Microsoft Surface 2 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 21, 2013 12:00 AM ESTThe New Display
Microsoft spent a lot of time defending its decision to use a 1366 x 768 panel in the original Surface RT, all the while knowing its successor would move to the same 1080p panel as its bigger brother. With Surface 2 Microsoft thankfully embraces the importance of relatively high resolution displays in tablets. The 10.6-inch 1920 x 1080 display weighs in at just over 207 pixels per inch, which isn’t too far off rMBP standards although still shy of the iPad with Retina Display. A higher resolution panel isn’t absolutely necessary here, and given the 64-bit memory interface of Tegra 4 (and its associated GPU power) I don’t know that we’d want something substantially higher in Surface 2.
By default Surface 2 ships with 150% DPI scaling enabled, and for the most part it works well in the limited selection of classic desktop apps that ship on the machine. Since you can’t install third party classic desktop apps there’s no real chance for anything to go wrong on the DPI scaling front.
Color accuracy is much improved compared to Surface/Surface Pro. Microsoft openly admitted to not targeting full sRGB coverage at the Surface 2 launch event, which means that you’re not going to see Surface 2’s color accuracy equal that of the Nexus 7 or iPad with Retina Display. Subjectively the display looks very good, a huge improvement over last year’s model.
Grayscale accuracy is actually quite good, as is Surface 2’s performance in our GMB pattern test. Measuring accuracy while we scale color saturation however has the Surface 2’s display falling short of the competition, and our basic gamut test doesn’t come out very strongly either.
Microsoft continues to be proud of the fact that its Surface 2 (and Pro 2) displays are laminated to their cover glass to help reduce reflections. In practice I can say that this helps improve the overall experience while using the devices.
Overall display performance isn’t bad at all, and it’s an improvement over what Microsoft shipped last year, but it could definitely be better. Google set the new bar with the $229 2013 Nexus 7’s display and all competitors really have to meet it at this point.
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Serr - Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - link
"Although IE11 does a relatively good job on the touch front, I find that heavy multitasking with IE11 on Surface 2 can result in a lot of hangs and crashes within tabs or the application itself."There goes the truth! You don't have that even on iPad 2.
Wall-Swe - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
@Serr Well that's a lie! My iPhone 4 is crashing almost everyday when using Safari.@Anandtech How come you only got 8hour of battery out of the Surface 2? Engadget got 14hours 22minuties, it its the best score they have had of any tablet!
MarcSP - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Yes, that discrepancy makes no sense. Or Anandtech’s device had some problem, or Engadget made a big mistake in the method they used. I know that of these options seems much more likely than the other ;-), but without more testing there is no way to know for sure.whatsa - Friday, November 1, 2013 - link
Theres video and videoI can tell you I dont get the numbers stated with a BD rip....
if its close then thats good enough for me as I have yet to see a standard for this
testing used across the board. (I may be wrong so if you need to shoot aim for the leg)
MarcSP - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
It is specially weird that Surface 2 got less battery life for video than Surface 1, when MS said battry life shoudl be 25% better and that now, unlike before, they are using the companion core for that task.TechFan1 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
If this had bay trail inside I would already own one. Really disappointed they went with Tegra 4 :(melomania - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Why in the ipad air review, does this machine only score a 750 in contrast ratio and here it is over 1000?JBVertexx - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
I'm thinking of picking up one of these for my 7th grade son. He's had a Nexus 7 since that first came out. He uses that mostly for gaming. But this year, he needs a "device" for school. The Nexus 7 hasn't really been up for class note-taking, etc. Thinking this would be the perfect solution.Hoekie - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Great review, but fails on the search for apps.Like telling us that there no Twitter app, make me worry you did not get a good look at the Store and have setting set to 'easy to find local apps'
The official Twitter app for instance in the Windows Store for quit a time now. Nice thing also is that it can be snapped to the left. A link in a tweet makes the browser open that link. All on the same screen. Killer!