All Things Surface Pro 4

JustinL

Hi Chattoe, so far so good but I haven't used it long enough to really comment. Give me a few days and I'll let you know. Initial impressions are build quality is superb, screen is gorgeous, excellent colour rendition and no dreaded adaptive brightness so far! Trackpad is fine though nowhere near as good as apple and the keyboard is fine. No coil whine and no excessive fan noise, hardly been on though I haven't pushed it yet!

Jon12345

Regarding battery life, I found this: Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book sleep battery drain could be because of Windows Hello

Some people think if you turn Windows Hello off, battery life on sleep shoots up.

cabanatuan

Quality

gangzoom

We've just decided to replace my wifes dying MacBook Air 2008 with a i5 Surface Pro.

I've only used Macs since the days of the MacPlus, have never spend a single £ on a Windows 'PC' ever....So my biggest concern with the Surface Pro is Windows OS. But from the hardware view it beats everything else we looked at. The new Macbook is just a thinner air - nice, but nothing new or innovate. The iPad Pro is great....expect its hindered by iOS, which is simply useless for any serious 'pro' work. I've tried using various document managers on our iPads (iPad 2  iPad4), but they just don't have enough flexibility, not when we're having to deal with documents that need to be sent/shared with half a dozen authors all running various different versions of Word, and document version control is paramount.

My wife uses the Air to produce 4000-5000 word scientific manuscripts, mainly using Word, Excel, SPSS, Endnotes, and Illustrator, with all the apps runnings at the same time quite often. At home the Air is plugged into a 21 inch screen   keyboard/mouse. The Surface Pro will be treated the same way at home. But the Surface Pro will offer more portability, and personally I find the form factor truly exciting

I'm now looking long and hard at my Retina MacBook Pro, despite it been only 1 year old, it feels/looks very very outdated compared to the design of the Surface Pro...The fact you can spec up the Surface to nearly the same as my MacBook Pro is frankly crazy!!

For us the Surface Pro is very much a Laptop replacement, I cannot see us using it to 'consume' media. The iOS interface is perfect for watching videos/browsing the web, cannot see Windows OS been quicker.

We're going to the sates in Jan, so planning to pick up a Surface Pro than, hopefully with some discounts post Xmas.....Never thought I would be so excited at the prospect of owning a Windows Machine

chukwe

Hi gangzoom,

For your\wife need, why do you think the SP4 beats the macbook air in terms of hardware?

I know the SP4 comes with the new Skylake CPU, but the different in performane with the previous CPU will be unnoticeable.

gangzoom

^^ Purely the form factor. The Air is fine hardware wise, but the 'tablet' function of the Surface   pen   touch screen just makes it so much more portable and versatile on the move.

If nothing else the Surface appears to have finally delivered the whole 'laptop into a tablet' promise. The iPad pro I really like, but it's held back by iOS, which is great for a consumer OS but for proper 'work' stuff is just too constrained

chattoe

I'm sorry but I disagree on no way does the surface fill the promise of being a tablet in my opinion. Battery life on a tablet is much better and Windows 10 tablet mode is in no way intuitive plus there is a massive lack of apps.

As a laptop how ever it's brilliant.

I took mine back on Saturday which is a shame as it didn't do what I wanted it to do for my uses. It's a lovely well built device though

cabanatuan

what apps are you missing?

IMO apps are better utelised in a mobile device. Stuff like facebook, twitter have terrible mobile/tablet apps imo and the websites offer better UI and features.

Evernote works far better in desktop mode too vs the mobile versions.

i also prefer yooutube.com vs youtube app. For multi media content, things lile VLC or classic media players are amazing as well as the desktop spotify version being way superior then the mobile version.

What apps you missing?

chattoe

The Facebook app is terrible on Windows 10, there's no YouTube, sky sports, sky go, bbc news, synology apps these are just a few. Yes I know you'll say you can go to the site etc but it's just ease of use I like the layout they are fast and have other features built into the apps you don't get on the website, for me a tablet is supposed to make tasks easier and more enjoyable the surface as a tablet does not do that for me.

gangzoom

But we're buying it to replace a laptop, not the iPads we have. At £900  after speccing up its not aimed at the same market as a £300 iPad.

Cannot wait to get ours