Introduction
I’ve always been a gadget enthusiast and a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to get my hands on Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro and decided do a review and unboxing feature for it. In the first part of this post, I will focus on the hardware build and features while the follow up will detail my usage experience and overall conclusion. My Surface variant comes with an Intel i5-7300U processor with 128Gb of SSD storage and 4Gb of RAM.
Overview
All Surface Pro comes standard with Windows 10 Pro. The 2017 model comes with a single USB 3.1 port, mini DisplayPort, MicroSD card reader, headphone jack, dock connector and its proprietary dock/power port. Design wise, the Surface Pro is sleek and I personally dig the grey color scheme of their hardware line up with the accompanying black TypePad keyboard attachment which looks very professional and classy. The new Surface has a slightly rounder edge compared to its predecessor but it still looks sharp in a good way thanks to the angled kick stand and sharp cut outs for the ports. It weighs a little over 700g and while it’s not as light as most tablets of it’s size go these days, the Surface Pro is still a serious contender in the ultrabook market given it’s versatility and processing power. The overall build quality is sturdy and the hinge may look flimsy and thin but rest assured it will withstand some heavy duty use over time.
Display, Camera and Sensors
One of the more striking feature of the Surface Pro is the gorgeous display. At a native resolution of 2736×1824 (267ppi) it offers crisp text and a brilliant display. Windows 10 along with the Surface platform offers adaptive brightness with the night light feature that reduces blue light emission which helps reduces eye strain into the evening. The Surface Pro comes with both a 5MP front facing camera for video calls as well as a 8MP primary shooter on the front. Another unique feature of this class of device is the Windows Hello feature with it’s built in infrared sensor which helps with the facial recognition as you register your face with the device and it will instantly unlock into your Windows desktop in a fraction of a second.
Keyboard and Touch Pad
The TypePad is a back-lit, magnetically attached keyboard which serves as an excellent companion accessory to the Surface line. I’d say they’re a must have for most users to fully maximize the capability of the Surface Pro. The keyboard has both a surprisingly good tactile feel to it and decent key travel distance compared to other convertible devices such as the Joi or other third party wireless keyboard attachments that I’ve used. I’ve yet to compare the TypePad keyboard with offerings from Asus or Acer to see how those keyboard stacks up against Microsoft’s flag ship. My only gripe is having the Up and Down arrow keys half sized and this confused the heck out of me as I’m writing this article.
As much as I appreciate having a trackpad on the TypePad, the narrow trackpad made it less user friendly than I’d like. Being spoilt on laptops and especially on a MacBook Pro, some gestures gets trickier to execute on the limited space. I like Apple’s implementation of the 3 finger drag/selection on the Macs but given the size of this trackpad, it may not be as useful but Microsoft should still consider adding the 3 finger drag gesture on their Surface line. The double tap drag gesture had me accidentally dragging and overwriting text easily when selecting text or just tapping and then navigating along on the trackpad. Of course being a touch screen device, you could also use the onscreen selection helpers which does help sometimes.
Expansion Options
One last thing to note is the lack of ports on the Surface Pro. With only one USB 3.1 port, you’ll be limited to the number of external devices that you can connect to it unless you shell out for the dedicated Surface Dock that offers a plethora of ports, or have a Display Port capable monitor that offers additional ports. However, there’s still an option for you to extend the storage with the built in MicroSD card reader and Microsoft was also kind enough to provide a USB port on the power brick itself to charge your mobile devices to compensate for these short comings.
Using the Surface Pro on a daily basis brings some unique experience on both the hardware and software front which I will detail in my follow up post. Stay tuned.