Microsoft Surface RT review

The Surface RT isn’t all about entertainment, though. Microsoft also includes a copy of Office 2013 RT Home and Student with the tablet, and to make the most of the Office software you can buy a selection of optional keyboard covers to go with the Surface RT. These clip firmly to the bottom edge of the tablet with a series of magnets and double as cases, flipping around to protect the screen.

The type covers are available in two different flavours, and both are expensive: touch (£100, or £80 when bought with a 32GB tablet) and type (£110). The former, as you might expect, has touch-sensitive keys embossed slightly on a textured surface. It’s better to use on than we expected, and you can get up quite a speed with a bit of practice. It’s likely to take a little longer to get used to the unpleasant impression that you’re typing on a thick piece of cardboard, however. The type cover is much more usable, although still far from the quality of a decent laptop keyboard.

This is the slightly-chunkier and more usable Type Cover

Another design problem shows the Surface RT isn’t up there with a laptop when it comes to work. The kickstand isn’t adjustable, and holds the screen at an angle that’s a little steep – all but the shortest of individuals will find themselves hunching to look directly at the screen. At least the battery life is good, although 10hrs 47mins in our video playback test isn’t quite up there with the third-generation iPad, which lasted for more than 11 hours in the same test. To compound this, it’s tricky to use the Surface RT while charging, as the wall charger’s cable is only just longer than a metre in length.

The kickstand angle isn’t adjustable

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the quickest tablet around. In general use the tablet is as responsive as an iPad, with touch elements and web pages gliding around under your fingers. 1,106ms in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark is pretty impressive, but the moment you try to do anything serious in Office things start to chug a little, while demanding 3D games such as Pinball FX 2 didn’t run as smoothly as we expected.

What will make or break the Surface RT isn’t its hardware, however, it’s the operating system – Windows RT. At first glance this looks identical to Windows 8, with the Windows 8 Start Screen overlaid on the Windows 7-style desktop, taskbar and system tray. But because the Surface RT has an ARM-based processor you won’t be able to install any older, standard Windows applications.

To add software you’re limited to the Windows Store, which at the moment lags a long way behind both Android and iOS in terms of the quantity and overall quality of its apps; at last count there were under 20,000, but there’s a lot of dross and many major apps are missing, with no BBC iPlayer and no official Facebook or Twitter clients available at the time of writing.

Still, with Office thrown in for free, the Surface RT does have a lot going for it. It’s the only tablet we’ve come across with such a valuable software bundle, and the only one we’ve seen with such flexible USB connectivity. For many people, that combination will prove enough. However, for the sheer quality of its screen, battery life, performance and the selection of apps, the iPad remains our tablet of choice.