Microsoft Surface Pro

After reviewing Microsoft's Surface RT, today it is the turn of its older sister: the Surface Pro, a tablet with all the power of Windows 8 and with which we already had a first contact ago weather.

On paper we have a good beast with 4 GB of RAM, an i5 processor and an Intel HD 4000 graphics card. And I can tell you that all this translates into outstanding performance, fluidity and power. The 10.6-inch 1080p screen is the other notable aspect of the Surface Pro, the first thing that jumps out at you. As for the differences with the Surface RT, practically all of them are related to the fact of having Windows 8 and not RT: deeper, heavier, less battery life... Otherwise it is the same, including the Type and Touch Cover keyboards that do not I will review again.

Surface Pro Design & Build

Broadly speaking, the Surface Pro has the same design as the Surface RT, only deeper. All the buttons are in the same positions, and the only thing that changes is the USB port on the left side.

Being an x86 architecture, the Surface Pro has to dissipate more heat than the RT. At Microsoft they have solved this in a rather ingenious way: instead of making an opening for the fan, they have made a continuous slot in the sides to expel the hot air.

The separation between the back and the side is the ventilation slot.

As expected, the tablet also weighs more and it is not very plausible to carry it in your hands for a long time. It is lighter than a laptop, yes, but not much. Still, I don't think this is where Microsoft wants to differentiate itself.

Microsoft has generally paid attention to detail in the construction of the Surface Pro, but not as much as on the RT. Some parts of the tablet give the impression of being slightly out of place, such as the upper side or the Kickstand, which protrudes slightly at the edges. Luckily, the latter is still just as robust and useful, with the same flaw of not being adjustable.

One of the things I was hoping would improve with the Surface Pro was the charger connector. The wider sides make it easier to clip on first time, but it still gets stuck unloaded from time to time.

High resolution display, but…

Surface Pro's screen is stunning. At 1080p and 208 ppi, the pixels are practically negligible. Even being myopic I have barely been able to distinguish them with the screen a few centimeters away. Videos and pictures look absolutely great.

Now then, there is a problem. With such high density, Windows 8 has to make the interface bigger so it doesn't look too small. This leads to the fact that, aesthetically, the system is not the same on the Surface Pro as it is on a normal computer. Enlarging fonts are slightly different, logos are slightly different…

Too much pixel density leads to some apps not looking quite right.

That wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that sometimes there are applications that don't quite adapt well, for example Steam or some installation wizards. When scaling images or old interfaces, they appear a bit blurry and not quite right.

For example, testing Firefox shows that it is not adapted, and probably the same thing happens with other programs. You can see in the screenshot the difference in rendering between Internet Explorer and Firefox. While the first adapts the web to the screen size, the second does not and leaves everything too small.

But Firefox isn't the only application where this happens. In Steam or in installation wizards, for example, the interface is blurred by the expansion. The only solution is to restore the scaling to 100%, but then the interface becomes unmanageable with your fingers.

As I told you, I think this is not a Microsoft problem but rather that of the developers, so we just have to wait for them to adapt to these high-density screen tablets. Luckily, Modern UI apps look exactly the same on Surface Pro as they do on other computers, so there's no need to make any changes there.

As for the tactile part, I have no complaints. Precise and instant control, and fingers glide seamlessly across the screen. Also, finger marks are very easily removed with a dry cloth.

The digital pen, a very useful addition

With the Surface Pro comes the Surface Pen , a stylus that is quite useful. It's basically a pointer that allows us to select things and double-click the button in the middle of the pen.

That same button is used to stick it to the side of the tablet: it is magnetic and stays hooked in the hole of the battery charger.

It's not essential, but it doesn't hurt if you want to write by hand or write down mathematical formulas. Text recognition works surprisingly well in both cases, even if you have handwriting as horrible as mine.

As a curious detail about this aspect, you can write with your hand resting on the screen, as if it were a piece of paper, without any strange clicks: Surface Pro disables touch input with body parts when it detects the digital pen.

Multimedia: camera, microphones and speakers

Let's keep going over the hardware of Surface Pro, now with the multimedia part. As expected, it does not stand out at all in the recording part. The rear and front cameras have poor resolution, and the microphone quality leaves a lot to be desired. They will help us to make a quick video call and little else.

Recording: mediocre. Reproduction: excellent.

What has pleasantly surprised me are the speakers. The sound quality is very good even at maximum volume, there is no appreciable distortion and the bass sounds much better than on a tablet.

Also, by having them located on the sides, Surface Pro can output sound in stereo without problems. This, together with the quality of the screen, make watching a movie or series here a real wonder.

Battery: enough for what it offers

The battery on the Surface Pro isn't great. It lasts about four to five hours on average with intensive use of applications: more than a laptop but less than a tablet. If we put a lot of processor and graphics load on it, such as playing powerful games, it lasts an hour at most.

If we take into account what this tablet has and what we can do with it, 4-5 hours seems like a lot, we must bear in mind that it is a laptop after all. What is clear is that, if we want to carry it all day, we will have to have the charger at hand.

When it comes to charging time, Surface Pro fully charges in two hours. And a very interesting detail of the charger: it has a USB port so that we can charge our mobile or any other gadget at the same time, without the need for additional adapters.

Surface Pro, all the power of Windows 8

Surface Pro Advantage 1: I can program with Visual Studio.

Let's go to the software now. Let's remember that the Surface Pro has Windows 8 in its guts, so it can run any program we put on it. Doing tests, I have to say that it has behaved really well .

As a computer scientist, the first thing I did was download Visual Studio. And sure enough, it works great and compiles anything you throw at it (and pretty fast). You can even debug Windows Phone applications, as you can see in the photo.

The other thing I've done as soon as I got my hands on it has been downloading Steam and a few games, including Portal 2 and CoD: Black Ops II. I did it more as a test to see what was the maximum level of quality that the tablet gave: imagine my surprise when both games run at 1080p and in high quality without any performance or fluidity problems.

Surface Pro Advantage 2: I can play Portal 2 in high quality.

Surface performs perfectly even when we wouldn't expect it to.

As for power, don't think it's easy to get it to start going slow. I've only gotten a little bogged down when I've hit 4GB RAM with Visual Studio compiling, a game running, all Office programs running and heavy documents, and 200+ tabs open between Internet Explorer and Firefox. And still it was going pretty well. Even Firefox was fast!

Even though I know the Surface Pro doesn't have bad hardware, it never ceases to amaze me that it can do so many things with such good performance. It also has a lot of influence on what iOS and Android are used to in terms of power.

Surface's performance doesn't stop there. The fact of having USB 3.0 makes passing data to adapted USB sticks (the Lumia 920, for example) much faster than with USB 2.0. And if what we want to transfer are files over the Internet, Surface Pro is not bad at all. The range of the Wifi is very good, I have not found any problem and it has transmitted at the maximum speed that the network allowed.

And finally, the aspect of temperature. With normal use, practically nothing heats up: only if we put a rod in it will the fans start to blow and the tablet will be a little hotter, but not much. Also, when it is ventilating it does not make much noise so it is not very annoying.

Windows 8 and its touch interface

With Surface Pro I have confirmed something that was already quite clear to me since I tried some tablets with Windows 8: this is what the Modern UI interface is designed for and that Metro / traditional desktop duality that has been so popular criticized.

It's on tablets like the Surface Pro that the dual interface makes all its sense. "On a tablet like this, it makes all the sense in the world to separate Metro for the more leisure applications (social networks, news, messaging...) and leave the traditional interface for the most powerful programs. One ready to use with your fingers, and another to plug in your mouse and keyboard and do something productive. Two different interfaces for two different things, and all on the same system. Now, to finish completing it, things are missing from the Modern UI interface so that it can be used without problems without having to go to the desktop. The main absence is the Modern UI file explorer. And, of course, and as we always say, it wouldn&39;t be bad if the Windows Store had more useful applications that don&39;t make us miss the desktop (Dropbox, light versions of some Office applications...). It would also be necessary to improve the traditional interface a bit to use it with your fingers.The double-click gesture>Surface Pro, conclusions"

At the beginning of the Surface RT article, I said that tablets were not a very attractive product for me. However, I have to say that this tablet-computer hybrid that is the Surface Pro I love. I have all the power I need for a PC, and it's not too far-fetched to use it as my main PC – all it takes is a wireless mouse and keyboard and an adapter to connect it to a larger monitor. Whenever I leave the house or want to lie on the couch reading RSS, I just unplug it and take it with me. And if I see that I will have to write something, the Type Cover is placed on it and you already have a laptop ready.

With its power, the Surface Pro could even replace a desktop computer.

It is also clear that this is not a leisure tablet. If you just want to watch movies, surf the Internet, and little else, the Surface Pro isn't the best option for its price, weight, and battery.This is a tablet for heavy users who want more than just a toy.

Of course, there are some details that would have to be corrected in the Surface Pro. For example, pointing out that that opening on the right side is actually the hole for the microSD (at first I thought it was a speaker ). I also miss a second USB port, and improving the quality of the microphone would not be a bad thing.

Otherwise I find the Surface Pro to be an excellent product, a real joy to play, type, and work on.

See complete gallery » Microsoft Surface Pro, analysis (19 photos)