Microsoft Surface: RT vs Pro

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Surface ProFour months ago I bought my daughter a Microsoft Surface RT tablet for her birthday as a laptop replacement. Last month I got a Surface Pro to use at work (also as a laptop replacement). Having now used both versions of Microsoft’s first tablet I wanted to jot down a few of my own observations about the Pro and how it compares to the RT version.

Hardware

The Pro feels solid and well-constructed, lighter than a laptop but heavier than the RT and iPad (just over 2lbs). The added thickness, when compared to the RT version, is due to the fan vents around the outside of the tablet. The tablet gets very warm to the touch, but I only heard the internal fans kick on when doing something CPU intensive, like video editing. Moving the microSD card slot from behind the kickstand (on the RT version) to the side bezel is a nice change, but the switch from one video connection (HD video out on the RT, mini DisplayPort on the Pro) is confusing. The magnetic accessory spine connector is strong and the keyboard cover connects easily with a satisfying snap.

Pen

The active digitizer pen is a cool addition. It’s magnetic so the cursor appears on screen before the pen even touches the tablet. It’s smart enough so that when the pen is being used, multi-touch is turned off so you can rest your palm on the screen and not have to worry about accidental touches or drawing, only the pen point is used. This means, however, that the pen won’tt work on the RT tablet, which is the more traditional capacitive touchscreen like the iPad. Also, for some reason (security?), the pen doesn’t work on UAC prompts (when the desktop is dimmed). It’s nice that the pen can connect to the magnetic power connector on the side for storage, but you obviously can’t store it there when the AC adapter is connected.

Power/AC Adapter

The magnetic power connector is still frustrating, just like the RT version. It has the promise of being able to easily snap the cord and tablet together, but in practice this is rarely the case. I find myself constantly fumbling with the connector trying to get it just right so the white light comes on and the tablet is actually charging. Pulling it off is, of course, very easy, but re-connecting it is a lot harder than the typical laptop. The extra USB power port on the brick is a nice addition for charging a cell phone or other small device.

Speakers

The speakers are very quiet, even at top volume. I tried using it on a Skype call and could barely hear the other participants in a semi-noisy room whereas usually on my laptop I could have the speaker volume at 50% and it’d be perfectly audible. I had to use an external powered speaker plugged into the audio jack so I could hear the other people talking on the call.

Keyboard

The Type cover is much better than the Touch cover in terms of feel and use for actual typing. Both seem to suffer, however, if they are not on a flat surface (i.e., your lap) although the Type cover is better in these situations than the Touch (which requires a lot of pressure on the keys).

Sometimes I had issues with scrolling with a keyboard attached. I could start scrolling, for example, a web page in Internet Explorer with my finger, but then it would stop responding to swipes and I’d have to use the touchpad built into the keyboard. I also occasionally had issues where the tablet thought an external keyboard was attached (when one was not) and would not display the on-screen keyboard. This is less of a problem on the Windows desktop (as you can tap the Keyboard in the system tray to display the on-screen keyboard) but it happened to me twice during the Windows login screen where there was no way to get the on-screen keyboard to display. If I connected the physical keyboard, and then disconnected it, that seemed to reset something and then the on-screen keyboard would appear when I tapped in the password field.

Some of the more advanced keys are confusing to use, or missing altogether. For example, in the on-screen keyboard, there is no Print Screen, even in the full keyboard mode. Using the F keys, or things like Home, End, can be hard to figure out and I wasn’t able to find Insert at all.

Screen/Display

The display itself very bright (although I did not test in direct sunlight), but the glare/reflections on it are terrible. The kickstand only allows a single angle, unlike an adjustable laptop display. As a result, when it’s on my desk in the office it perfectly reflects the overhead lights. Luckily, there is no shortage of matte screen protectors available from third parties, like this one.

My biggest problem with the display is the default resolution (1920×1080) and scaling (150%). The scaling is necessary to make on-screen text easier to read in the traditional desktop, but it causes all sorts of strange display issues. After an hour or so of using the screen, I found myself suffering from eye fatigue and even getting a slight headache. I can only attribute this to the varying sizes of window controls and crispness of the text on screen, which is disappointing.

The worst part about the scaling is what happens when you connect an external display. On a decent widescreen monitor, the 150% scaling is way too big so you need to turn it back down to 100%. But then when you disconnect the display you have to crank it back to 150% again, which requires you to logoff and back in again. This results in an endless cycle of frustration if you switch back and forth between travelling with the tablet and “docking” it at work (for more about this, see Paul Thurrott’s “Surface Pro: Ideally unsuited for desktop docking” article). My solution to this is to run the Pro at 1366×768 and 100% scaling. This makes the classic desktop in Windows 8 a usable size and eliminates the need to change scaling when connecting an external monitor. It does mean I’m not running the Surface at its full HD resolution, but I prefer the less frustration over screen real estate.

Battery Life

By default, the tablet will go into Sleep mode when “turned off” but in my experience I found that my Surface would not “survive” overnight. If I turned it “off” before leaving the office (not connected to AC power), when I came in the next morning it was dead and needed to be charged. This is very unlike an iPad which can go days in sleep mode. I turned off Bluetooth to save battery power, tweaked the display brightness settings, etc. but it would seem the only real way to make sure the Surface will turn on when you need it is to power it off completely. Luckily, even when powered off, the tablet boots very quickly!

Apps

Since the Surface Pro is running the full version of Windows 8, every Windows application I threw at it (including iTunes) ran just fine, except for the display issues caused by the 150% scaling and resolution as discussed above. I learned that Chrome can run in Metro or Desktop mode which you can control under the 3-bar menu. It will normally remember the last mode you ran it in but you can switch with that option if desired (I preferred it in desktop mode).

 

Despite its flaws (and there are quite a few of them), the Surface Pro is a pretty decent, although expensive, laptop replacement. It suffers from the split personality of Windows 8 (am I a tablet OS or a desktop OS?) but if you ignore the Metro side of things you’ve got a solid piece of hardware with a great touchscreen running Microsoft’s latest software.

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