Microsoft Surface Pro Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 5, 2013 9:00 PM ESTSurface Pro as a Windows 8 Notebook
If you can deal with tradeoff of having a not-totally-rigid display/keyboard hinge, Surface Pro does approximate a notebook fairly well. The trackpads integrated into the covers don’t do a good job, but getting used to the touchscreen for most mousing duties isn’t a problem at all. The biggest issue with using Surface Pro as a notebook replacement is that you just can’t use it in as many sitting configurations as you’d be able to with a traditional notebook. If you can deal with that however, it’s a pretty awesome device.
When it comes to performance and response time, Surface Pro behaves just like an Ultrabook. In our performance tests it ended up a bit behind Acer’s 13-inch S7, but I’m guessing that has more to do with Microsoft having a slightly more conservative thermal profile than the larger notebook. You'll notice that in most of these tests, Surface Pro is within striking distance of Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air running Windows.
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amrs - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
I'm also wondering why the SSD benchmark showed only throughput? No 4k random access or access time tests?jack.fxx - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Surface Pro has 5 times greater performance than competing ARM tablets with half battery life.nangryo - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Considering cellular cell draws more power. I think you should separate the result of the wifi test and cellular test. Because makes the Galaxy Tab chart below Surface whilst it is using cellular connection makes it a bit inaccuratemaximumGPU - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
can someone block this douche who's been polluting a lot of AT's threads?milli - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
After reading this review, I have to conclude that Intel is ahead of ARM in regards to power efficiency on every front. Before this review, it was obvious that Clover Trail is competitive to the current ARM offerings on power usage and speed. And it's soon to be upgraded with the Silvermont core and 22nm.But Intel's i5 ULV seems to be better at performance/watt too. >5x faster while offering half the battery life. Even on a TDP level compared to Exynos 5 it's twice the power (8W vs 17W) while offering >4x the performance on the cpu front and at least 2-3x the performance on the GPU.
With Haswell and 22nm Atoms coming, it's seems ARM's stand against Intel is going to be more short lived than many believed.
LetsGo - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
In your dreams, the Nexus 10 drives a much higher resolution then the surface pro and is the first iteration of A15's. ARM chips will undercut Intel's and deliver just as good performance because the real heavy work is done in the GPU.Watch Intel's share price drop in the coming years.
Netscorer - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Your conclusion is wrong. Clover Trail may have matched ARM power consumption but is still below the par on performance and is completely pathetic in GPU performance. To add insult to injury, it is priced substantially higher then ARM chips, so good luck seeing it in many mobile devices.Ivy Bridge is the top dog in performance but is still far from being optimized for power consumption. Haswell will (we all hope) change that but again, at much much higher prices then ARM design. When you have a CPU alone cost $250, forget about building budget tablets around it.
kyuu - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
What? Clover Trail is faster than any ARM SoC except for A15 -- and A15s use more power than Clover Trail.powerarmour - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
$899 for a 64GB SSD with only 23GB free space... Give me a break...amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
$499 for 16GB with only 13GB free space... what the heck...Consumers should spend 2x$499 to get 26GB free space, haha this way they can beat surface pro in terms of non-removable space, lol.
On the other hand, feel free to insert SD card, USB flash, USB 3.0 external, NAS and etc...
What does the $499 offer you? They'll accuse you of stealing mp3, mp4, mp5 or whatever else they can accuse you of stealing. Yesterday they're telling you that you're holding it wrong, today they're calling you using the device the wrong way, I guess tomorrow they'll just call you stupid plain and clear so it's dummy proof ;)