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Surface Pro X



This is my review of the Microsoft Surface Pro X. Do you think this ARM-based tablet can compete with the iPad Pro or Surface Pro? Surface Pro X is a product which was clearly designed to compete with what iPads offer. This is a thin, elegant looking, magnetically attached tablet that has an ergonomic design that looks good with good battery life and still runs Windows 10 for the functionality that people want in a computing device. I am gonna start with hardware and then I will come to user experience.








This is not a super-light machine. It is slightly lighter than the regular Surface Pro. It has a bigger screen and thinner bezels and is heavier than an iPad Pro. The finish of this device is black anodized aluminium. I also found that some of the edges have got sharper. Due to the sharp edges, this device becomes prone to damages which generally should not be the case in premium Surface devices. Protect this stuff! I highly recommend a skin for this device. This is a good looking 13' screen. It's bright and sharp with a 3x2 aspect ratio. It is basically a screen that you would expect from a high-end Surface device.














There are speakers on either side of the screen. The media consumption experience on this device is surely enjoyable. It also has good connectivity(at least better than the iPad). It has two USB-C ports ( they do not support Thunderbolt 3) and a Surface Connect. I don't like the Surface Connect(Microsoft Connection Port). The AC adapter in the box uses this port but you can also use the C ports to change. I wish they would have put a USB-A port instead of a Surface Connect. On the backside, you have a removable SSD and a SIM card slot so you can use LTE anywhere. You don't have user-friendly access to any other hardware. The Wi-Fi card is Wi-Fi 5 and not 6.







The battery is fine. They claim a 13-hour battery but I think it is around 9.5 hrs. It is a respectable battery, similar to the iPad's battery life. The keyboard attaches magnetically like any other Surface keyboard. It doesn't work with other Surface devices. It has the same kind of touch and feel as well. One thing which is different and super-cool is that there is a hidden pen in the keyboard which sits in there magnetically and charges. They have designed it in such a way that if you put the pen upside-down, it will flip! The kickstand is like the regular Surface kickstand. It gives you a whole bunch of viewing angles. It's a nice design.


The webcam supports Windows Hello. There is a rear camera as well for 4K shooting if that's your thing. Let's talk about performance. If you are doing regular like YouTube, emails, browsing or Netflix then this thing is smooth. The whole experience is nice with the Windows 10 and multiple ports, native mouse and trackpad etc. However, if you want to run specialized applications like Photoshop: this machine cannot run 64-bit native based photoshop and it runs poorly on the 32-bit version and the performance is not good because the chip is SQ1. It is an ARM-based chip supporting ARM-based applications. This thing needs applications that developers have made specifically for this chip and right now there are very less of them. If you think you can play games on this thing because it has good graphics, Don't! This device may be graphically capable but just Don't play any games on this device.


Now, if you look at the benchmarks compared to the most recent iPad Pro. The Surface Pro is not a strong performer even with the Surface Pro 7 so iPad is on a different level right now. The value of a product like this is dependent on the ecosystem. There are very few apps for this device. Whereas, the iPad Pro with a rich ecosystem has thousands of really good high-quality apps from A-tier developers to C-tier ones. Ten years ago, this was not the case the iPad did not have any apps, Everybody thought that there was no utility of such kind of device. It just felt like a gigantic-iPod but as these things became more popular, developers found it worth their time and effort. That is the exact same case with Surface Pro X right now but because this is a 1000$ Windows device, I don't know if developers will find it worth their time,
effort and energy.


The idea of this device is cool, I like it, I love the tech here. It has a thin ergonomic design on an ARM-based tablet with good battery and all that stuff. However, it is hard for me to recommend this device openly right now. I would definitely get an iPad for a person having a 1000$ budget unless his/her goal is productivity or connectivity. Just wait for the apps focussed on this device to show up and then we can look into it.
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