stiffer than other Surface keyboards, but you won't notice unless you're comparing them.
On the right side is a Surface Connect port. This port rules. Not only because the charging cable attaches magnetically just like MagSafe (RIP) did on old MacBooks — which makes it klutz-proof — but because you can connect to a Surface Dock that hooks up to a display and adds more USB ports and ethernet.
Whereas the Surface Go is — I'm sorry — trash, the Laptop Go is the affordable Surface that everyone's been waiting for. It's not as powerful as a Surface Pro 7 or a Surface Laptop 3 and that's okay because it doesn't cost as much.
The $699 version is the sweet spot with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. The $899 Laptop Go doubles the storage to 256GB, but I think that's way too expensive. If you need more storage, you can easily increase it with an external memory card (with an adapter, of course, since there's no built-in slot) or a hard drive. High-capacity external storage is dirt cheap these days.
$700 is still nothing to sneeze at for a laptop. Look hard enough and you can find laptops with better specs for about the same amount. But you also have to consider less-than-stellar keyboards, janky trackpads, bad speakers, and garbage webcams. Compared to a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard, which totals up to $1,350, the $700 Laptop Go is a bargain and a better laptop, especially since it runs a proper desktop OS.