Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 21, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- Surface
- Surface Pro 2
Battery Life
Surface Pro 2 retains the same 42Wh battery and 48W charger as the original Surface Pro. I wasn’t pleased at all with the battery life of the original design, and I had hoped for a significant increase in battery life with Surface Pro 2. Microsoft claims up to a 75% increase in battery life compared to the original. In our 2013 tablet battery life test that turned out to be a 40% advantage – not shabby, but not where it needs to be. Update: Microsoft issued a firmware update that brings Surface Pro 2 up to 8.33 hours of battery life in our web browsing battery life test, or 76% better than the original Surface Pro.
I’m also beginning to think that Haswell’s video decode engine may not be all that power efficient. We did see better results out of OS X, but it’s still nowhere near what’s possible on the best ARM platforms.
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Klimax - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
You don't need stylus either... it is just one of many options with Surface. And I don't think Type Cover adds that much weight either.MikadoWu - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Good Choice. I have been using the Surface Pro (purchased 3 for the Family) as my Main computer since release, and Planning on getting the Dock when it hits.Sent my Daughter to college with only the Surface and a 24 inch Flat Screen. She gets hounded daily about the Pro, and many of the Honors students, are upset they got MacBook's after seeing what she does. She just giggles and smiles.
I am replacing my Fathers RT (Mom gets the RT), this week for the 8/256 Model. Can not wait to see how AutoCAD runs on it.
hoboville - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Interesting, though you're very much in a niche. As someone who has to write endless reports, I can barely stand my own laptop keyboard at times even though it's mid-sized (ProBook 6570b). The nice thing about my laptop is that I can write the reports somewhere alone with it, then when I have to start messing with email and spreadsheets and research, I can hook it up to a monitor and have two sizable displays. It's hard to put a price on that retail space.And that's kind of the point, sadly. Surface could be a great device, but it's very dependent on the kind of work you do.
meacupla - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
I thought the 75% battery life increase over original was with the power cover?inighthawki - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Nope, it's the power savings gotten from haswell, LPDDR3, and OS optimizations. With the power cover i think they said it was 150% of the original. Someone feel free to correct me on the exact number.zerogear - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
2.5x with power cover was the stats given.chizow - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
No change to the chassis makes me think they just made too many of the chassis and didn't sell enough of them with the original Pro. I still wish Intel dropped the price point on the Pro, or made a x86 version with their Bay Trail-T SoCs, instead I'll end up picking up an Asus Transformer T100 instead.inighthawki - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Just out of curiosity, is there any reason you expected it to change? Or do you just mean mainly thickness?chizow - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Yep, mainly in terms of thickness due to the move to Haswell ULT, and possibly better configuration of internals. The original Surface Pro teardown showed the internals were pretty sparse and a nearly universal criticism of the Pro was it's thickness, especially compared to the RT.http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+P...
nerd1 - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Apple haven't changed the MBA chassis for almost 4 years - which means they didn't sell enough of them and reusing old chassis.