Let's talk about heat. This laptop can get toasty, and I mean uncomfortably warm in ways that might surprise you.

When It Stays Cool (Most of the Time)

Normal Day-to-Day Stuff: For typical work—emails, web browsing, Word documents, even video calls—this laptop stays pretty chill. The ARM processor really is efficient, so you're not dealing with a hot lap warmer during regular use.

When Things Get Spicy

Heavy Work Warning: Here's where it gets interesting (and not in a good way). I was doing some photo editing in Photoshop, and after about 30 minutes, the back of this laptop was legitimately too hot to touch comfortably. We're talking 115°F—that's hot enough that you wouldn't want to use it as an actual laptop on your lap.

The Heat Pattern: The worst spot is right behind the screen hinge, but the warmth spreads across the back half pretty quickly under load. Your wrists and the keyboard area stay reasonable, but if you flip it over to check something, you'll definitely notice.

The Fan Situation

Microsoft's Quiet Obsession: They clearly prioritized keeping this thing whisper-quiet over keeping it cool. The fan barely kicks in even when temperatures are climbing. It's great for meetings where you don't want laptop fan noise, but not so great when you actually need cooling.

Thermal Throttling Reality: When it gets too hot, the laptop just slows itself down to cool off. You'll notice your intensive tasks suddenly getting sluggish—that's the laptop protecting itself.

Real-World Advice

Lap Usage: Despite the name "laptop," don't plan on doing heavy work with this thing actually on your lap for extended periods. It'll get uncomfortable fast.

Desk Setup: Keep it on a hard, ventilated surface. Those soft surfaces that block the vents will make the heat problem worse. Consider a laptop cooling pad for intensive work sessions.

Work Habits: If you're doing intensive stuff, plan for breaks. Let it cool down between heavy tasks.

The Bottom Line on Heat

For typical business use, you won't have issues. But if you're planning on pushing this laptop hard with intensive applications, just know you're going to feel the heat—literally.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: those AI features Microsoft keeps bragging about. Spoiler alert—they're pretty disappointing.

What Actually Works (Sort Of)

The Stuff That's Actually There: I've been using the live captions feature, and honestly, it's kind of neat. It can transcribe what people are saying in real-time, even translating languages on the fly. Useful for international work calls, but it's not exactly revolutionary.

Microsoft Paint got this AI image generator thing that creates surprisingly decent pictures from text descriptions. It's fun for about 10 minutes, then you realize DALL-E and Midjourney do it way better.

Video Call Enhancements: The camera does this eye contact correction thing that makes it look like you're staring directly into the camera even when you're reading from another window. It's subtle but actually helpful for professional calls.

The Big Missing Piece: Microsoft Recall

Here's where Microsoft really oversold this thing. They promised this amazing "Recall" feature that would basically remember everything you've ever done on your computer and let you search through it visually.

What Happened to Recall? Privacy experts took one look at it and basically said "This is a surveillance nightmare." Microsoft quietly delayed it indefinitely. So that killer feature that was supposed to justify the Copilot+ branding? Yeah, it doesn't exist.

The Copilot Reality Check

There's a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard that launches Microsoft's AI assistant. The problem? It's literally just ChatGPT in a Microsoft wrapper, and it's not meaningfully different from what you get on any other Windows computer.

The AI Processing Chip: This laptop has a special Neural Processing Unit that's supposed to make AI super fast. In practice, I can't tell the difference. The AI features that exist work fine, but they're not mind-blowing.

Should You Buy It for AI?

Hard no. If you're excited about AI features, you'll be disappointed. The current capabilities feel like beta features that Microsoft shipped to justify the "AI PC" marketing.

Buy this laptop for what it actually does well—incredible battery life, solid performance for productivity work, and premium build quality. The AI stuff is a bonus that might get better over time, but it's definitely not ready to be your primary reason for purchasing.

Here's the thing that absolutely blew me away about this laptop: the battery life is legitimately incredible. Like, forget-your-charger-for-a-weekend incredible.

My Real-World Battery Experience

I'm someone who's perpetually anxious about battery life, always hunting for outlets and carrying chargers everywhere. This laptop changed that completely.

What I Actually Get: On a typical work day—bouncing between Word documents, Chrome with way too many tabs open, Slack notifications constantly pinging, and a few Zoom calls—I'm consistently hitting 13-15 hours. That's a full day of work plus some Netflix in the evening, all on one charge.

The Video Test: I wanted to see if Microsoft's "20 hours of video playback" claim was complete marketing nonsense. Turns out, it's actually conservative. I got 19 hours watching YouTube and Netflix at about 50% brightness. That's basically three flights across the country.

Why This Battery Life is Different

It's the ARM Magic: Remember how your iPhone can last all day while your old Android phone died by lunch? Same principle here. This ARM processor sips power like it's expensive wine, not chugging it like a frat party.

Smart Power Management: The laptop is genuinely intelligent about power usage. When I'm just reading emails, it barely uses any juice. When I fire up Photoshop, it ramps up performance but still maintains impressive efficiency.

Sleep Mode Actually Works: Unlike every other Windows laptop I've owned, this one doesn't mysteriously drain 30% battery overnight in sleep mode. It sleeps like a proper device should.

The Charging Reality

Fast Enough: Getting to 80% in about 90 minutes isn't the fastest I've seen, but when your battery lasts this long, rapid charging becomes less critical.

Charging Flexibility: While it comes with Microsoft's magnetic charger, you can also charge via USB-C with any decent power adapter, which is super handy for travel.

The Bottom Line on Battery Life

If you're tired of constantly thinking about battery percentage and hunting for outlets, this laptop will liberate you from that anxiety. It's genuinely the first Windows laptop I've owned where battery life just isn't a concern anymore.

The only downside? You might forget how to find power outlets in airports.