$500 128GB Surface Pro - Tablet/Laptop Hybrid

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This is basically a $1000 2012 Macbook Air + a high res touchscreen (with pen!) - a keyboard.

If you were thinking about getting a tablet/laptop for university, just get this instead. Use OneNote & the active digitizer (i.e. awesome pen) and you have the best note-taking device on the market.

But it's still a completely legitimate x86 Windows machine! Plug a keyboard & mouse into the full size USB 3.0 port and play Empires or some shit.

128GB isn't enough storage? Then get a $50 64GB microSDXC card and enjoy almost 200GB of storage in an iPad-sized package.

If I was still a student, I would be all over this shit.

Review

 

Haha no. Tablets are pure marketing, they can never EVER replace laptops. On my laptop I can go from taking notes to compiling programs to playing video games, with no performance difference. I don't expect a Tablet (even if it's running a hybrid OS) to accomplish all those task without extreme mediocrity.

The only reason you'd be all over it if you were a student is because you yourself have a consumerist nature to buy gimmicky gadgets, but it's so limiting, especially running the current shittiest OS, that it'd be better to drop the $500 on A decent gaming machine or on purchasing fast food.

 

Lulwut, why can't a Surface Pro "go from taking notes to compiling programs to playing video games"? It's literally the same hardware & software as any other ultrabook.

 

some guys at uni actually use a surface pro for note taking, and they seemed to be quite content with it. The digitizer seems to work surprisingly well. I still prefer my Samsung series 9. :D

 

The tablets seem like a better choice for school related work because with a laptop you will just distract yourself with all the games and porn you have on it.

They are more convenient when it comes to luggage and that helps a lot in a educational setting.

 

After a tedious rigorous scientific experiment i can confirm that porn works on ARM processors too!

 

Ok, me and my T530 Thinkpad are laughing at you. I don't need buzzword equipment.

And the Surface Pro uses CISC, have fun running out of batteries on a fucking tablet.

 

There's your answer. Ultrabooks aren't made for handling the software that I use as an engineering student. Tiny screen that's hard to read code on; a processor to slow to do what I need it to do. As a general student, it'd be okay, but as a power user, fuck that.

 

What CPU needs does an engineering student have?

 

One good enough to run the compiler and circuit simulators.

 

I'd guess a quad-core/duo-core with hyperthreading and a GPU optimized for AutoCAD.

 

So you would be perfectly fine with an ULV CPU, as i thought.

 

Oh, the venerable T Series, eh?

Well, I'm sure that 35W CPU is treating you well.

The thing is that it's famously difficult to tell the difference between a 35W dual core CPU and a 17W (ultrabook class) dual core CPU. They both end up running at roughly the same clock speeds.

I snagged a snippet of a decent CPU-intensive benchmark. Without looking at each bar, see if you can tell where the ultrabook CPUs stop and the "normal" mobile CPUs start.



I know what you're thinking, but you're not right. That jarring drop is the transition from 45W CPUs to 17W/35W CPUs.

You could be using an ultrabook and you wouldn't notice a damn bit of difference.

Don't give me that RISC/CISC horseshit. Now you're just sounding like a fanboy. That was patently disproven the moment Bay Trail hit the market.

Yes, the battery life is shitty on the Surface Pro 1, but not because it's CISC. It has shitty battery life because it's an entire ultrabook in a tablet. I expect future Surface Pros to use 7W tablet CPUs, not ~17W ultrabook CPUs.

What does a mobile power user need? A 45W CPU?

That's reasonable, adding on another two cores can add plenty of performance. However, I have a hunch that many power users like Grant or you are actually making due with much weaker processors which are effectively no better than the stuff in ultrabooks.

 

It's a i5-3210M in my current laptop, which is a bit better than the one in the Surface Pro. It's dual-core, 35W, but power draw isn't what I'm ever worried about, my university has outlets where I need them.

And I'd argue that screen size is just as important as processor speed for me. My laptop has a 17" screen on it, which is sufficient for my purposes, but it still feels crowded sometimes. God forbid I use an 11" screen for anything. Or use a laptop without a numpad for that matter. Plus, I need all my IO ports.

 

Whoa there bud, you're not just going to state that there's no difference between my 2.9 GHz clockspeed and the Surface Pro's whopping 1.7 GHz clockspeed. I don't even think sub-2.0GHz processors can even handle 4 year old games. And your statistics there are skewed, the lower numbers there are clearly running off of integrated graphics, that doesn't help your argument at all the difference in FPS doesn't come from wattage but actually from the graphics card. You of all people should know that CPUs, being the fastest part of the computer, wouldn't actually have made much difference in that benchmark, but since you seem content with just raw numbers, then I'll hand you over raw numbers.

My CPU benchmark vs The Surface Pro CPU benchmark. My CPU is rated in the same range as the i3-322x which were very viable processors for gaming.

But again, CPUs are the fastest part of the machine, 3 GHz dual cores (with hyperthreading) are pretty sufficient for gaming. It's the graphics processing that really matters, and the Intel HD 4000 processor that the surface pro has will never ever cut it. You can't even bullshit your way out of that one, Intel integrated graphics are not meant for anything intensive at all, they're really only meant to display your screen to you and browse facebook. I don't even think you can get 30 FPS in an outdated engine like source with an HD 4000. I don't even think you could get 30 FPS in a game with shitty graphics like league of legends, which is meant to run on Brazilian toasters. So it isn't adequate for gaming at all, so there goes that "feature".

No, it's an ultrabook with a touchscreen, it's marketed as a tablet because the word tablet makes money. But if they made 7W tablets, then it would seriously be useless except for browsing facebook and writing notes.

But back to the size of the thing itself, think of the Engineers like Candles and the CS students like me, we need to program, need to use modelling programs, bullshit programs like matlab, Linux, look up shit on wikipedia like physics equations. Things that need screen space, and things that need screen space require a big physical screen size. When I'm doing any work on my computer, I usually have the text editor/word processor open taking up half the screen, an internet browser taking up the other half of the screen, and my Terminal open if I'm booted in Linux. I don't even think I'd have enough screen space for one of those windows fullscreen if I was on a surface pro AND be able to use them adequately.

If you're a liberal arts student, then fine, the tablet is great, but if you're taking anything that requires mathematics, physics, or programming, you'd find a fat hunk of plastic like what I'm using to be a much more attractive choice.

 

I was wondering if you guys would impress me with professional machines and big 45W CPUs, but alas...

Grant, oh you...

First off, that was x264, which is mostly CPU-intensive, not GPU-intensive. I get that it's misleading due to the results measured in FPS.

This feels like a cop-out, but Passmark is shit.

It's a synthetic benchmark that measures the maximum output of the CPU if the stars align and they align for like six hours. Passmark spits out unrealistic results like Bulldozer beating Sandy Bridge and other goofy stuff.

You seem to get your jollies off about that 1.7GHz base clock, but the CPU will almost always run at 2+GHz unless it's experiencing a power virus (e.g. Passmark). That's the reason why Apple can put a "1.4"GHz CPU in its latest ultrabooks and still match the performance of last year's model. It will scale up to 2.9GHz in most realistic situations.

But don't worry, you spent the extra $50 on the buy-up CPU (Candles didn't, 2.5GHz peasant), so you get to wave your clock speed dick around. It gets you at least 2% more performance! If you concentrate, you might be able to tell the difference in your big boy engineering applications!

Gaming? What? Why aren't you drilling me on the lack of pro GPU driver support? That's where you need to hit me.

But about gaming, I'm just going to ignore your shitty synthetic benchmark again. You can play games like LoL, Empires and a lot of other stuff on an HD4000. I'm not going to indulge your trolling with an explanation.