Microsoft Surface Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 23, 2012 9:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- Surface
- Windows RT
Type Cover
If Microsoft’s Touch Cover is the perfect companion for occasional typing, its Type Cover is the professional counterpart. Thickness increases by roughly 2.2mm, enough to be noticeable while still maintaining the svelte profile of Surface, but in exchange for marginally more bulk you get a keyboard with actuating scissor keys.
The keys themselves are a little bigger than in Touch Cover, thus reducing the amount of empty space between each key, but overall the feel is very similar. Where Type Cover really delivers is in its use of scissor keys. If you want more of a notebook feel, this is the way to go.
Typing quickly on Type Cover isn’t fatiguing at all and it’s just as easy to write large documents or emails using it as it would be on a traditional notebook. There are very few tradeoffs that you make to enjoy Type Cover. There’s only one color (black), and of course there is some additional thickness. The keyboard itself isn’t perfect but it’s good enough to write this review on.
I actually wasn’t bothered by the relatively shallow keystroke depth on Type Cover, although I am very used to the relatively shallow feel of most ultraportable keyboards by now. If you’re expecting the same sort of keyboard as you’d find on a thick mainstream notebook, you will be disappointed.
Type Cover’s trackpad is marginally better than what you get with Touch Cover. The trackpad is actually a tiny, top-hinged clickpad, which makes clicking a bit easier. Tap to click and two finger scrolling are both supported. The trackpad surface isn’t particularly smooth, and it isn’t all that large of a surface which work together to make scrolling nice and frustrating. The lower right section of the trackpad serves as a physical right mouse button.
Type Cover sells at a $10 premium to Touch Cover. At $129 it isn’t cheap, but it’s likely the option anyone who is going to do a lot of typing will need to take to get the most out of their Surface RT tablet.
My only complaint with Type Cover was that it would randomly stop accepting keystrokes in mid sentence, sometimes even in the middle of a word. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, whether I’m hitting performance limitations and the platform is just dropping keystrokes or if there’s a physical problem with my unit (or Type Cover in general), but it was annoying. Even with the occasional dropped keystrokes I was still able to type faster and better on Type Cover than I could with Touch Cover. If you write for a living, you can live with Touch Cover, but you’d probably rather have Type Cover. Neither is as good as a traditional notebook keyboard, but both are light years ahead of typing on a glass screen.
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kyuu - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Apple reviews came a week or more after the product was released, not pre-release. Also, they're doing a separate review of WinRT. Unlike Apple, the OS and hardware do not go hand-in-hand (i.e. there are OEMs), so reviewing the hardware and OS separately makes sense.amdwilliam1985 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Where is the thumbs up button when you needed one.It's been a while since I've enjoy Anand's writing(too much Apple lately). Read every single word in this great article. My emotion was like a roller coaster reading through the pages. I was sure I'm going to get one at the beginning of the article. And then reading about the "good enough" screen, the power/battery connector, the HDMI port, I was like, maybe next generation. Then moving on with software integration and office, I have my hopes up again. Finally seeing Atom performance preview and the upcoming core x86, I'm definitely holding my horse/breath.
Thanks again for an hour of great reading. I'm in NYC, so I'm planning on seeing the surface on the launch day/evening with my girlfriend.
thomas-hrb - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I wonder what the maximum size MicroSD card the surface can handle. 32/64 GB is a bit small for a device that I would like to replace my laptop with. But if it could take a 64GB MicroSD like http://au.sandisk.com/products/mobile-memory-produ... then that resolves my issues.Although I intend to hang on for the pro version, as I have a lot oc x86 software I would like to run.
Chris-Simmons - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
All Surfaces use microSDXC so they can take up to 2TB as per the microSDXC spec. I believe the largest microSDXC card available currently is 128GB but that is only for commercial customers, 64GB is the largest for retail. We are just waiting on larger cards to become available.jibz - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Quick question I didn't see answered in the review: how easy is it to use as a multi user device? One thing that has always bothered me with an iPad or any other tablet is that I can't have different accounts for different family members. So if I install GTA, it'll be available for the kids, I don't have my own bookmarks in my browser, etc. How is Surface/Win RT doing from that point of view?WP7Mango - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
I can give you a detailed answer...Firstly, setting up for multiple users is very easy. The main user is the administrator and the administrator can add further users in the Settings page. Once a user is added, then it's just a case of that new user logging in using either a password, a PIN, or a picture password.
Each user has their own settings, their own apps, their own Start screen layout and background image, their own email accounts, their own contacts in the People hub, their own social network accounts, their own app data, their own bookmarks, etc etc. When one user installs an app, if another user subsequently wants to install the same app then it doesn't get downloaded again - instead, new seperate app settings are created for the new user. So if you are playing a game for example, then your saved games will be seperate from another user's saved games. If you delete a user, only their data is deleted and yours remains intact.
Bottom line is that multi-user works very well.
kyuu - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
Thanks for the detailed answer on that!karasaj - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
You mentioned that typing speedily on Surface could bring up some heavy CPU usage: do you think that this really hampers Surface's user experience (would it be an issue) or is it merely an example of MS office 2013 nearly taxing Tegra to its limits?I.E. when typing speedily did CPU usage go up but it remained smooth, or was there a noticeable slowdown? The only things I can imagine doing with Surface are MS office, netflix (HD video), and youtube/IE. Do you think any of those feel too slow/laggy to be detrimental?
VivekGowri - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Based on my experience with the VivoTab RT (nearly identical hardware/software - Tegra 3 + Windows RT) it's the latter - I saw weirdly high CPU utilization, but no typing lag. Anand mentioned getting some with the Surface, but nothing too drastic if I remember right.karasaj - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Fantastic. I'm not too worried about high cpu usage as long as there's no lag, although it does seem like that establishes a "lower limit" for RT hardware. Do you think this high cpu usage would have a worse effect on battery life than say the wifi browsing battery life test for example? (I feel like no, but cpu usage shouldn't be too too high there)