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There are many words you could associate with Microsoft Surface devices. Innovative. Flexible. Smooth. But there is one word you absolutely do not want – and it's "affordable".
Yeah, you can buy a $ 700 Surface Pro, but you make a lot of sacrifices to get into it. budget, and you will still need to buy a surface pen separately. But what if you could have a Surface, a keyboard and a pen, all for less than $ 600?
Enter Surface Go. Starting at $ 400 for the tablet alone, this slender little Limbos 2-in-1 surface in a price range makes it attractive to the average PC statistic shopper, a person who Spends only $ 600 on average. Does this mean that Surface is ready for the masses?
Swinging down at the iPad
Recent iterations of the Apple iPad have tried to prove themselves as machines capable of productivity, with limited success. The iPad Pro is offered as a legitimate replacement for a PC, and even the basic iPad is now compatible with Apple Pencil. Cupertino engineers do their best to prove that the iPad is more of a tool than a toy.
Microsoft has the opposite problem. Surface sells on its reputation as a productivity machine, but Surface Pro is too expensive, too cumbersome and too constraining to work as a standalone tablet. The Surface Go is an attempt to change that. This brings the mark to a price level legitimately close to that of Apple. A basic iPad costs $ 330 with 32GB of storage, while the Surface Go starts at $ 400 with 64GB of storage.
So, can the Surface Go seriously compete with the iPad? Pick up the device will tell you. The datasheet says that it's slightly heavier than the iPad at 1.15 pounds (tablet only – the Surface Go keyboard is another half-pound), and it's about a millimeter d & # 39; thickness. The difference is hard to notice. Both tablets are light enough to be handled easily with one hand.
At a glance, the Surface Go looks almost identical to the usual Surface Pro. And I mean identical. Nothing on the Go suggests that it is a cheaper model. Even the crutch looks, feels and works in the same way as the Pro. Microsoft's decision to reduce the size of the now well-known Surface look is wise. It keeps the Go clearly separate from the iPad, despite the fact that it is almost the same size.
The Go is big enough to enjoy the content, but small enough to rock it with one hand while you tap on the screen with another. 19659011] There is a big difference between Pro and Go, however – the size. The Pro has a 12.3-inch screen, but the Go has a 10-inch screen with an aspect ratio of 3: 2 and a resolution of 1800 x 1200 (or 217 pixels per inch). Reducing the display also means reducing the size of the chassis, which is why the Go weighs almost half of the Pro. The overall footprint of the Go is exactly what you expect from a 10-inch tablet. It is large enough to display most of the content without compromise, but small enough to accommodate one hand while you press the display with another.
A USB-C port provides the only USB connection to the device, which is nice, as the Surface Pro does not have (but the Surface Book 2 does). It is joined by a MicroSDXC card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The power is provided by the same proprietary Surface Connect interface used by other Microsoft devices, and the Go will work with all the accessories that use it.
A Windows Hello compatible camera is also included to allow facial login recognition. This is a great feature for a tablet, and that many competitors, including the iPad, do not support it yet.
Is Windows ready to use?
The Surface Go design is certainly at the height of other tablets. l & # 39; equation. This is a Windows 10 device, and although the operating system has many touch features, the keyboard and mouse remain the leading citizens of the platform.
where the Go gets messy. Our brief intervention, which lasted about half an hour, involved a quick tour of regular productivity applications like Word and Powerpoint, as well as the Edge Web browser and the Windows 10 settings menus. Everything worked, but stylish this is not. We often found ourselves fumbling for icons three or four times before handling the answer we wanted, and some elements of the interface were too small on the 10-inch screen
These are not new problems for Windows 10 but annoying disadvantages. to frightening obstacles on a small device that encourages use without a keyboard. The Apple iOS, designed from the ground up with the iPhone and iPad in mind, is much more intuitive. iOS does not require users to struggle with archaic or improper menus that try, and ultimately fail, to work on both a tablet and desktop with a 27-inch screen.
We did not notice any signs of stuttering, shifting, or hesitating during my short time with the camera. [Windows, Windows] has advantages, particularly in the surface pen. It attaches magnetically, feels as smooth and natural as ever, and the smaller size of the Go makes taking notes easier while holding the device. Personally, we like the Surface Pen better than any other stylus, and it's wonderful to use it with a small enough tablet to be handled easily. We used surface devices like a tiny whiteboard, placing them against a table or my thighs, but the Go is a legitimate alternative to a paper notebook.
Microsoft plans to ship the Surface Go with Windows 10 Home "S Mode". This means that you will only be able to download applications from the Microsoft Store and you will not be able to use old apps that are not there. This will cause some hardcore Windows fans to roll their eyes because S mode restrictions are not popular. You can however disable the S mode without charge, and the change is completed in minutes
Below all, it's still a PC
Rumors about the device we know now are those of Surface Pro. be powered by a Qualcomm processor, like the recent "Always Connected PCs". In fact, Surface Go is much more conventional. It is driven by a dual-core Intel Pentium Gold 4415Y processor. The input model is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of SSD storage, while the more expensive models offer upgrades of 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Microsoft says that LTE support will eventually come, but not at launch.
Go with a Qualcomm chip would have been interesting, but I have nothing to complain about the Intel Pentium Gold. It's not a basic chip, but it's based on the same architecture, and it certainly delivers the performance you'll need to navigate through Windows 10 and accomplish most tasks. We did not notice any signs of stuttering, shifting or hesitating during the short time that I spent with the device. It looked like any other laptop, which is exactly what we want to see from an affordable computer.
However, there is a major weak point of performance. Surface Go is based on Intel HD Graphics. Although fast enough for everyday tasks or even for 3D rendering in applications such as Powerpoint, it's not a powerful machine and completely unsuited to anything more demanding. This is a big disadvantage next to the iPad, which can render beautiful graphics in games and other applications. The hands of Microsoft are related on this point, because there is no PC graphics hardware that could reasonably function in the Go, but this is no less of a problem.
This is the best keyboard you will find on a 10-inch device.
The battery is not ideal either. Microsoft says it's a 27-watt-hour unit that will be good for nine hours of battery life. This is not much, and I'm afraid that the Surface Go does not last a full day of work by eight hours without finishing it in the afternoon. The Surface Pro promises up to 13.5 hours of video playback, but only 10 hours and 15 minutes in our video loop. The Apple iPad, meanwhile, promises up to 10 hours of Wi-Fi use.
While the internal hardware is hit-or-miss, the keyboard, like a lot of Go, emulates the Pro. It has the same look and feel and is available in the same colors as the current Pro keyboard covers. The only difference, and it is important, is the size. A 10-inch screen size does not offer much room for keyboard layout, so the keys of the Go will feel cramped for most people. There is no physical way to avoid this.
Still, the keyboard makes the most of the situation, and beats snot on the keyboards available for the iPad Pro or the Samsung Galaxy Book. This is the best keyboard you will find on a 10-inch device, and I think you could use it to type a few thousand words with only minor cramps.
Even the trackpad is good. It supports Windows Precision Touch gestures and can handle up to five points of touch sensitivity, all in trackpad dimensions similar to those of the usual Surface Pro. It's impressive considering that the Go has less overall space to work with.
This small area is a big deal, but it faces big obstacles
My first reaction to Surface Go was skepticism. A surface of 10 inches? Running Windows 10? Does it really work?
I quickly prepared for that. The Go is an attractive device – certainly in a league above other affordable Windows 2-in-1. Its processor is good for the price. And the keyboard? We like that. It's easily the best we've ever used on such a small device, and this includes traditional laptops.
Still, there is a problem. Windows 10. Although we loved the operating system on my desktop, it is less useful on a tablet, and the small size of the Surface Go encourages use without the tiny and wonderful keyboard. We do not doubt that the Go will be a niche for Surface fans, and for companies that need Windows to install important business software, but the reign of the iPad as a tablet only seems not yet threatened.
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