The score was updated to reflect the increase in battery life after initial tests.
My 11th-generation Surface Pro consistently set my blood to a lukewarm temperature throughout my use.
On occasion, this laptop made my blood hot enough to boil over.
Of all the apps running on that desktop, a fair few of them cannot run natively on ARM.Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo
The prophesied AI capabilities are currently pointless.
Theres plenty to like.
I enjoyed typing on it with the keyboard on my lap and the screen on my desk.
The bright OLED screen makes it easy to last long in the chair.
Its fast enough for any task I could throw at it (at least compatible).
But the biggest issue is its price.
The Surface Pro starts at $1,000, but thats stretching the truth.
Thats a lot for any PC, but does the convertible versatility make up for it?
Considering its varying limitationsno, it doesnt.
The Surface Pro looks like a tablet.
It has the same power and volume controls as a tablet, but its not a tablet.
Microsoft calls it a flexible laptop, orin other wordsits a convertible that doesnt function well without the keyboard.
Windows 11 has no tablet mode, though the display will still reorient itself if you hang it lengthwise.
Its an excellent keyboard, to be sure.
Its not worth the cost ofa solid Chromebookjust by itself.
All Copilot+ PCs are billed as productivity-only devices.
Theyre not meant for gaming.
Eventually, youll find that one app you regularly use, like Blender, doesnt have an ARM version.
Occasionally, youll find apps like Apple Music dont support Windows on ARM at all.
So its not horrible, but its far from perfect.
We originally experienced very poor battery life considering the PCs original promise of a full day when browsing.
I wouldnt be so harsh if the Surface Pro and Copilot+ were merely an average Windows experience.
In its current iteration, its worse than what you’re free to get on other PCs.
Microsoft Surface Pro Design and Usability
Why Cant Microsoft Abandon the Surface Connect Port?
The review unit sent to me by Microsoft is a fine-looking laptop.
The blue color is as comforting as an empty sky on a clear day.
The machine feels solid, if a bit weighty, for what you get at just under 2 pounds.
With the new haptic touchpad, the keyboard offers a solid and surprisingly clicky typing experience.
And yet, I cant help feeling Microsoft has an antiquated sense of what users want.
The Surface Connect port remains.
As with any older Surface Pro, its an awkward laptop that doesnt feel comfortable on your lap.
Sticking the screen on the table and using the keyboard separately if you want to get cozy is better.
The S Pen helps a bit, making scrolling easier with nice, haptic feedback built in.
Microsoft could have modified its design to make it better and easier to use.
The Slim Pen doesnt have the versatility of theApple Pencil Pro, let alone unique features like Barrel Roll.
The keyboard and trackpad do the job well enough, but everything else is basically unchanged from previous generations.
That ratio is, of course, whats promised by Apples Mac products with its M-series chips.
The same can be said for Cinebench 2024s CPU benchmarks.
But thats not the whole story.
The Snapdragon X Elite isnt meant to be a graphics chip, and it shows.
I can compare the ARM-based chips with 3D Marks Wild Life Extreme.
The Snapdragon X Elite scored 6160, while the base M3 chip on the MacBook Air scored 7561.
Does any of this matter if all you want is a zippy, small productivity PC?
Not necessarily, no.
I was happy with the speed of Microsofts latest convertible.
That will depend on how well it supports current software.
Microsoft promises customers wont know when their favorite app or program runs on the Prism emulator.
Thats true for the most part unless you depend on PC performance for the app to run well.
Browsers from Chrome to Firefox and even Opera or Brave will work fine.
The Windows version of Arc, however, wont.
It wont install from the executable, let alone work on the Prism emulator.
I have a feeling these PCs might not have enough NPU to handle Photoshops AI model.
So its mostly good news, right?
Try searching for Apple Music for Windows or on the Windows Store, and you will not find it.
Apples music app does not support Windows on Arm; as we know, the company doesnt plan to.
Most apps that do run on Prism work perfectly fine.
However, youll still find apps hampered by that lack of support.
As good as it is for most applications, Prism is a nonstarter for programs that require extra juice.
And yet, Microsoft, in all its wisdom, preloads the Xbox app on Windows 11.
Do you pay for Xbox Game Pass on PC?
Microsoft restricts you from downloading your titles on the native Xbox app.
Instead, its relegated to cloud gaming only.
Remember howMicrosoft owns Minecraft?
Well, the game wont even download from the Microsoft Store.
Hitting the Install button leaves you with a blue spinning wheel of death.
That being said, nothing is stopping you from downloading your game clients and trying it anyway.
The folks atForbesdid a pretty good rundown of which games did or didnt work on ARM.
This is, overall, a good thing.
Plus, its being made completely optional.
The rest of the new AI features exclusive to Copilot+ are largely pointless.
There are also some new Live Captions features that automatically translate audio and video in near real-time.
The translated text appears as a big transparent window.
This AI image generation is happening on-unit.
you’re able to tell by how the NPU gets maxed out during generation.
Its bright and colorful, which is the best way a 13-inch screen can be.
I registered a peak full-screen brightness of 495 nits, which is pretty damn good for an OLED screen.
Its about the same full-screen brightness on the iPad Pro 2024 with its tandem-OLED display.
Theres also a surprising benefit to the Surface Pro with its webcam.
Either way, its supposed to be an all-day battery with a 53 Whr capacity.
Our initial video playback tests indicate this convertible can do 14 hours of endless YouTube video.
Overall, the Surface Pro should last you a full workday.
Is it powerful enough for everyday use?
Yes, youll have to excuse the performance on other apps that dont immediately have an ARM64 version.
Even then, the Surface Pro doesnt know what it is.
Its stuck in limbo between a tablet, a PC, and a newfangled AI gadget.
The performance is solid but can’t compensate for app compatibility problems and pointless AI features.
The dawn of the “AI PC” has yet to leave its mark.
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