We spent much time with Surface Pro, drawing
many scenarios every day to see how it faced the tablets and laptops it will
compete against. To test its ability to increase productivity, we prefer Type
Cover than the Touch Cover that we focus on in the Surface RT review, making this
feel more like a laptop. And, in fact, it offers an acceptable typing
experience, helping you easier to reach higher speed than on Touch. Still, the
cramped layout and short gaps of the keys, along with the slow trackpad give us
terrifying recalls to the previous netbooks. It's better than 99% of the current
tablet keyboard accessories, but be inferior to the keyboard on the similarly small
ASUS TAICHI (which we'll soon discuss in more detail).
Unlike
its RT-based brother, Surface Pro both supports and includes a
pressure-sensitive electromagnetic pen
However, every app we throw into tablet runs
like a miracle, which is a nice change from RT. When we tested the device, we
tried to increase the productivity, but the lack of support for x86 Windows
apps meant we had no IRC client app and didn't have access to the set of text,
photo and video editing tools we use every day. Surface Pro has no troubles
running, and after 30 minutes of downloading and double-clicking on a bunch of
setup files, we finished some official work.
However, as tried, we could never get
comfortable in this layout. Keyboard slowed us down and its trackpad continued
to cause disappointment. Due to the lack of finger-friendliness in many legacy
Windows apps aforementioned, we frequently used a mouse - in this case a Wedge,
whose small size made it a good traveling companion for Surface. Without it,
selecting toolbar buttons and controls accurately often appeared to be difficult
and using photo-editing tools was impossible.
Fortunately, Microsoft fixed that
particular problem with the inclusion of a stylus, which uses Wacom technology
and provides 1,024 degrees of pressure sensitivity - just like Samsung Galaxy
Note II. There's no room in the chassis to insert the pen, but it attaches to
magnetic power connector. It's a pretty solid, but if you put the tablet in
your bag, you're likely to have to search thoroughly to find the pen later. The
pen works anywhere in the OS, but it proves to be best-suited to the graphics
and many other creative apps, including OneNote. It's not something we see
ourselves using every day, but it sure makes quick doodles extremely easy.
Microsoft
fixed that particular problem with the inclusion of a stylus, which uses Wacom
technology and provides 1,024 degrees of pressure sensitivity.
While we spend much of our test with the
attached keyboard, to test it as a tablet, we removed Type Cover and spent a
lot of time surfing the web. Using IE in this way is quite good, as it's
finger-friendly and fast, and of course in this way you're encouraged to use
all the great Windows 8 gestures, which become quite visual after only a few
minutes of use. Besides, the keyboard on the screen provides many useful
layouts, and predictive text and autocorrect functions mean you can type rather
quickly.
But we still have a problem: physically, we
can't get comfortable with the tablet. When laying it flat on a lap, it's very
good, but we can never find a good way to hold it in vertical position. With
about 2 pounds, it's definitely heavy, which is one major minus, and combined
with the angular edges that jam into fleshy parts of the hands, means this is
not a tablet you'll want to hold for a long time. With the stand, you can put
on a coffee table if you like, but that's not the ideal sofa-lean-back
experience that most tablets do very well.
Press
the power button and you'll have to wait for about 3 to 4 seconds for the
display to appear.
In addition, when using a tablet you'll
want to stay away from the traditional desktop as far as possible. We mentioned
the problems with text scaling, but typing is an also an issue. While there is
a virtual keyboard for the desktop, it's completely different from the version
you get in separate Windows 8 apps. It doesn't provide the predictive text or
autocorrect functions offered by the (identical-look) keyboard you have when
running an app with the tiled interface. Switching back and forth causes
unbelievable confusion and makes typing an actual scrupulosity.
Finally, getting into the tablet takes more
time than Android or iOS competitors. Press the power button and you'll have to
wait for about 3 to 4 seconds for the display to appear. Then, supposing that
you've set up a password, you'll have to type it in, and safe passwords are
rarely interesting on virtual keyboards. Login passwords can be replaced by a
simpler PIN or login Microsoft's innovative picture (where you type separate
areas of an image), but there's no way to protect the OS that only requires
credentials after a certain period of inactivity. If you're a kind of person
who likes to turn on your tablet quickly to check for new email or Facebook
messages every few minutes, you may find yourself forced to give up that habit
here.
At this time, few of the laptops and
tablets that Surface Pro will compete against can overcome those different use
cases quite as well as this tablet can, but in the individual categories of
laptop and tablet Surface Pro struggles.
