Microsoft Surface Book

In many ways, the Surface line has been about breaking free from the limitations imposed by having a display and keyboard that are attached to each other. But after seeing the popularity of the Surface brand -- and looking to vie with Apple’s MacBook Pro -- Microsoft opted to go back to a more-standard laptop formula with the 13.5-inch Surface Book. While not nearly as light as many of the other PCs on our list (3.34 pounds), the Surface Book is notably more portable than the 4.5 pounds of a comparably sized MacBook Pro, and it carries a bit more horsepower too, with sixth-gen Intel Core processors versus the fifth-gen Intel Core processors of the MacBook Pro. The Surface Book has a starting price of $1,499 (Core i5, 128 GB of storage, 8 GB RAM).