Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet is selling like crazy. This comes as a bit of a surprise, so big a surprise that they’ve sold all of their stock within hours of putting it on sale.
This is especially surprizing after Microsoft’s first tablet, the Surface RT didn’t fared all that well. Moreover, the return rates of the tablet are crazily high and whether this condition will remain the same for the Surface Pro too? Only time will tell.
In case you’re thinking of buying a Surface Pro yourself (because Surface RT is decidedly unworthy of buying) here are 5 things you’ll need to know or you’ll end up reselling this tablet for a lot less.
Hot, Thick and Heavy Design with a Low “Usability Range”
The Surface Pro runs on an Intel Core i5 processor with 4 GB RAM. As a result, this thing is a tank of a tablet. It is 1.34 cm thick and weighs in at 907g compared to 9.4 mm and 652g of the latest iPad 4. That’s a lot more in real life than on paper.
Also the kickstand on the back makes the tablet tilt in only one angle (i.e. the same whether you’re working on your bed or on a couch) so you better be get used to it.
Low Storage
The Surface Pro comes with 64 GB and 128 GB versions but due to recovery partition and built-in-apps, you’ll only be getting 23 GB and 83 GBs of storage in both the versions. There is a memory card slot on-board too to cover up for your memory woes but you’ll have to buy it separately and quickly.
Inability of Playing Hard-core Games Very Well
Being more of a tablet than an ultrabook, the Surface Pro won’t be able to play hardcore games like Modern Combat, Skyrim among others as well as any ultrabook. Also it will be really difficult or nearly impossible to upgrade this thing. Intel Core i5 sure will make this tablet run at a steady pace but this tablet wasn’t made to play anything more than just the solitaire.
Gimmicky Touch-Cover and Inconvenient Stylus Placement
The two touch-covers cost over $100 and the cheaper of the two is almost a gimmick with slow and inconsistent typing rates. The touchcovers also aren’t very comfortable especially when not used on a table. The stylus is quite amazing, I agree, but it is magnetically attached to the end of the tablet so it will get off very easily. Well at-least it comes for free along with the tablet.
Battery Life and Loud Fan Noise
Being a powerful tablet, the Surface Pro offers a good punch but unfortunately not a good battery life. 4 GB RAM and Intel Core i5 are obviously not power-efficient.
And thanks to this hardware, the tablet gets quite warm and hence fan needs to work constantly which makes a loud noise upon operation.
Final Words:
Being a tablet and ultrabook combo Microsoft has (unsuccessfully) tried to achieve the best of both worlds. At over Rs. 100,000, it can’t be called cheaper as well. With this price tag, you can easily buy an ultrabook, which will not only bring better usability but will also relieve you from the issues stated above.
If, however, you think you can live with these issues and pay the amount of money it takes to buy one of these, then I think this tablet will suit you well.
I don’t really want to be calling names to the author but almost everything written in this article is fallacy.
1. Its not Hot but Warm which is obvious because of ULV processor and not the small SOCs built into other tablets, kickstand increases usability when compared to other tablets that have no such options provided. Its a hybrid device and some comprises are necessary, why no one cries for the Nexus or iPad having low usability of Lap ?
2. For one its 29GB and 89GB, secondly its a full blown OS unlike other watered down versions available on Nexus and iPad, secondly if you compare it to MacBook Air which features full OS (MacOSX) and factor in the recovery partition that can be offloaded than MS Surface (128GB) will give you 7GB more than MacBook Air, its as good as every other laptop out there. You cannot compare a Mobile OS to Full OS.
Compare iOS to WP8 and Windows to OSX for fairplay.
3. Inability of playing hardcore games, are you serious ? How many times have you played hardcore games on your iPad, or Nexus tablets ? OK ok its a i5 processor than how many times have you played hardcore games on Acer Ultrabooks or MacBook Air ?
4. Gimmicky touch cover, its not gimmicky there is some inconsistency in touch cover (NOT on Type Cover) but thats more of a software issue and is expected out of new software which gets fixed overtime and also new technology gets time being used to, once you have adapted to it the accuracy rate increases considerably (a person typing first time on touch screen will also have low accuracy).
5a. Battery Life, yes battery life is low but you can’t expect anything else, Intels Haxwell processor will make things better later this year.
5b. Loud Noise ? I have no idea what really makes you think it makes loud noises, I have one for myself and fans noise is only audible when pushing the processor to the boundry and even than its not Loud Noise but audible fan spinning sound.
The price is accurate with pretty low margins of profit for MS, the tablet has real i5 processor which itself costs $225, there is a full mSATA SSD Hard Drive (not eMMC like in every other tablet) which costs over $150, the price is in range of MacBook Air and has almost same hardware as MBA but it can do bulk load more than MBA and outdoes MBA in screen quality and better selection of App and Hardware support.
Next time when you write something at-least use it properly and do not create useless posts to give wrong idea to people.
Also you should read the MS Surface Review by Anand Lal Shimpi at AnandTech, he is one of the most appreciated reviewer of technology and nobody questions his credibility.
And lastly I hope you would have enough courage to let this comment through and not discard it.
Too many things you said fall under ” can be fixed; can you do that on….?”. For the price this retails at, it is a no brainer why people would want it to be perfect. It feels like the same story that happened with netbooks.
#1. Can be fixed: That is part of each and every tech gadget availabe, iOS does not have plug and play support, WP does not have Notification Center, OSX crashes apps just by typing ‘File:///’ in any app (yes each and every app having a text field).
#2. Can you do that on: There is no device in this world that will do everything, comparisons are and should only be made to devices of the same class, author wants to do hardcore gaming on a $899 machine, do you even know how much Gaming Laptops cost ? There is no $899 device that can do hardcore gaming let alone Tablet/UL class.
You are also being as myopic as the author himself, if people do not want to spend that much money than why is Macbook Air a stellar success even though it has almost same specs as SP and lesser display than SP ?
Your analysis is way better than what has been described in the post. The writer should also know that this is not meant to be a desktop replacement.
I am buying it.
I just bought it with type cover and trust me its the best ever purchase. Prices in Pakistan are ridiculously high, i got mine from US in $1250. And this is quite lame article. I mean how can you write a whole article without even touching the device.
All who wants to purchase it and have doubts about its performance, just get it, or check the benchmarks of surface pro. At some tests it even exceed i7 Ultrabook processors, and with SSD beating right in center, cold boot time is 6 sec. Yes OSX cant get near it!
Your game play mention is crap. I play all sorts of new and highend games on my surface. SWOTR, LOTRO, DDO.
Solitare barely touches the processor.
I own a surface pro and I can say that this tablet runs games like Team Fortress 2, League of Legends and other common games very well without lag. The screen has a very wide viewing angle so the tablet lean angle never becomes an issue. If you think 2 lbs is hefty, you’re absurd. Also the fan only runs when running graphics intensive things and unless you’re in an entirely silent room, the fan is not noticeable at all. After using an iphone for years, typing on the touch keyboard isn’t hard at all and actually is just as fast as using a tactile keyboard. the stylus is spot on unless you’re using it at an angle near the corners but that’s easily configurable. I also get an average of 5 hours of battery life doing battery intensive things. Don’t let this article lie to you. This tablet is great.