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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kyuu - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link
I'm looking to get a mobile device with part of my tax return. I have zero interest in an iOS or Android tablet. What I'm looking at currently:1) Vizio's Hondo-based Tablet PC that was shown at CES.
2) Vizio's 2nd gen thin+lights, 14" model with touch screen and AMD A10
So basically, an ultrabook (thin+light) or a tablet are the only mobile devices I'm interested in. A normal laptop is too heavy and bulky for me to reguarly take with me out of the house. The Surface Pro would be in consideration, but the price is a little higher than I'm willing to spend (and should *really* include one of the covers).
atl - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
42W 2 cell battery means 2 x 6 amps Li-ion cells (probably cut at 90% to increase cycles).As Li-ion charges from 0% to 70% at 1C, it requires 6amp charger.
Supplied charger just doubles the fast-charge period
kawatwo - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Would like to see some Win 8 tablets with Core I3 and weight under 1.5 pounds. 2 pounds is a bit heavy for a tablet. Needs to include the Type keyboard as well. But overall what an awesome device. I'm sure other PC makers will get it right in the not real distant future.jeffkibuule - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link
Acer will have a newer version of the W700 with a 7W SDP Ivy Bridge chip that is 20% thinner than their current model (around 8mm), so it's certainly possible.phillyry - Saturday, February 16, 2013 - link
Graphics would blow on an i3 and make the touch based interface borderline unusable.Sabresiberian - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
I think Microsoft got into building their own hardware here because they felt forced to; no one was building the kind of quality device they wanted. I think Nokia and HTC need to step their games up too if they don't want a Microsoft phone to come along and take their business away (or relegate it to the cheap seats). I like this approach, and hope they do kick the phone industry on the pants, because none of them are what I'd really call "good". (I'm talking ALL smart phones, not just Win 8 phones - phones that really don't take much of a back seat to anything else on the market, overall.)THE one thing that kills the Surface for me is the 16:9 screen. that's okay for a tablet I suppose, but the Surface isn't about being "okay", and I think it's a slam in the face of a real quality experience. It puts the iPad out of the picture in every other way (in my opinion), but in this way, the iPad still pretty much kills everyone else.
Netscorer - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Nobody else is building these because there is not enough demand. Microsoft can afford to chuck up all the costs that gone into Surface as marketing for Windows 8 OS, but if you are a typical PC manufacturer who operates on razor thin margins, you won't be able to afford to do what it takes to create an iPad killer. Add to this that neither Intel, nor Microsoft are giving you much of a slack on prices for core and Windows and that market for $1000+ laptops is already very small to begin with and you get the picture.SilthDraeth - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
I know it was a windows 7 tablet, but it to runs on a core i5 and 2gb of RAM. Have you guys never bench marked it, to include it in the graphs, in comparison to the newest?Silma - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
While it is perfectly clear to me that with a much bigger processor power consuption will be bigger than a way slower arm, hence it is to be expected that ultrabooks/surfaces can't have the same battery life as an iPad or nexus tablet, I don't understand the extreme différences seen in video playback benchmarks.On this benchmark I would of course expect Windows 8 offering to use a little more power than on an ios / android tablet due to the overhead of a bigger os, but here the différences are huge.
Here I think Microsoft and Intel could optimize greatly the power usage for 720p and 1080p mp4 playback.
andrewaggb - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Agreed.