Microsoft Surface Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 23, 2012 9:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- Surface
- Windows RT
A Plethora of Ports and Storage Options
One area where Surface is a significant departure from the iPad is in its IO and expansion. The iPad features a single dock (and soon to be Lightning) connector, while Surface looks more like a laptop (or Android tablet) when it comes to IO.
There’s no port for syncing, you get content onto Surface via WiFi or a more traditional method. Surface has a single USB 2.0 port on the right side of the device. You can plug almost anything you want into this port, including USB storage devices of course. Behind the kickstand is a single microSD card slot, giving you another option for expansion.
On the left edge of the device there’s a micro-HDMI out port that can be paired with a Microsoft made VGA or HDMI dongle (both dongles have a 22-degree connector on them to mate flush with Surface). I tested HDMI output with Microsoft's dongle and unfortunately the result wasn't very good. The 1080p output had a lot of issues with scaling quality (as you can see from the shot below) and there was a lot of tearing on the screen with a big impact on UI frame rate. I reached out to Microsoft for an explanation but have yet to hear anything.
Finally there’s a standard 1/8” headphone jack along the top of the device.
Power delivery comes via a custom magnetic connector along the lower right side of Surface.
Given that the internal storage is an eMMC solution, performance from the microSD slot with a good card should be fairly comparable. In practice I could read and write a large sequential file at roughly 10.5 MB/s using a SanDisk microSD card.
Copying from a fast USB stick to Surface’s internal storage gave me transfer rates closer to 17MB/s. There are a few vendors for Windows 8/RT eMMC devices, I’ll be paying close attention over the coming weeks to figure out who makes the best. I know Microsoft and Intel (among others) have been playing close attention to the eMMC providers with hopes of weeding out those that deliver honestly unacceptable performance.
While doing background file IO I didn’t notice any of the stalling/pausing that we’ve seen on some of the more recent Android tablets.
Update: Many have asked about how much storage is taken up by the Windows + Office 2013 installs. The screenshot below shows the directory size for both C:\Windows and C:\Program Files, the latter is where the Office15 install files are included (and yes winword.exe is still the Word executable).
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You're looking at roughly 6.47GB for Windows RT and then another 830MB for Office for a grand total of around 7.3GB.
USB Compatibility
Microsoft is particularly proud of its single USB 2.0 port on Surface. Although USB ports have been featured on several Android tablets, their support was typically limited to flash drives, keyboards and mice. With Windows RT, Microsoft wants to bring more of the traditional Windows experience to tablets. Had Surface been x86 based, you would be able to plug in virtually any USB peripheral and it would just work. As the first version of Surface is based on an ARM SoC, driver support is a little more limited but still pretty decent.
USB drives obviously work as you’d expect them to. Even SATA to USB adapters worked fine when plugged into Surface. Other smartphones and tablets also worked, although their level of support varied. For example, you can plug in the iPhone 5 and have it come up as a supported device for moving pictures to/from. However USB tethering is not supported by the class driver included in Windows RT. You can even plug an iPad into Surface and get the same level of support.
Printer support is pretty decent, although the Epson Workforce 910 I tried didn’t actually have specific driver support under RT. Although development for the desktop side of Windows is limited, manufacturers can supply Windows RT drivers to enable support for some more obscure devices. Unfortunately when it comes to those devices you’ll have to play the waiting game as there’s simply not a lot of third party Windows RT drivers available for download today.
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sviola - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Care to source the claim that A6 performs the same as x86 core processors per clock cycle?blandge - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
"A6 is as fast as Intel per clock cycle. (and yes: I understand that A6 is dual core and intel is quad + clocked much higher. But the fact is that A6 is as fast per clock cycle. ARM will replace X86)"This simply isn't true. The A6 scored 908ms on the SunSpider browser benchmark and a 2700k scores about 135ms (Lower is better). That's about 6x better, and SunSpirder is a SINGLE CORE benchmark.
Brainling - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Are you serious with this about the A6? The A6 is NO WHERE NEAR as fast as full on Intel silicon. It's not even in the same ballpark. Maybe if you're comparing it to Atom?An Ivy Bridge full silicon CPU is in another league over the A6. Of course, they aren't meant for the same purpose. Even taking the faster clocks in to account (~4x the clock speed), the Ivy Bridge regularly scores 6-7 times the execution scores of an A6 in synthetics. That's not pure clock speed, that's also a flat better CPU.
I swear...some of this stuff is just mind blowing. What in the world would have ever made you think an A6 was "clock for clock" as fast as Intel's best offerings? Also, the XBox 360 doesn't use an Intel CPU or an x86 CPU...it's a Motorola PowerPC. Might wanna check your facts next time.
Kevin G - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
A typo: "Microsoft offers Touch Cover in six colors black, white, magenta, cyan and red." Not sure if a color is missing or you meant five (though five pictured).Anand, you've been taking the Surface around judging the examples in the article. Any chance it was with you during the iPad mini event? I can image the looks being worse than when you tried to make a call at the iPhone 5 event.
"Simply typing quickly in Microsoft Word maxes the single threaded performance of Tegra 3’s ARM Cortex A9 cores." It does seem odd that one of Surface's biggest selling points on the software side is a self inflicted wound. Office should be the premiere application for MS to show case, not bloatware that'd deserve to sit in the sloth exhibit at a zoo. Was Office even usable?
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Apparently we can't count today. It is indeed five colors, not six.ssiu - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Finally, some objective Windows RT versus Windows 8 Atom tablet performance comparison on the net -- thanks anandtech. Definitely no reason for me to consider Windows RT.Zink - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Yep this is silly. The only reason for RT is to let OEM's compete <$500 with Apple and to emulate other walled garden ecosystems.Atom should have been launch hardware for a better user experience. Hasn't Apple success shown that UI is #1?
dagamer34 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Basically it seems like Microsoft built a rather competent product, and when we see Windows RT tablets with stronger hardware like Tegra 4 or S4 Pro, it should be a great experience.Considering this is Microsoft's first hardware computer, they could have done a LOT worse, and there are some things you only learn by actually shipping a product. For a 1st gen release, that's pretty good.
shompa - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Thats is one of MSFT problem. Since they control the hardware, we wont see the crazy Android/PC hardware wars. How long time for MSFT to write drivers/support Tegra4 or any other fast SoC?Just look at Windows Phone. Nokia have the killer "Pure View" and MSFT don't support it.
(And thats is why Nokia will die with only MSFT support)
notanakin - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
"Microsoft’s talents not as a software developer nor as a parts assembler are what make Surface great here, rather its design and manufacturing intuition."Er, so what is it that makes Surface great here? Almost sounds like the less talent you have, the greater the product. (In that case, please contact me for insanely great product designs.)