Surface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: Pricing and AvailabilityWhile plenty of specific features differentiate the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and the MacBook Pro, they’re perfectly matched in one area: Both systems share a base price of roughly $2,000 (if you skip the stripped-down vanilla-M3 MacBook Pro for a unit with the desirable M3 Pro processor). While that’s an upward bump for Microsoft (the first-gen Laptop Studio is still on sale starting at $1,599.99), the real question is how upgraded configurations are priced, since many creative pros will end up paying more for the power and performance they need.The most basic Laptop Studio 2 with discrete graphics (an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 laptop GPU instead of Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics) costs $2,399.99. Boosting the solid-state storage to 1TB and bumping the GPU to an RTX 4060 costs $3,299.99. Top configurations go even higher (up to $3,699).
(Credit: Brian Westover)
As mentioned, a base model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro is $1,599, but for something offering the same sort of processing and graphics muscle as the Studio 2, you’ll want the $1,999 M3 Pro configuration, which teams an 11-core processor (with 14 GPU cores) with 18GB of memory and a 512GB solid-state drive.Stepping up to a 12-core M3 Pro chip version with an 18-core GPU and 1TB of storage costs $2,399. An even more powerful M3 Max version with 14 CPU and 30 GPU cores is $3,199. And if money is no object, you can configure the 14-inch MacBook Pro to a loaded M3 Max platform with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, 128GB of RAM, and a colossal 8TB SSD for the super-premium price of $6,899.For this comparison, we’re sticking with the $1,999 version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Pro. Its 11-core CPU and 14-core GPU roughly match the Surface Laptop Studio 2’s Intel Core i7 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060.The Surface has more storage (1TB versus 512GB), which is handy but doesn’t begin to justify the price difference. At $3,299.99, the Microsoft laptop is a whopping $1,300 more than our Apple test unit.Winner: MacBook ProSurface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: ComponentsMicrosoft’s creative laptop comes in two flavors: one for consumers and the other for commercial customers. The primary difference is the processor, with the former model getting a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H and the commercial version a Core i7-13800H. The two CPUs offer near-identical hardware and performance, though the Core i7-13800H has a slightly higher Turbo Boost max clock speed of 5.2GHz. Either chip can be paired with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of memory.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Graphics options are more varied. The base model, as mentioned, relies on Iris Xe integrated graphics, which are fine for office productivity but not suited to multimedia content creation. Switching to a discrete GPU opens up more options, with both Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4050 and 4060 available as well as a workstation-class Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada chip. (Microsoft hasn’t clarified whether the professional GPU will be limited to the commercial version of the laptop, but we wouldn’t be surprised.)Apple’s move to house-brand silicon in all of its MacBooks means that every configuration has a variation on the M2 processor, whether M2 Pro or M2 Max, with different numbers of CPU and GPU cores available. In our testing, these small differences have amounted to a big deal, elevating the M2 Pro to the equivalent of a top Intel CPU with discrete graphics while the M2 Max provides workstation-grade processing and graphics power.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Thankfully, we don’t have to compare Apple hardware to Intel oranges solely on specs and manufacturer claims, because we’ve benchmarked and reviewed both machines. The MacBook Pro leads the way in tasks like video transcoding. The Surface Laptop Studio 2 does extremely well, but the M3 Pro appears to have the upper hand, especially in accelerated media workloads.All of this in spite of the fact that our 14-inch MacBook Pro isn’t even the peak configuration—you can scale it up with an M3 Max processor with even mightier graphics power. The Apple definitely wins this one.Winner: MacBook ProSurface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: Connectivity and PortsConnectivity is more important than ever these days, but that just means there’s an imperative for manufacturers to offer the best networking hardware and port selection they can. For wireless work, both Microsoft and Apple have outfitted their creative laptops with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.The port selection is a different story, however. While both laptops are outfitted with two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, their other I/O options differ. The Surface Laptop Studio 2, for example, includes a microSD flash card reader. These card slots are rare on most consumer laptops but are still important features for anyone shooting their own photos or videos for post-processing.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Apple’s MacBook Pro also includes a card slot, but it’s a full-size SDXC slot. Which is more important for your workflow will come down to your choice of equipment: You can use a microSD card in a full-size slot with a simple card adapter, but there’s no way to fit a larger card into a smaller slot; you’d have to use an external USB adapter.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
The MacBook Pro has another feature many users strongly feel about: an HDMI output. This is an especially important connection for anyone working with video who wants to share their work on a bigger external monitor or preview how a clip will look on a standard TV rather than a professional color-corrected display. Sure, you can use a DisplayPort adapter dongle (or a Thunderbolt 4 dock with HDMI output) to do the same on the Surface Laptop Studio 2, but the extra hardware is more hassle than most folks want to deal with.These are tiny details, but they have an outsize effect when they impact your work. In this case, we think Apple has the edge due to the addition of an HDMI port and its slightly more flexible card reader.Winner: MacBook ProSurface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: DisplayAt first glance, the 14.4-inch Surface Laptop Studio 2 display and 14.2-inch MacBook Pro screen look extremely similar. What Microsoft calls a PixelSense Flow screen provides HDR support, high resolution, and great brightness, while Apple’s Liquid Retina XDR panel does the same.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
On paper, the two are closely matched. The Surface Laptop Studio 2 display is a fifth of an inch bigger measured diagonally, and the panels have similar densities of 200 pixels per inch (ppi) and 254ppi, respectively. The Apple can get a little brighter when displaying HDR content, but both are rated at 500 nits of brightness for normal SDR use.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
But there’s more to a screen than just visuals. At least, there’s a lot more to the Surface Laptop Studio 2’s display, which offers both touch and pen support along with a multi-position convertible design. That functional shift to interactive touch and multi-mode capability makes Microsoft’s the more compelling choice by far. If you need to draw, annotate or mark up images, or just get hands on with a project, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 can serve you in ways the MacBook Pro can’t.In our instrumented testing, the Apple delivered slightly better color quality and superior HDR capability, though the displays’ overall quality is remarkably close. The Surface Laptop Studio 2 stands out for touch and pen support and its convertible design, while the MacBook Pro narrowly wins in brightness and color accuracy for users prioritizing display quality above all. The split between touch and pen support and color coverage means we’re calling it a tie.Winner: TieSurface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: CameraWhen the 14-inch MacBook Pro debuted, Microsoft’s and other Windows laptops were still settling for lowly 720p resolution webcams, but that’s changed. Full HD (1080p) resolution is the current standard, and the Surface Laptop Studio 2 steps up further by matching some of the fancier features of Apple’s cameras.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The Surface webcam offers features like automatic framing, background blur, and even an AI-driven eye-contact mode. Apple has some of these features, too, but is not the clear winner it once was. For this comparison, we’ll call it a photo finish.Winner: TieSurface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: Battery LifeBoth Microsoft and Apple made big claims about these laptops’ battery life when they were announced, but now that we’ve tested both, we can put hard numbers to these promises of power efficiency.Microsoft promised up to 19 hours of typical usage for the base-model Surface Laptop Studio 2, while Apple quoted 18 hours for streaming Apple TV and 12 hours when browsing the web over Wi-Fi. Since laptop vendors use different testing standards, we apply the same battery benchmark to all products.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
In our case, that means extended playback of a 720p video file, with matching settings for screen brightness and audio volume, Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off, and disabling any advanced power management features that might skew the results by changing our test parameters. We saw impressive unplugged stamina from both systems, but our times were nowhere near the estimates from Microsoft and Apple. The Surface Laptop Studio 2 lasted a fairly long 15 hours and 23 minutes in our video rundown. For a desktop replacement with a discrete GPU, that’s actually quite good. But the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro smashed category records with nearly double the runtime—30 hours and 27 minutes, hours more than Cupertino’s most optimistic claim.Any machine that can get through a full day of work or school without an AC outlet deserves praise, but this is no contest: The 14-inch MacBook Pro is the clear champ.Winner: MacBook ProSurface Laptop Studio 2 vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: SoftwareThe debate over whether Windows or macOS is the superior operating system is decades old, and we’re not about to settle it here. But it’s probably the key factor in deciding which creative laptop is better for you.The Microsoft ecosystem offers many professional apps for photo editing, graphic design, video work, and 3D and CGI rendering and engineering. Alongside the latest Surface laptops, Microsoft also introduced a slew of AI-driven features coming to almost every aspect of the Windows experience. Similar features are being added to Adobe products such as Photoshop. The Surface Laptop Studio 2’s Core i7 processor doesn’t include the built-in neural processing unit (NPU) found in Intel’s newer Core Ultra chips, but has a separate Intel AI chip on the mainboard dubbed Movidius.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Apple’s M3 Pro and M3 Max processors also support AI and machine learning, but macOS doesn’t yet offer the sort of deep integration of AI into common applications that Redmond is promising for Windows, the Microsoft 365 suite, and third-party apps. This may well change with future versions of macOS, but at this writing, Apple isn’t aboard the AI bandwagon as Microsoft is. As with most Mac-versus-PC questions, it’s probably mostly about which platform you already use.Winner: TieVerdict: MacBook Pro Wins, But Surface Has Unique AppealAdd it all up, and the M3 Pro version of Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro is the winner on most counts. With its stellar performance and bonkers battery life, it’s as much a mobile workstation as it is a mainstream laptop, and an undeniable asset for creative professionals. The fact that you can get a more powerful system for less than you’d spend on a Surface Laptop Studio 2 is also a pretty decisive factor.But don’t count out the Microsoft machine completely. Its combination of high-performance hardware, touch and pen support, and pull-forward convertible design offers some things no other laptop can, making it especially attractive to artists who want full-featured drawing and inking without having to pack along a tablet or digital drawing pad.If you’re curious about either of these systems, check out our full reviews of both the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2023, M3 Pro) and the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2.
