Microsoft Surface Pro Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 5, 2013 9:00 PM ESTBattery Life: The Downside
Despite having an integrated 42 Wh battery (similar in size to the 3rd and 4th gen iPads with Retina Display), battery life is a real sore spot for Surface Pro. Haswell is really designed to drive platform power down to very low levels, which should help close the gap between ARM/Atom based tablets and Core based tablets. Unfortunately, Haswell for tablets won’t hit until the third quarter of this year, which forced Microsoft to use Ivy Bridge.
In our tablet benchmarks, I never saw Surface Pro break the 6 hour mark on a single charge. In most cases I’d expect to see 5 - 6 hours out of Surface Pro in light, tablet usage. Video playback was especially disappointing as Surface Pro managed to use more power here than during our web browsing battery life test. I suspect this might have to do with the relative power efficiency of Ivy Bridge's video decoder. It'll be interesting to see how Haswell does in this department.
I also put Surface Pro through some of our new notebook battery life tests for 2013, and here it didn’t fare too bad. I only have Acer’s 13-inch S7 to compare to but Microsoft managed 3.85 hours in our medium workload compared to sub-3 hours for the larger Ultrabook:
| Windows 8 Notebook Battery Tests | ||
| Battery Test | Acer Aspire S7 (13-inch) | Microsoft Surface Pro |
| AnandTech 2013 Light | 4.00 hours | 5.2 hours |
| AnandTech 2013 Medium | 2.88 hours | 3.85 hours |
This is easily the biggest disappointment with Surface Pro. You just won’t get the all day battery life you do with an ARM based tablet out of this design. I expect Microsoft will have a solution to this problem with Haswell, but not until the end of the year.
Charging
Surface Pro retains the same large, magnetic power connector as Surface RT. In fact, Surface RT’s power adapter will still charge Surface Pro. The Pro model does however come with its own 48W adapter. It’s a nice looking, but large and still fairly traditional two piece power supply (brick + detachable wall cable). There’s no sophisticated cable management other than a tiny hook to help keep the device end of the cable together. One neat feature is the power adapter does feature an integrated USB port for charging your smartphone.
Under max charging load the power supply will draw around 27W at the wall. Microsoft included a 48W unit in order to be able to charge and power the device without slowing down charge time. It took me 2.692 hours to charge Surface Pro from completely empty to 100% with no additional power draw at the wall. The quick charge time is pretty nice and about the only reprieve here when talking about Surface Pro's battery.
I did notice something odd with the first power supply Microsoft sent me. When charging through my power meter, I picked up some interference in the capacitive touch screen itself resulting in around 10% of my taps not being recognized. Microsoft supplied another power supply that seemed to resolve the issue.
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Imaginer - Saturday, March 30, 2013 - link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvR_3OTxs8A# at 3 minutes in.That is the reason I detest bricks that have the prongs in them versus a cord.
rwei - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
One item that I think would be helpful in the Win8 convertible reviews is an overview of what is out there and what is coming - and your views on them.Particularly with all the different solutions being implemented to "how do I make a convertible tablet/laptop?", it would be useful to let users know what their options are and will be.
For example, I saw a picture of the Thinkpad Helix a few days ago and was overcome with happiness since that speaks to my particular use cases. Off the top of my head I can also think of:
- XPS 2 (rotating screen)
- Thinkpad Yoga (360 degree keyboard)
- Vaio 12 (slider)
- Aspire S7 (180 degree keyboard)
- Another one (Fujitsu?) that was just really confusing...
But then I read a disturbingly large amount of tech news. I'm pretty sure many others would find an overview like this interesting.
Tams80 - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link
There are three Fujitsu types:Slate: Q572
Dock: Q702
Convertible (swivel): T902, T732
Montevale - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
So how about the PEN???
How about letting us know if the pen is accurate?
Is it as responsive on the edges of the screen as it is in the middle of the screen?
What if the screen is rotated?
What if it is used by a leftie?
Does the cursor shift if the pen is tilted?
Does calibration of the pen make any difference?
Pen support is natively built into the OS in Windows and unlike the S-Pen on the android there is no need for the special app support.
Handwritten notes in MS OneNote are actually searchable by default.
You can annotate Word and Excel native files add drawings in Outlook to the typed emails as your own annotations and mix text and drawings together.
For the first time a windows device is truly portable with a Pen!!!
JimTC - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Ditto! Those are the issues that are the tipping point for me.JimTC - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
I've been waiting with baited breath for what feels like ages for something like this - thank you, well done!Now - I only wish I could find as comprehensive a review on how this handles One Note so that I can really know if I can finally go truly paperless (including design notes, diagrams, calc's, meeting minutes, etc, etc.). If this machine (and software) can do it, I'll be one very happy camper!
Thanks again! - fresh air!
darwinosx - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
I disagree with Anand which is rare. I think this device is a very poor tablet and laptop and will not sell.althaz - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
It's not a good laptop (it's better than a laptop for what I want though), but it's a brilliant portable computer and a very fast, very nice to use tablet (wouldn't say it's a good tablet for most folks, as the battery life is poor and the weight will be an issue for most).For me it's the best device on the market. It's a portable desktop, it's a drawing tablet, it's a powerful tablet and it's going to be fantastic for playing football manager on the train.
I for SURE would prefer a version with half the weight, double the battery life and triple the graphics performance for under $500, but seeing as there's nothing on the market that can match the Surface Pro at anything like the same price point, I'm getting one. The closest I've tried is Samsung's Ativ, which is $300 more and has no support for a pen as well as not being as high quality.
When this becomes literally the perfect device (at version 3 or 4 most likely), then I'll upgrade and give this bad-boy away. But until then, this is the best there is for those that DON'T WANT A LAPTOP. I've got a laptop. It's useless to me. It's too bulky to use comfortably on the train or couch and the attached keyboard is annoying when I'm using it as a moveable desktop.
Lonyo - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
The Samsung Ativ Pro has pen support. It comes with one which docks to the body. Which is pressure sensitive (not sure how many levels).ananduser - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Can I ask you an honest question ? Would you have ever been interested in the Surface otherwise(for instance with better battery life) ?I'm asking since I've read AppleInsider and read your posts there(and melgross'). Would you have purchased anything else other than Apple hardware and abandoned OSX ?