A sidenote, dear reader before you begin. This post was originally written and scheduled for November 2017. So, for the time being, consider this a “from the archives” type of post and enjoy this snapshot from the thoughtnet time machine!
The Deal
Well, here I am again dear reader. It’s Friday and there’s no special name attached to this post, so it’s all about the content this time. And as the title says, I’m talking Microsoft’s latest incarnation of it’s Surface Pro device. This year, I finally needed to get a flagship device as my trusty Asus Zenbook Prime was slow and problematic enough to warrant a significant upgrade. This upgrade happened on launch day for the New Surface Pro, June 15, so I’ve been using it since then and have enough words to put together a coherent post.
A… Review?
Sort of. This is just my thoughts and concerns after owning and using the New Surface Pro, but I will try to talk about some of the things that I see posted regularly online and some stuff I wish I’d known going from a traditional laptop to a “first-party” Windows device. Now, let’s get into it.
The Outgoing Champion
It wasn’t much of a champion, really. I have owned and used an Asus Zenbook Prime from early- to mid-2012 so that’s the power level I was shopping around for. I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but it had survived two soda spills on its keyboard, many a disassembling and cleaning, and a slew of battery-related hard crashes.
The problem was that nothing in mid-2017 had impressed me, especially not Microsoft’s then-freshly-announced Surface Laptop, but when a refined Surface Pro was announced, featuring the elusive i7 I wanted and enough of a change to make me grow as a laptop user, I eagerly weighed the odds and walked into my local Microsoft Store on June 15 and bought my i7 Surface Pro, burgundy Type Cover, and a Surface Pen for good measure.
First Impressions
June 15 was a Thursday, and I spent that night learning the trackpad gestures, how to use the Pen to extend my workflow, and finding a good kickstand position to learn to open the Surface to for easy viewing at a desk. June 16, Friday, I brought my Surface to work to see how it handled my regular tasks (spoilers, Friday went really well and I could tell I was using a new device, but more on that later).
The first thing I took notice of was the screen ratio of three-by-two. Coming from a traditional (and aging) sixteen-by-nine laptop, I immediately noticed and enjoyed the extra vertical screen space in places like web browsing, Twitter, and especially document writing.
I liked the Surface Pen, but it wasn’t essential and was regularly either left attached to the Surface’s magnetic left edge or in the pencil slip in my messenger bag. It did get some use when not on-deadline for projects, though, and being able to handwrite things into Windows instead of the typical typing input was a welcome and refreshing change.
Most importantly, I loved the keyboard. My Zenbook’s keyboard had become stiff, and some keys had flat-out stopped working (I’m looking at you, ANY of the F# keys and Tab keys…) and the Type Cover had smooth, shallower actuations on each key, and a nice level of backlighting to be readable in dark spaces, but not blinding enough to try typing by the light of the screen. And speaking of…
That screen! Specifically the brightness! I hadn’t noticed it the previous day when I first set up the Surface Pro, but I found out in the variably-lit office that the Surface Pro supported an option for dynamic display brightness based on ambient light levels, and it regularly kept the display decently bright but still brilliantly-colored. The Surface Pro came with two display calibrations out of the box: sRGB (which is aimed more at accuracy, rather than enhancement) and Enhanced (which amped up the color reproduction to OLED-like levels of contrast between light and dark space in images).
And Now?
Now, four months later, my Surface Pro is still glowing like the day I took it out of the box and first snapped on the keyboard. That’s due to a number of things, the most major being I’m gentle with my technology, regardless of price. The hardware of the new Surface Pro, as with the Surface Studio that Microsoft debuted last fall, has ‘fallen aside and let the screen be the focus,’ and that has been the best experience I’ve had to date on any Windows-powered device. The screen lights up, the device unlocks with Windows Hello biometric authentication, and I’m back to whatever I was doing before I flipped the Type Cover shut or pressed the power/sleep button.
There’s another aspect of my time using the new Surface Pro that may differ from some general users or professional reviewers: I used it every day, lengthily. I still do, as a matter of fact. The new Surface Pro is my primary device, even if I’ve got my desktop PC powered on in the other room. I choose to use my Surface over any other device because it lets Windows 10 and all of my programs just work, however I want to use them. Traditional trackpad-and-keyboard web browsing and Office use? Check. Keyboard-detached landscape orientation to browse Twitter or catch up on the news? Check. Propped up at an angle on the kickstand to catch up on a show over a meal, or in an armchair? Check. Portrait orientation to read a particularly long article or write something by hand? Check.
I’m admittedly a light user, though; no heavy computation, no high power requirements, and definitely no CPU-intensive software development environments, but I use every part of the Surface Pro except the pen in all the ways Microsoft touts that you could. I’m no artist either, so there’s not much angled shading going on, but there is some extremely accurate cursive that somehow is recognizable as English, and the Surface Pen outputs that digital ink gloriously consistently, and I enjoy writing as much as I do typing, if not more.
And Yet
There were flaws when the new Surface Pro launched four months ago, and there are still flaws now. Some are the fault of the hardware maker, some are the fault of the software maker, and some are the fault of the nature of the technology industry as a whole. The biggest issue the new Surface Pro faced at launch was numerous reports of excessive backlight bleed. The panel is an LCD rather than an OLED or IGZO display, and I believe my device suffered this as well, though I never had reason to fret over it as it is noticeable when looking for it, rather than in everyday use.
The most glaring problem I myself face, however, is what’s known as a hotspot. Not the Wi-Fi kind for on-the-go Internet access, but the kind where a spot on the display will have distorted colors and be generally bad to look at. I’ve got one, and I hate it. It’s relatively new (only about a month old) but it’s a bad sign that it appeared within the first year, let alone the first half-year.
Now to the more broad-stroke problems of Microsoft’s new Surface Pro, and I’ll just number them off right now: 1) the name, 2) the unintentional hype, and 3) the timing of announcement and release. I’m not going into any of these, save the latter, because it ties into my final qualm with the new Surface Pro: the flawed nature of the hardware technology industry as a whole.
What I mean by that is that there is literally no good time to buy a new device. There are times when you need to, like when your current one no longer works or is incompatible with new or necessary software and features. There are also times when you simply want to upgrade to the new best thing on the market. In the latter situation, you’ll find that it’s impossible to stay on top of the performance pile for long, as technology and those that innovate on it are ceaselessly moving forward, making things faster, stronger, lighter, and, ideally, better. That makes Microsoft’s choice to put Intel’s seventh-generation of Core processors in the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop a necessary bad choice. The Surface Pro 4 was a year and a half old and Microsoft still hadn’t made a move into the traditional laptop market. If it had waited until now, when in announced an Intel eighth-generation-powered Surface Book 2, people would’ve been upset with what they got, because even in the time it took to release a new Surface Pro, it doesn’t feel very ‘new.’
Wrapping Up
I don’t hate the new Surface Pro. I don’t need the pen, and I wish the Type Cover was included. The important thing, however, is that I don’t regret the investment in a device I plan to use for the next five years. More importantly, I would feel confident buying the new Surface Pro when I did knowing everything that I do now. I’m neither a Surface fanboy, nor a MacBook hater, but I understand why Surface brand loyalty exists and is so strong, but is also as fickle as it has been since the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop landed on store shelves four months ago.
Now, it’s time for the big moment. Do I recommend someone buy the new Surface Pro, Type Cover, and Surface Pen if they’re shopping for a new laptop or 2-in-1 hybrid-style device? No; I’d say consider it, and look at what kind of features Microsoft thinks work best to show off Windows 10, but it’s not the best device, empirically and subjectively. There are devices that do identical tasks the same, if not maybe better, for less money, or offer more features or accessories for the same price.
All of that isn’t to say it’s a bad device in the least. If you like the design, or want first-party accessories and support, or just like saying you’re a Surface owner, then it’ll be a great upgrade for you. Microsoft Surface is meant to show what a single OS can do given a specific hardware form. For the new Surface Pro, it’s done just that, and very well.
Thoughtnet 