Aiming at education with Windows 10 S OS, the new Microsoft Surface Laptop starts at a rather steep price of US $999 for the base version, powered by 7th-gen Kaby Lake Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Both HP and Acer have unveiled their notebooks powered by Windows 10 S, the HP ProBook x360 Education Edition, and the Acer TravelMate Spin B1 Convertible, which start at rather more reasonable US $299, coming with 11.6-inch screens, Intel Celeron CPUs, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

While it might be both lighter and thinner than any Apple Macbook as well as 50 percent faster than Macbook Air (like that was so hard to achieve), the Surface Laptop falls short when it comes to some serious competition.

Microsoft spent a lot of time talking about dimensions and the fact that the Surface Laptop is both lighter and thinner than any Apple Macbook. Measuring at 308.1x223.27x14.48mm (12.13x8.79x0.57 inches) and weighing in at 1,252g (2.76 lbs), the Surface Laptop is a fancy looking system with anodized chassis and Alcantara covered keyboard, but competition, like the Dell XPS 13, coming with CNC machined aluminum chassis and carbon fiber composite palm rest with soft-touch, is not far behind at all.

The Dell XPS 13 measures at 304x200x9-15mm (11.98x7.88x0.33-0.6inches) and weighs 1.22kg (2.7lbs) for the standard and 1.31kg (2.9lbs) for the touch version, which makes it smaller and pretty much the same weight as the Surface Laptop. 

When it comes to hardware, Dell also offers more bang for the buck, at least when it comes to high-end configurations. The most expensive version of Surface Laptop, one featuring an Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB or RAM and 512GB of PCIe NVMe SSD is listed at US $2,199, whereas Dell will give you its high-end XPS 13 Touch with Intel 7th-gen Core i7-7560U, 16GB or RAM, 512GB of SSD storage and the 13.3-inch QHD (3200x1800) touch screen for US $1,974.99.

Dell also has the new XPS 13 2-in-1, which was introduced back in January, and which comes an UltraSharp QHD+ (3200x1800 resolution) screen or a standard 1920x1080 screen. It is powered by Intel's latest Kaby Lake Y-series CPUs, including the Core i5-7Y54 clocked at 3.2GHz or i7-7Y75 clocked at 3.6GHZ. It can also be equipped with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of SSD storage, so this is a viable competition as well. 

HP has a neat offer with the Spectre 13-v151nr, offering a 13.3-inch FHD system with Intel Core i7-7500U CPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage for US $1,249.99.

We are sure that Surface Laptop has its market but those in education will be looking at cheaper systems while those looking for a high-end notebook will probably look elsewhere as there is plenty of competition offering more than Microsoft's new Surface Laptop, let alone the Apple Macbook line. Bear in mind that all of these high-end notebooks run on Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro OS, which offer a lot more than the locked Windows 10 S OS.