By Luke Larsen
Publication Date: 2026-10-16 13:00:00
With 1,344 dimming zones, it’s the brightest laptop screen ever made. Using my colorimeter, I measured 987 nits of brightness in SDR and 1,945 nits in HDR in a 9 percent window. The result is pretty stunning HDR performance. Games and movies look spectacular on this screen, even without the perfect black levels OLED would provide. Add in the 120-Hz refresh rate, and you have a beautiful display for gaming—especially in more visually immersive, single-player games.
But the screen is highly reflective. This was also true of the standard Surface Laptop, but it’s noticeably more reflective than a MacBook. Even with the brightness fully maxed, I still found myself staring at my reflection when viewing websites with dark backgrounds—and that’s despite this being unquestionably the brightest screen ever put in a laptop. The reflections are really my only complaint. Otherwise, it’s one of my favorite displays I’ve tested.
The 1080p webcam isn’t particularly impressive. It struggles in…
