Surface Laptop 7 with Snapdragon X Elite drops below $1,000 ahead of Prime Day — but you have to pick the right color

Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 is "the clamshell form factor perfected," according to our Senior Editor and Surface expert Zac Bowden. The laptop has great battery life, a refreshed and modern design, and a 120Hz display.

The Snapdragon X Elite inside premium models of the Surface Laptop 7 is excellent as well, though there are some compatibility limits to consider before purchase. Right now, you can save over $400 on the Surface Laptop 7.

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Best Windows laptop

Microsoft Surface Laptop 7: was $1,399.99 now $999 at Amazon

"Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 is the clamshell form factor perfected. It's the best thin and light Windows laptop you can buy on the market right now" — Zac Bowden

Windows Central review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

✅Perfect for: Productivity workflows, all-day battery life, Microsoft Office & Teams, web browsing, creative work.

❌Avoid if: You want to game or run heavy apps under app emulation.

Display: 13.8-inch 3:2 IPS touchscreen. CPU: Snapdragon X Elite. GPU: Qualcomm Adreno. RAM: 16GB. Storage: 512GB SSD. AI PC: Yes. Warranty: 12-month Standard. Launch date: 2024.

👉See at: Amazon

💰Price check: $999.99 at Best Buy

🤩Alternate deal: $1,049.99 for Surface Laptop 7 (Snapdragon X Elite)

Best Surface Laptop 7 deal

The current deal on the Surface Laptop 7 is an excellent bargain. At $999, the Surface Laptop 7 with a Snapdragon X Elite is less than the retail price of the same PC with a Snapdragon X Plus processor.

To see that price, you'll have to select the Platinum color of the Surface Laptop 7. I prefer that color, but if you really want your laptop in Black, Dune, or Sapphire, you just need to pay a bit extra.

Best Windows laptop

We cover a lot of PCs here at Windows Central. Few of them earn a place on our desks long-term. The Surface Laptop 7 has been Bowden's daily driver since he called it "the best laptop, period" over one year ago.

"It's the perfect productivity device, capable of handling your usual office-based workflows including web browsing with plenty of tabs, multitasking across Office, Teams, Spotify, and email, and a whole lot more," said Bowden when covering a deal on the Surface Laptop 7 with a Snapdragon X Plus.

The Surface Laptop 7 is a traditional clamshell laptop. It's ideal for productivity, browsing the web, and using Office or similar programs. The Snapdragon X Elite version of the PC is also powerful enough to handle more demanding tasks.

When speaking of benchmark results for the Surface Laptop 7, Bowden said:

"This result trades blows with the Apple M3 in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. It easily beats the Surface Laptop Studio 2 as well, which was previously Microsoft's most powerful Surface on the market. It's also well ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 9 found in the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, which only scores 2,391 in single-core and 13,305 in multi-core. All this is to say the Surface Laptop 7 with Snapdragon X Elite is a bit of a beast when it comes to performance."

The Snapdragon X Elite processor inside the Surface Laptop 7 is built on ARM64 architecture. That means some apps have to run through an emulation layer called Prism.

Most emulated apps run well, but there are some exceptions, such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Discord. Those apps are noticeably slower when running through emulation. Running an app through emulation uses more battery life than running a native app as well.

An increasing number of developers are working on Arm-native applications. The list of the best native Arm apps now includes several popular browsers, social media apps, and creative tools.

The Surface Laptop 7 feels like a flagship device throughout. Its keyboard, trackpad, display, and overall design are all premium. At $999, you can get the most powerful Surface Laptop 7 for $400 off.