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Surface Go Reviews Are All Over the Place (arstechnica.com)
The reviews for Microsoft's Surface Go tablet are in, and they're all over the place. While the press generally agrees that the processor is slow and can only handle light tasks, such as browsing and mail, there are mixed conclusions as to whether or not the 10-inch, $399 tablet is worth buying. Ars Technica's Peter Bright summarizes: So, should you buy one? That's hard to say. Mashable was a fairly unequivocal "no:" for light productivity, a Chromebook or iPad does the job for less money, and the performance is too problematic for anything much beyond that. On the other side of the coin, Windows Central reckoned that "as a mini-PC [Surface Go] is about as good as you can get," and Ed Bott said, "It's the best cheap PC I've ever used." Gizmodo called it the "perfect representation of what laptops at this price should be."
For everyone else, it depends. TechCrunch says that it's worth a look, but there's no shortage of competition around this price point. Acer and Lenovo, among others, offer decent systems that are a bit cheaper. PCWorld concludes that, if you want a tablet, get an honest-to-god tablet (which is to say, an iPad) rather than a system with Windows 10. But if you want something small and light and might just need the full flexibility of a PC, Go is the system to go for. Engadget acknowledged that the Go is "full of compromises" but that, as a "secondary device," the keyboard and software compatibility give it the edge over other tablets. The Verge concludes similarly: it's "probably not the right thing to be your only computer," but it could have a "real place" as a secondary machine. And VentureBeat took a similar line: if you really want the flexibility of a two-in-one, "you're unlikely to find anything better," but if you want either a laptop or a tablet, "you'll find better options for less." As a refresher, the Surface Go features a 10-inch touchscreen display with a 1800x1200 (217 PPI) resolution and 3:2 aspect ratio, an Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y Kaby Lake processor with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage via a SSD (the 64GB eMMC variant features 4GB of RAM), integrated Intel HD Graphics 615, and "up to 9 hours" of battery life. The base model is just $399, compared to the $549 model with 128GB/8GB RAM.
Not when I can get one of these for that price or this if I don't need a good GPU.
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Oh look at that. You can buy a non tablet, without stylus or touchscreen for that price. Please tell us about all those other things that are completely different you can buy for that price.
$399 for the tablet, $99 for the pen, $99 for the keyboard
It's marketed as more of a workhorse compared to the iPad pro and then proceeds to include something more restrictive to actual work: Windows 10 S locked down with the complete lack of software that is available from the Windows Store.
It's compared to the rest of the Surface line which is mostly made up higher end and quite capable devices, and like the original abortion of the Surface RT is nothing like it's brethren.
It's pushed towards education at a higher price class than most of the competitors.
It's being compared to laptops which it's not. It's being compared to cheap which it's not.
Honestly, buy a tablet, buy a laptop, or buy a proper Surface Pro, and if you're hell bent on restrictive cheaper devices there's a Chromebook that is right for you.
6 watt Pentium processor, Windows 10... what could possibly go wrong? I think Microsoft is going to sell quite a few of these, to people who want real windows on a real PC that is also a kind of heavy and slow tablet with mediocre battery life. But Windows! Outlook express (is that still a thing?) Microsoft Office, student edition or whatever. The list of compelling reasons why you need this gets really short, but hey, there are a lot of Windows users out there and just by the numbers game a bunch of them will buy in on the principle that it works exactly as badly as the aging laptop they already have, except slower and not upgradaeble. Booyah.
This may be the product that convincingly demonstrates the unfixable weakness of Intel Architecture for ultra mobile. Two cores + hyperthreading, 1.6 GHz. 15 watt TDP. Thirsty little bugger for such a low clock rate and core count. OK, it's going to work but the 4+4 core Snapdragon 845 at 2.8 GHz will absolutely kick its tail. Microsoft's problem: ARM Windows is not Real Windows. Ouch.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I actually bought one. I've been looking for a while for something that's lighter and has better battery life than my antique Thinkpad.
It wasn't cheap. $550 for the tablet part, $100 for a keyboard, and $100 to upgrade to non-crippleware Windows. You can actually switch to Windows 10 Home for free but it doesn't support Bitlocker. (WTF?)
Despite all the astroturfing I've seen about these online, no one else was looking at them in the store and the staff seemed surprised when I asked to buy it.
Because one of uses for these devices it to take on vacation/trips to allow immediate processing of photos without being concerned about leaving it in the hotel room or car.
sure people are using it like a laptop but it's a tablet
I'd flip that around: sure people are using it like a tablet, but it's a laptop. Please don't mind that it's even less ergonomic than an ultrabook, way slower, awful keyboard, falls over when you poke the screen. But it is lighter than an ultrabook, pretty good for a backpack or airplane dinner tray, and there is the tablet thing.
I can see this being mildly popular. Linux probably installs on it easily, without the developer mode annoyance of Chromebook. Similar price to low end Chromebooks but with several times as much flash storage, because Microsoft isn't primarily trying to force you into the cloud. The thing actually needs to act like a real PC, albeit with performance harkening back to the previous decade. I could see picking one up for a Linux install when they go on sale.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Spent a bit less than 399 to get a used Core i5 ThinkPad X230 in decent condition with 12GB RAM and 250GB MSata SSD, and a spare 9 cell battery. Granted there's no touchscreen and pen, but the keyboard is to die for
You sound like a dumb carpenter who bought all light tools because they were easier to carry. Small hammers, tiny saws, oh wait, kind of stupid huh. How much time do you spend carrying it around versus how much time do you spend using it versus how much it slows you down when you are trying to use.
M$ you get the review you pay for, surprise, surprise, surprise. M$ is left with nothing but it's desktop monopoly and it is killing that as we speak, due to insatiable greed, and that greed being pretty darned arrogantly stupid.
They watched the phone business die as a result of people being pissed off with Windows 10 privacy invasions and M$ demand that they be able to install what ever the fuck software they want on your computer when ever the fuck they wanted to and crash you machine to reboot to force it.
For portable computing I would not touch an M$ box, they are WOFTAM now, waste for fucking time and money. I only use M$ for fucking gaming, seriously, just for computer games and internet fun stuff, beyond that they are simply an unreliable crap supplier that can not be trusted. How much trust do you need to a toy operating system to play computer games and browse the web.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen