The 10-inch PixelSense display on the Surface Go may be small, but it offers plenty of pop. It averaged 415 nits of brightness, which is lower than the iPad but miles above the average budget laptop (245 nits). The Surface Go's screen delivered excellent results in our labs, too. So that may be enough power for most users, to be fair.While the panel on the 9.7-inch iPad is even higher-res at 2048 x 1536 pixels, I don't have any complaints about the Surface Go's canvas. But once you add more tabs that does start to slow things down. You can get a dozen Chrome tabs, 1080p YouTube video, Slack and Spotify all running without lag. We'd say definitely go for that top end if you're doing anything that might cause a strain on processing power.

That said, you do have the option to spec this out with more RAM, up to 8GB to be exact. Great for battery life but not so great for raw processing grunt. This is thanks to it having an 8th Gen Intel Core m3 at its hearts. Yup, that's the major and maybe only real complaint about this tablet. The Microsoft Surface Go 2 lacks power in some configurations. This is thanks to that decent 1920 x 1280 resolution and the punchy visuals are thanks to some impressive 107% of the sRGB color spectrum being displayed at over 400 nits of brightness. The display, at 10.5-inches is plenty large enough for multi-screen working, movie watching and multi-tasking. More than Apple offers on its iPads then. Ports are minimal with a USB-C and Surface connector along with a headphone jack on one side, and a microSD reader on the other. It's easy to use, holds it position well and goes from zero to 135 degrees – it even has a little notch for your finger to make it super simple to use.

The kickstand at the rear is a really useful way to angle this tablet for viewing movies, video chatting online, working – whatever you need really.

Surface go 2 laptop review