As someone who works in IT and gave out Ipads, then switched everyone over to Surface Pros. I honestly believe the surface was a great device. I even took one to use for a few years to work from home. Use the dock and attach a keyboard, mouse, and some monitors and it did great keeping up with what I needed it to do. I felt like i was one of the few people that thought they were great, sadly.
I have a SP7 and I hate this thing. Mine is the i5 model so it’s passively cooled. Doing anything besides light internet browsing and this thing heat soaks so fast, then throttles horribly. Battery life isn’t very great either unless I’m doing very light tasks. And windows on a tablet still kinda just sucks.
The SP8 finally fixed performance with all models getting a fan so Windows Update won’t nuke the device for an hour to do a basic update. But with Intel battery life is always going to be compromised. If they put an AMD CPU in there those things would be really neat, but it’s Intel’s baby so it’s going to have at least some issues. If they could make a Surface Pro X that isn’t garbage it might be amazing. Or if they got the M3 CPU into it then it would actually be a useful “pro” tablet unlike the iPad Pro.
As someone who just had to basically retire their surface pro 3, I’ve always felt like they were great devices that really didn’t work well for tech journalists and so they got kind of unfairly punished for doing all the things they were doing for good reasons.
A great example was the power connector - they always got dinged for not having a “standard” one like USB-C, but somehow magsafe returning was amazing, when the surface pro one was already magnetic and it worked incredibly well with the dock.
The keyboards always got dinged since you couldn’t type up the Apple keynote from the audience but in reality no one I know has ever had a problem with “having” to use it on a table. The pen always got dismissed with some scribbles, going, “it’s ok but I’m not an artist” but never actually checking with an artist, and every year it gets “it looks the same but has a new processor” when realistically what the hell are they supposed to change? When they were thick and powerful everyone complained about the thickness, and when they were thin and slower everyone complained about the performance.
Like, there are actual issues - the repairability is garbage (apparently the newer ones are better?) , they’ve had weird hardware issues, the BIOS is useless, and the keyboard really should be included in some way, but everyone I know that has one really likes theirs.
About the pen I love my surface for college being able to hand write notes for myself then be able to type up assignments on a physical keyboard (my hand writing is terrible)
The units themselves are great, but the accessories are rubbish. My wife has had a Pro 7 for about 3 years. In that time she’s had 4 genuine Microsoft power supplies and 3 or 4 generic Amazon/eBay ones. And, she’s on her 3rd keyboard. They just stop working after a while.
I love the Surface Pro 2 I had, unfortunately the charger stopped charging so now it’s a big, thicc placemat. Tablet with a full OS and detachable keyboard was my dream since about a decade before any of them existed. Similar to how the Steamdeck was my dream gaming device for a decade before the switch even existed. Now if only I could afford one…
As someone who works in IT and gave out Ipads, then switched everyone over to Surface Pros. I honestly believe the surface was a great device. I even took one to use for a few years to work from home. Use the dock and attach a keyboard, mouse, and some monitors and it did great keeping up with what I needed it to do. I felt like i was one of the few people that thought they were great, sadly.
I have a SP7 and I hate this thing. Mine is the i5 model so it’s passively cooled. Doing anything besides light internet browsing and this thing heat soaks so fast, then throttles horribly. Battery life isn’t very great either unless I’m doing very light tasks. And windows on a tablet still kinda just sucks.
The SP8 finally fixed performance with all models getting a fan so Windows Update won’t nuke the device for an hour to do a basic update. But with Intel battery life is always going to be compromised. If they put an AMD CPU in there those things would be really neat, but it’s Intel’s baby so it’s going to have at least some issues. If they could make a Surface Pro X that isn’t garbage it might be amazing. Or if they got the M3 CPU into it then it would actually be a useful “pro” tablet unlike the iPad Pro.
As someone who just had to basically retire their surface pro 3, I’ve always felt like they were great devices that really didn’t work well for tech journalists and so they got kind of unfairly punished for doing all the things they were doing for good reasons.
A great example was the power connector - they always got dinged for not having a “standard” one like USB-C, but somehow magsafe returning was amazing, when the surface pro one was already magnetic and it worked incredibly well with the dock.
The keyboards always got dinged since you couldn’t type up the Apple keynote from the audience but in reality no one I know has ever had a problem with “having” to use it on a table. The pen always got dismissed with some scribbles, going, “it’s ok but I’m not an artist” but never actually checking with an artist, and every year it gets “it looks the same but has a new processor” when realistically what the hell are they supposed to change? When they were thick and powerful everyone complained about the thickness, and when they were thin and slower everyone complained about the performance.
Like, there are actual issues - the repairability is garbage (apparently the newer ones are better?) , they’ve had weird hardware issues, the BIOS is useless, and the keyboard really should be included in some way, but everyone I know that has one really likes theirs.
About the pen I love my surface for college being able to hand write notes for myself then be able to type up assignments on a physical keyboard (my hand writing is terrible)
maintenance and repair is a nightmare on these things. i wouldn’t trust anyone to take care of these things.
you made a perfectly valid decision, having any laptop is better than trying to use an ipad for anything besides clash of clans and a web browser.
i would probably have given out thinkpads or those yoga models that can transform into a tablet.
The units themselves are great, but the accessories are rubbish. My wife has had a Pro 7 for about 3 years. In that time she’s had 4 genuine Microsoft power supplies and 3 or 4 generic Amazon/eBay ones. And, she’s on her 3rd keyboard. They just stop working after a while.
I love the Surface Pro 2 I had, unfortunately the charger stopped charging so now it’s a big, thicc placemat. Tablet with a full OS and detachable keyboard was my dream since about a decade before any of them existed. Similar to how the Steamdeck was my dream gaming device for a decade before the switch even existed. Now if only I could afford one…
Big fan of surface pro here too, so Linux compatible. Using them for years. Decent battery too.