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Microsoft Surface Pro review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £799
inc VAT

The best Windows 8 tablet, but battery life isn't great and you have to factor in the cost of a keyboard

Specifications

10.6 in 1,920×1,080 display, 916g, 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U, 4.00GB RAM, 128GB disk, Windows 8 Pro

http://www.microsoftstore.com
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Microsoft Surface Pro pen
The bundled Surface Pen lets you draw on the screen

Another way of interacting with the screen is by using the Pro’s new bundled in Surface Pen. It works in a very similar way to drawing tablet pens and the screen will sense it even when it’s 2cm away. It’s a little unintuitive to use when the Surface Pro’s propped up with the kickstand, but it’s great for sketching and taking notes when it’s lying flat. It won’t replace drawing tablets completely, as we found it wasn’t quite so accurate when we hovered the pen over the corners of the display. Unless it was angled perpendicular to the screen, the sensor would run away into the corner, making it difficult to close and minimise windows.

Pen issues aside, its image quality was excellent. Reds, greens and blues really popped out of the screen and whites were particularly bright. Blacks weren’t quite true black, but they were deep enough to make our high contrast images look stunning. We could see a very high level of detail in all of our test photos and colours were rich and vibrant throughout.

Microsoft Surface Pro Kickstand and ports
A DisplayPort output is useful, although you’ll most likely need to buy adaptors

Microsoft’s squeezed even more connections round the chassis this time as well. The USB3 port (it was USB on the RT), micro SDXC card reader and headphone jack match the ports on the RT, but the newest addition is a mini-DisplayPort output, so you can connect the Surface Pro to an external monitor. You’ll most likely need to buy a mini-DisplayPort to VGA, DVI or HDMI adaptors to use most monitors.

Inside, the Surface Pro has full laptop components, so it blows any other type of tablet out of the water when it comes to raw performance. There’s a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U processor powering the tablet, which we’ve seen in a lot of Ultrabooks. It gave the Surface Pro an overall score of 44 in our multimedia benchmarks. That’s one of the best scores we’ve seen for an Ultrabook and shows that this tablet is incredibly powerful.

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Basic Specifications

Rating****
ProcessorIntel Core i5-3317U
Processor clock speed1.7GHz
Memory4.00GB
Memory slots1
Memory slots free0
Maximum memory4GB
Size13x274x173mm
Weight916g
SoundRealtek HD Audio
Pointing devicetouchscreen

Display

Viewable size10.6 in
Native resolution1,920×1,080
Graphics ProcessorIntel HD Graphics 4000
Graphics/video portsHDMI via adaptor, mini-DisplayPort
Graphics Memory128MB

Storage

Total storage capacity128GB
Optical drive typenone

Ports and Expansion

USB ports1
Bluetoothyes
Wired network portsnone
Wireless networking support802.11n (dual-band)
PC Card slotsN/A
Supported memory cardsmicro SDXC
Other portsheadphone out

Miscellaneous

Carrying caseNo
Operating systemWindows 8 Pro
Operating system restore optionrestore partition
Software includedN/A
Optional extras£80)

Buying Information

Warrantyone year RTB
Price£799
Detailswww.microsoftstore.com
Supplierhttp://www.microsoftstore.com