Microsoft's New Surface Pro Features Faster Intel Kaby Lake Processor, 13.5 Hours of Battery Life (thurrott.com)

On the sidelines of Windows 10 China Government Edition release, Microsoft also announced a new Surface two-in-one laptop. The latest addition to company's hybrid computing line up, the "new Surface Pro" sports an improved design, and houses a newer processor from Intel. From an article: The new Surface Pro features the same 3:2 12.3-inch PixelSense display as its predecessor, providing a resolution of 2736 x 1824 (267 ppi) and 10 point multi-touch capabilities. Surface Pro is based on faster and more reliable Intel "Kaby Lake" chipsets in Core m3-7Y30 with HD Graphics 615, Core i5-7300U with HD Graphics 620, and Core i7-7660U with Iris Plus Graphics 640 variants, which should make for a better experience. As with the previous version, the Core m3 version of the new Surface Pro is fanless and thus silent. But this is new: The Core i5 versions of the new Surface Pro are also fanless and silent. And a new thermal design helps Microsoft claim that the i7 versions are quieter than ever, too. The new Surface Pro is rated at 13.5 hours of battery life (for video playback), compared to just 9 hours for Surface Pro 4. That's a 50 percent improvement. urface Pro can be had with 4, 8, or 16 GB of 1866Mhz LPDDR3 RAM. The new Surface Pro is built around the USB 3-based Surface Connect connector and features one full-sized USB 3 port and one miniDisplayPort port. Microsoft also announced a new Surface Pen (sold separately), and claims that the new pen is twice as accurate (compared to the previous version). No word on the pricing but it will be available in all major global markets in the "coming weeks." The new Surface ships with Windows 10 Pro. (Side note: Earlier Microsoft used to market the Surface Pro devices as tablets that could also serve as laptops. The company is now calling the Surface Pro laptops that are also tablets.)

Comments

Too bad, was expecting some sort of overhaul

[Eloking]

Well, like Windows Operating system, MS has accustomed us to overhaul every two version so I thought the Surface Pro (5?) would have move changes. Sadly, it's simply a Surface Pro 3 v3 (and the Surface Pro 4 was the v2). Talking about this, scapping the numbering is dumb and now I will have a lot of trouble to find support for my "old" Surface Pro (the first). Well, not as dumb that Surface Pro One at least.

Better battery and CPU/GPU are to be expected, nothing amazing there.

New LTE support (only for latter model) are interesting, but data over LTE cost a little too much here to be useful (I something create a Wifi with my cellphone and and, after a quick web browsing while drinking my coffee, I had over 50mb used because of the habits of MS and it's program to automatically use the internet for anything.

Not including the pen anymore is a bad decision imho because it's the killer feature this product. If you're not using the pen, then buying this over another Ultrabook with similar spect at almost half the price doesn't make much sense. Also, the pen is too easy to lose (it took me about a year to lose mine) so I do think that MS should find a way to "dock" the pen on the tablet more firmly. The magnet that I saw on the Surface Pro 4 isn't enough. Oh yeah, and since the pen is quite pricey (50$-60$) + the keyboard at 130$, it's also a subtle way to make the Surface Pro a little more expensive that the labeled 799$. In reality, the real cost of the most basic Surface Pro (new) is really 1000$.

Still only one USB 3 port. MS seriously need to step down and add USB-C to their Surface product. Since it's pretty clear that the USB-C will become the new standard, I don't want my brand new Surface Pro to be obsolete in 2-3 years.

The i5 version is now fanless....well I don't particularly care about this and I usually prefer a laptop that blow hot air instead of a laptop that become hot itself.

Kudos to MS for calling them "Laptop" now. Compared to "real" tablet, the Surface Pro is doing a very bad job for, well, "tablet" uses. Hardware is good, but the Apps availability difference is just too big.

So, yeah, an "ok" upgrade but I'll kept my Surface Pro (the first) for now.