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Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book Reviews
An anonymous reader writes: Anandtech posted reviews of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the Microsoft Surface Book today. They write: "After launching Surface Pro 3 with Haswell in 2014, Microsoft — like so many manufacturers — opted to skip the short-lived Broadwell generation of Intel CPUs in favor of making the larger jump to Skylake. Skylake brings with it notable increases in both CPU and GPU performance, particularly in the mobile space thanks to a series of optimizations and the use of Intel's leading 14nm manufacturing node," about the Pro 4 and with regards to the Book, "The basis of the Surface Book is that it is designed to be used as a laptop most of the time, but the display can be removed as a Clipboard for use with the pen. The Surface Book is certainly not the first device to do this, but it does some things in new ways that are pretty interesting."
Looking to do so...
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We're testing Skylake processors and Z170 chipset motherboards for moderately priced POS systems. The Core i5-6500 based system is 3X the performance across the board of an i7 based system from 2.5 years ago at 1/4th the cost. The relatively low cost, low power (read quiet operation), and performance are amazing. Putting these into a surface pro has got to be really awesome.
Greed is the root of all evil.
from all the reviews the hardware is exceptional, The OS is obviously personal preference, win 10 being probably the best MS based OS so far and unlike what the trolls and shills try to claim it isn't malware, people making those claims only hurt the rest of the Linux community as it makes us look like a bunch of clueless zealots.
the ms write off surface inventory was the old arm based stuff which didn't sell well. these things are selling extremely well. It is for corporate users that want full functionality but in a lightweight format. No it isn't for dev or gamers or regular users, you seem to be oblivious to a whole range of other users out in the world.
I'm forced to work with Windows 10, but the best OS so far? The letters of many programs are fuzzy, borders are not straight, everything looks flat and it is hard to see what window is active, computer has become slower than with Windows 7 and it is not easy to find programs installed on the computer. Meanwhile the computer stalls a few times a day which basically means it's time to go for a coffee and a chat because my computer becomes unresponsive while it is doing its high HD activity thing.
I don't like Windows OS but 10 is not the best MS based OS so far. I would even count it to one of the worst OS on equal level with Windows 95 and Windows ME. Especially the marketing campaign of the MS sales people who have convinced our bosses and marketing people to choose to become a Microsoft only shop. I even had to give back my Ubuntu developers laptop since the MS Cloud/Office Online/SharePoint crap can only be programmed with Visual Studio with a license that is exactly 8,999 euro more expensive than my Ubuntu developer tools.
Sales and marketing people blinded by the 'free Windows 10' thinking that handing their customers over to MS cloud platform will ensure their future. We'll become nothing but Javascript developers in the near future. And that's thanks to Windows 10 and its cloud shit. An attempt from Microsoft to take over customers from the middle man who might offer competing products and sell the online services directly.
Bad move and a bad time for me so it will be hard to find a new job for me at this time (my family needs me and my stable income).
We bought two Surface 3's for our sales guys. The hardware is good but not great. We seem to often have networking problems with them.
The keyboards are flimsy, and when you dock them, the keyboard interferes with the sliding dock. There is no power LED that I can find on the dock to verify i the plug pack is working. Plus Win8 is a dog, even on a tablet.
What surprises me, is whenever a surface is discussed, it is like an Angel of God descended. Is the hardware really that good, or is MS upping their shill budget?
46137
1. Developers would rather have lots of RAM and disk space, they can have those systems with better CPU for far less than what this thing costs
Very few developers need more than 16 GB RAM or a 1 TB SSD. Also very few need a processor faster than an i5-6300U. I currently develop on an i5-4300U with 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD, and never feel it is insufficient.
The extra cost is trivial for any professional use. If there is even a slight need for a touch screen for things like notes taking or drawing diagrams / UI mock-ups, then a few hundred dollars amortized over 2-3 years of use is virtually nothing. $500 of extra up-front cost comes to $20 per month even if you replace your machine every two years, or approximately 0.2% of the labor cost of a decent developer.
2. Obviously not for gamers, the system does not have powerful GPU
This is mostly true, as you aren't going to play Witcher 3 on either of these machines. But you could play plenty of casual games or even many non-cutting edge games. I assume playing Civ 5, for instance, would be fine on the Surface Book with a discrete video card.
3. Regular users now are moving away from laptop
... to devices like this. I am finally making the move from a laptop & tablet to a 2-1 when my Surface arrives next week. I will still have a desktop at home for gaming purposes, but everything but the video card is from 2011 since there is rarely a need to upgrade anything else now a days.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
As someone with a maxxed-out ThinkPad W530 they've payed ~$2.2k for overall (originally $1.7k then upgraded to a 512GB mSATA ($200) + 2 * 2TB SATA ($100 each) and 32GB of RAM ($200) aftermarket during sales) honestly the Surface Pro 4 is quite tempting.
The Core i7 version with the Iris 540 has equal/better performance to the Quadro K2000M my current laptop has as a secondary Optimus video card. So it has MASSIVE power honestly, "Integrated" doesn't mean it's any slouch for gaming anymore, this is a giant myth ever since the first Intel HD Graphics 4000 came out. Iris is capable of 1080p gaming just fine, and the HD 4000 can cruise-control even brand new games at 720p easily in my experience.
Honestly, $1800 for the i7 w/ 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD, or $1600 for only 8GB of RAM? That's a damn good price for a travel-friendly laptop for any business traveller. It's far more capable than most 'full fledged' notebooks I've had to cope with.
And at $900 for the 'Core M' version with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD? I'd still rather have that than the other $900 laptops out there. People with desktops seem to miss that you really don't need massive storage on a portable device. You need storage, yes, but most of that can be kept off-device, even for gaming these days I rarely have more than 50GB of games installed at a time as I uninstall anything I haven't played in a few months and re-download it later if I pick it up again.
So for the crowd MS is targetting? I'd call the Surface a home run. The 3rd version had massive and known overheating issues, but this iteration? I'm excited about getting one to replace my W530 at some point most likely.
- WolfWings, too lazy to login to /. in years and years.
It's still expensive, and the upgrades are premium prices.
That said, it's the only game out there if you want a sub-2lb machine (okay, 2.25 with the keyboard) and a digitzer pen. Everyone has a device that is cheaper than a surface, but none of them are tablet-able, have a pen, and weight less than 2.25 lbs with the keyboard.
I had a Sony Flip 15 because I wanted a pen, a dGPU, and I didn't think a 12" screen would be big enough and thought that . What I found was that I rarely used the GPU, a 16x9 screen is a pretty lousy form factor for taking notes, I really need something that can handle medium usage for 6 hours, and 5 pounds is just to freaking heavy for a tablet (or any computer I'm going to go "mobile" with). And while the 15" screen was nice, it still was so far from the 3-head setup I have at my desk it was almost as limited at the 11.6" laptop I had previously (Which was 3lb and lasted 6-8 hours on a charge). So I'm getting a SP4, and hoping it will do what I need. *fingers crossed*
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In the consultancy I work within, two platforms are most common: Macbook Pros and Surface Pros. There are a smattering of relative dinosaurs hauling around 2.8kg Dells or Thinkpads, but the lighter form factors are absolutely relevant in this space, which does require good grunt running a development platform. I'm still using my Thinkpad because even at 2.5 years of age it has plenty of dev grunt, but I refreshed into a Surface Pro which in most ways is faster, and when docked it's a delight to work with. I went with SP because it's like a grand less than a MBP and I prefer a tablet with a standard okay detachable keyboard to the MBP's keyboard of just wrong (don't smack me, I worked with one for two months and never stopped hating its keyboard). My SP I can slip into a small bag and take to presentations or do small engagements, or I can pack the dock and accessories into a backpack. At 16gb and 512gb RAM and SD, it's plenty for even the big iron engagements I've done in the past few years.
Very few developers need more than 16 GB RAM or a 1 TB SSD. Also very few need a processor faster than an i5-6300U.
If, by 'developers' you mean 'people writing Javascript web crap for some social media startup', yes.
I only have 16GB of RAM and 12 cores on my development machine, and it's trivially easy to exceed both when writing real code that does real work in the real world.
You need to grow up. There is plenty of real code doing real work in the real world that is not resource intensive. In fact almost all of it. Not everyone is writing the next great 3d game engine or supercomputer modeling software. Even most resource intensive software today is written to be scaled out on commodity hardware, so most development and testing can still be done on modest machines.
If you have trouble developing with 16 GB of RAM and 12 cores, you are either very bad at your job or you have an incredibly rare workload for a professional developer. Although I do agree it is trivially easy to exceed 16 GB of RAM and 12 cores on many development tasks. Writing efficient and scalable code is hard.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
... The letters of many programs are fuzzy ....
I think I can help with this one. Open the properties dialog for the executable (or shortcut) of that program. Click on the Compatibility tab and check the box for "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings".
I only have 16GB of RAM and 12 cores on my development machine, and it's trivially easy to exceed both when writing real code that does real work in the real world.
Of course it's trivially easy to write shit code that consumes crap loads of resources. Exactly what is it you are doing to achieve this that applies broadly to "developers"?
I am not trolling, I do not understand the target market for this costly laptop. 1. Developers would rather have lots of RAM and disk space, they can have those systems with better CPU for far less than what this thing costs 2. Obviously not for gamers, the system does not have powerful GPU 3. Regular users now are moving away from laptop. MS had to write off on Surface inventory recently as well. What does MS achieve from this Surface book and Surface Pro when it is not making profit?
I'm considering one at some point, for something that I can interchangably use as a laptop or tablet, whichever I desire. #3 is ideal. If I need something I can take around, w/o needing the keyboard at all times, but which has everything that I'd normally have in my laptop. Also, the pen that comes w/ it makes handwritten note taking easier than typing all the time. But you have a keyboard cover that fills in that need whenever it comes up.
Also it works with the full version of Photoshop, something you can't do with Apple tablets.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I have customers using them for point of sale in their restaurants. The Surfaces were cheaper than the POS terminals the vendor was pushing, the ordering system is web based and didn't require anything special and all of the printing and card swipe stuff they already owned just worked.
Original Surfaces (the RT version) also shipped with a full copy of MS Office and never had any sort of Malware issues (or games), so they are/were decent choices for actual productivity with a minimal management requirement. The philosophy behind the Surface is substantially different from the way most people see tablets. They were never meant to be media consumption devices and in fact that's something they're oddly bad at being.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Lemme guess... you live in New York City and don't know a single person who voted for Ronald Reagan?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Except that will leave the program running too small to see. The reason that option exists at all is because way too many Windows programs flat-out ignore the DPI setting and just assume everyone's running at the same DPI Windows 95 ran at.
You're basically screwed thanks to Microsoft's decision to go with a 150% scale factor - either these old programs are made blurry by scaling them up 150% using a bilinear filter, or they're way too small to see thanks to being 66% smaller than they "should" be. Apple's "retina" display being exactly double was genius in that it allowed them to just do a straight nearest-neighbor scale on "legacy" apps: old apps were still visible, new ones look crisp. Microsoft's 150% scale is only better in that it doesn't waste pixels that you can't possibly see.
Microsoft's highest achievement was stealing the late Steve Jobs' distortion field when they announced the Surface. It kinda went like this: "Holy shit, it's an iPad for Windows! And it has a kickstand we stole from Archos! Running a tiled window manager we lied about market-testing! And some people have to do real work on it, so we made up this floppy disaster of a keyboard, because hinges are so yesterday!"
Yeah, we see how that went. Sad missionaries from Redmond trying to balance a flipped-back keyboard on their knees, or seeking a flat table when they have to type... Truly, the specs of the tablet were good, but a limp, flaccid keyboard was just unfathomably stupid on a device intended to run Office. Sure, the thousands they distributed to employees at the time were greeted with interest, but after a few days with the floppy felt touch keyboard, more than half just got boxed back up and stuck on a shelf while something with a HINGE got used everyday.
And now they tacitly admit the floppyboard sucked, by claiming they invented/reinvented/discovered the hinge. Brother, please. How about just saying "yeah that was a screwup, but we've come up with something nice"?
I think not...(*poof*)
Yeah, we see how that went. Sad missionaries from Redmond trying to balance a flipped-back keyboard on their knees, or seeking a flat table when they have to type... Truly, the specs of the tablet were good, but a limp, flaccid keyboard was just unfathomably stupid on a device intended to run Office.
Sounds like someone who should have bought a laptop. The keyboard is for convenience and nothing more. It's quite a crappy thing, perfectly usable for typing and office type work, but as you rightly say you need a table. This thing is not a LAPtop.
Still suits for an incredibly large number of use cases.
I am not trolling, I do not understand the target market for this costly laptop.
Emphasis mine. If you're comparing this to a laptop you've missed the point. If you want a laptop buy one. They are cheaper and far more powerful than the Surface.
If however you want something you can use standing up, with a pen digitizer, that is light enough that makes you question if someone stole it from your bag, then you should start looking at a Surface and when you compare it to similar devices it is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.
And for the price it should be exceptional. Fucking spectacular in fact. You don't even get a keyboard despite the absurd premium of the tablet. Personally I think I'd wait for other manufacturers to catch up and avail of the substantially cheaper prices for equivalent performance.
This is the teacher/professor's laptop of choice. Most of the things they need to access are web based anyway; the most graphic intensive thing they'll run is using it for a video presentation. My husband is still lugging around his original Surface Pro and has decided to ask for one of these Surface Books as a replacement when it's time for a refresh rather than a Surface 4 or 5 or whatever number they'll be at then.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It falls short in both respects, while costing more than most decent laptops.
This may come as a shock, but l33t gamer laptop isn’t the only valid market for portable Intel based hardware. I’d venture to say greater than 80% of buyers wouldn’t know an i5 from an i7 if you poked them in the eye with it. They don’t need to, because the difference between those CPU’s doesn’t actually give them anything they’ll make use of.
The CPU & GPU are more than adequate for running the business applications, email, web browsing, etc. that most people buying this device will use it for. Going overkill on CPU/GPU needlessly increases the price, decreases battery life, increases cooling needs, fan noise, etc. Very few applications outside of gaming are actually CPU or GPU bound. Better to spend the money on more or faster storage or more RAM.
“Moar Power!!!” isn’t always the correct solution when building a portable device.
Well, this has fixed at least ten programs for me and I haven't experienced a program being "too small". I just resize the window - every program that I use accommodates window resizing.
And for the price it should be exceptional. Fucking spectacular in fact. You don't even get a keyboard despite the absurd premium of the tablet. Personally I think I'd wait for other manufacturers to catch up and avail of the substantially cheaper prices for equivalent performance.
Personally, I'm waiting for Apple to release the ARM port of OS X that they have (obviously) been working on, so I can get an iPad Pro for my "walkabout" computer.
So you don't use Google products then? Or apple?
Guess you like to live on the edge and run some random Linux flavor of the month? Good for you!
Leave Apple out of this. They simply don't do that shit, period. Or don't you read?
Prove me wrong, or STFU, COWARD.
Also it works with the full version of Photoshop, something you can't do with Apple tablets.
He was comparing it to a MacBook Pro, which is a full-blown Laptop. Your comment is irrelevant.
It's relevant to a discussion of the relative value of the Surface PRO. And the macbook pro can't be used with a pressure sensitive stylus.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Sorry if I implied that the CPU itself is 3X faster - by across the board I meant I meant the whole computer PassMark rating as reported by PerformanceTest 8.0 from CPUComparison.com for an i5 system (3210) and an i7 system (994).
I'm comparing three computers, the HP RP3000 POS system we used to sell, the Desktop I use daily and a new i5 computer we are considering to use instead of the RP3000.
The RP3000 uses an Atom Processor and its associated Intel chipset video and 4GB PC2-6400 ram and WD 500GB Caviar Blue HD
My desktop is a Core i7-920 2.67Ghz on an Asus Sabertooth X58 with an NVidia GT610 graphics card with 24GB PC3-12800 ram and WD 1TB Caviar Black HD
The new Skylake system is a Core i5-6500 on an Asus Z170M-Plus with 8GB PC4-19200 ram and Samsung EVO 128GB SSD
Here are the rating details:
PassMark RP3000 - 260, CPUMark 249, 2d/3d GraphicsMark 63/NA, MemoryMark 242, DiskMark 332
PassMark i7-920 system - 994, CPUMark 4916, 2d/3d GraphicsMark 435/158, MemoryMark 1436, DiskMark 664
Passmark i5-6500 system - 3210, CPUMark 7366, 2d/3d GraphicsMark 622/1092, MemoryMark 2713, DiskMark 4373
Conclusions:
The i7 processor and GT 610 video card on my desktop computer was not the highest performance model 2.5 years ago but the model that fit my budget at the time. I went back and checked the costs and I exaggerated that- it was 2x the cost of my i7 system and not 4x the cost.
The new Skylake CPU and Z170 chipset is much cheaper and faster than systems from several years ago.
For about the same money, the i5 system is more than 10x faster than the HP system most of our customers have for about the same cost.
Finally, the power utilization is shockingly low. According to CPUID HWMonitor, the power of the whole system is usually under 5 watts in the i5 system versus over 100 watts on the i7 system. Using BurnInTest Pro, I could not get the i5 system to draw more than 38 watts.
While its clear that Moore's law in the CPU category is in trouble, the overall system performance with the integrated graphics, DDR4 memory and SSD storage has made up for it. As an added bonus all this is been made available with low power capability suitable for tablet/laptop systems.
Greed is the root of all evil.
It's relevant to a discussion of the relative value of the Surface PRO. And the macbook pro can't be used with a pressure sensitive stylus.
And yet another irrelevant comment.
You have rage issues.
And you are an Anonymous COWARD, COWARD.
FOAD
It would help if you had an opinion instead of just randomly insulting people while hiding like a fucking coward.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
It's kids these days. They probably all got participation trophies and think they are special. What they needed was an ass-whupping by their parents.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Writing code involves needing 16 GB ram? I have yet to see an IDE that has requirements nearly that high.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I'd be really pissed if my device drivers were pushing my machine. Maybe you should learn what "real" code is.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Sure, the 1920x1080 resolution is so much better than 2736 x 1824 on the Pro 4 or 3000 x 2000 on the Book.
And carrying around a 5.68# laptop is so much easier than carrying a 1.73# Pro 4 (2.41# including the keyboard) or 3.34# Book.
That is a different class of product aimed at a different market segment. Some people are willing to pay extra for portability and versatility. Others just want the best bang for their buck. And neither is Right or Wrong.