Microsoft Surface Pro Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 5, 2013 9:00 PM ESTThe Surface Pen
While you don’t get a keyboard with Surface Pro, Microsoft does bundle a digital pen with the device. Based on Wacom’s technology (presumably Electro-Magnetic Resonance), the SurfacePen supports 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity. The pen itself is passive, all of the power consuming circuitry is contained within the display stack itself. A weak EM field is generated by Surface Pro which enduces a current in the digital pen that then powers its resonance circuit, which in turn impacts the EM field and is used to determine the position and angle of the pen itself. Surface Pro will recognize the pen starting from about an inch above the display. The pen won’t work on Surface RT as the requisite Wacom EMR grid and logic don’t exist on that tablet.
It's not clear to me whether or not Microsoft is using Wacom's RRFC to enable capacitive touch in addition to digital pen support. Regardless, I didn't notice any impact on touch response when using Surface Pro without the digital pen.
The Surface Pro pen doesn’t store anywhere inside the device, but it can be docked to the magnetic power connector as long as you’re not charging the tablet. The magnetic dock doesn’t charge/power the pen in any way, it just holds it in place. The tablet is a bit awkward to hold with the pen in place, and there’s also the problem of where do you store the pen if you’re using the tablet while plugged into the wall, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
Microsoft does a good job of palm rejection with the pen in use, although I did occasionally have to erase an errant line or two caused by the edge of my hand in a drawing app.
Tracking and responsiveness were both excellent in using the pen. I’m not much of an artist but I did have a good experience sketching with Surface Pro’s pen. Creative professionals who are already Wacom users will probably appreciate the inclusion. Surface Pro doesn’t really offer the same drawing surface area as some of the larger Wacom tablets, but I can see how it’d be a nice addition for those who don’t want to carry around a separate drawing tablet.
You can configure Surface Pro to work in second screen mode, allowing you to use the entire display as a pen surface while using the integrated miniDP out to drive your display to an external monitor. In this mode Surface Pro approximates a Wacom digital tablet, although without the software customization that you get with those tablets. The biggest issue I had in second screen mode is the lack of a toggle to switch between pen and mouse positioning, Surface Pro operates exclusively in the former.
In pen positioning, every point on the Surface Pro display corresponds to a similar location on your external display. To draw something in the upper right corner you need to move your pen to the upper right corner of the Surface Pro display and draw there. Wacom’s own tablets let you switch to mouse mode, allowing you to use the pen as a mouse to place your cursor wherever you want it. Pen mode is something you may or may not be able to get used to, but it’s worth pointing out that the inflexibility is a limitation of Surface Pro’s pen implementation.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
228 Comments
View All Comments
faizoff - Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - link
This hits pretty much all the expectations I had for this device. I've accepted the price point as a fair price, if you search for a device with a 1080 screen resolution on a touchscreen the pro would be a cheaper option.My curiosity however is the usability of 1080 resolution on a 10.6" screen. Is it difficult to touch and use? I guess trying it out in store would be the best place to find out.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
I didn't have any usability issues with the 1080p 10.6-inch display. In modern UI everything is optimized for touch with big touch targets. On the desktop, the 150% DPI scaling helps eliminate any issues in apps that properly support DPI scaling. It's the apps that don't where there's a problem.Take care,
Anand
faizoff - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Thats good to know. I should've probably mentioned I was concerned with the touch usability on the desktop more than Modern UI. Thanks for the answer.faizoff - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
I normally don't set the DPI to 150% on my windows desktop. I just set it to 150% on my win 8 pro VM and on desktop mode Chrome looks quite blurry.Just like you mentioned those programs that dont scale in higher DPI will suffer.
jeffkibuule - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
It's not designed for touch and probably never will be. Microsoft can make some adjustments to touch target sizes without visually changing anything but ultimately if you want to have any accuracy in a desktop environment, you'll want to use the stylus.GTRagnarok - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Third page: "Type Cover will set you back $119 while Touch Cover is $129"You have the price switched around.
Netscorer - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
This is a very comprehensive review that is long on technical details and very short on actual usability of the Surface Pro. Sometimes Anand gets too enamored with charts, while forgetting that most folks want just first hand experience.There is very brief mentioning of working in legacy UI and regular programs, with no mentioning of how easy (or, rather difficult) it is to navigate interface with your fingers (and no mouse tracking support for stylus is a show stopper as you can't use it to replace your mouse). I wish, Anand would use one of the programs (like Chrome) and tried some of the more popular web sites (Google+, YouTube) and let us know if he was able to get even 50% hit with his fingers on the small buttons that pepper the screen. There is not even a mentioning of the atrocious virtual keyboard for non-metro apps. Windows scaling is simply not working how it should on the device of this type, yet we get a very diplomatic two sentence non-commital response.
Tap dancing around storage issue is another breaking point. 128GB is not only recommended, it is the minimum that people should consider. $899 64GB storage option leaves only 23GB left even before user installs anything (ANYTHING!) on the device. Add to this Office, inevitable restore points and huge MS regular updates, few photo or video editing programs and you won't have space left for anything else but some small documents. No music, no video, no Steam, no nothing. And we are talking about using this as a laptop substitute?
faizoff - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
From my experience this is usually the type of review done for any device here on Anandtech. Doesn't surprise me much.I too would like more info on actual usage on the desktop but as such those can be easy or difficult per user.
I'm curious how you know that windows scaling is not working on a device of this type. Or is that just your opinion?
althaz - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Are you sure you can't use your stylus as a mouse? I've read a couple of other reviews where this was explicitly mentioned as being possible (and comments on how well it works).faizoff - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Was watching the video review on The Verge and they show the stylus being used like a mouse pointer briefly dragging tiles around. Still not sure how the stylus can be used on the desktop mode in terms of scrolling the page,etc...