The new Microsoft Surface Arm laptops are in the wild now and getting properly tested. The Verge did a full set of benchmarks that conclude with a few relevant points:

• It runs a little faster than a MacBook Air and quite a bit slower than a MacBook Pro. These really are aimed at the MacBook Air.
• Battery life is behind the MacBook Air’s. This isn’t a surprise, as I suspect they have a lot of experience with the MacBook Air.

Together, these two points make sense. They upped the clock cycle count to outperform the MacBook Air — which is an admittedly sexy headline for Microsoft — at the expense of some battery life. Regardless, I think it’s great news that people running Windows now have an option that’s competitive with MacBook Air performance and battery life. Now, if it just ran a better operating system…