Review: Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go 2 has a lot of problems, but I like it anyway

Enlarge / Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go 2. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Anyone who buys a Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2 should go into it fully aware of the laptop's shortcomings.

The first and most important is that the base model, the one that gives it its attractive $600 starting price, comes with only 4GB of non-upgradeable RAM and should be ignored by pretty much everybody. Seriously, don't buy it, and don't try to talk yourself into it just to save money.

Behave as though the actual starting price is $700, the amount it costs to get the configuration with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. This is still closer to "budget" than "high-end" as ultrabooks go, but the list of omissions, shortcomings, and odd decisions does get harder to overlook as you spend more money. The generation-old processor. The un-backlit keyboard. The tiny port selection. A touchscreen that is neither particularly high-resolution nor very colorful. A 128GB SSD that will feel cramped for many people, and a 256GB option that (1) isn't all that much bigger and (2) adds another $100 to the price.