Even though I recently upgraded my current laptop (after several years), the new Surface Laptop Studio is still very tempting.

Granted, it’s been over a decade since I last owned a Windows machine, and I still love using my MacBook Pro. But there are a few things my MacBook just can’t do, like playing PC games unassisted or using a touchscreen interface. The Slim Pen 2 integration is also pretty significant.

There’s no logical reason for me to trade in my current laptop for Microsoft’s new Laptop Studio. What I have now does everything I need it to do without a hitch, and it’s only a year old at this point. Yet the less logical part of my brain keeps screaming at me about how cool the Surface Laptop Studio is.

Compared to my current rig, the Laptop Studio would definitely be a step up. Sort of. It’s kind of a significant upgrade in some ways and a small step back in others. At least, depending on which Laptop Studio model we’re looking at. For the sake of fantasy but also to stay close to reality, I’m only going to talk about the base 256GB Intel i5 model.