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
CPU Performance
While multitasking on Surface 2 can struggle, the same really can’t be said for Surface Pro 2. The tablet is effectively a Haswell Ultrabook, capable of delivering the exact same performance as a 2013 MacBook Air – but in the form factor of a thick tablet. The performance of Intel’s Core i5-4200U is a fairly known quantity at this point, but to put Surface Pro 2’s tablet performance in perspective here are some comparisons to the best of the best in the ARM tablet space.
I ran tests using both Chrome and IE11, the latter is really only optimized for SunSpider and horribly unoptimized for everything else. In general you're multiple times better performance than what you can get from a quad-core Cortex A15 based device. If we look at Kraken, Surface Pro 2 running IE11 completes the test in 1/4 the time as Surface 2 running the same browser.
GPU Performance
Intel’s HD 4400 is good enough for light gaming and is a huge step above what you can find in a traditional ARM based tablet. Microsoft only gave us a few days to review both devices so I didn’t have a ton of time to re-characterize the performance of Intel’s HD 4400, but I’ve done that elsewhere already.
Storage Performance
My review sample appears to have a SK Hynix based SSD. I ran it through the same modified IO tests I did on the ASUS T100:
Our Android IO tests rely on Androbench with a relatively limited LBA span. I increased the difficulty of the test a bit under Windows 8.1 but still kept it reasonable since we are dealing with eMMC solutions. I’m testing across a 1GB LBA span and testing for a period of 1 minute, which is an ok balance between difficulty of workload and sensitivity to the fact that we’re evaluating low-class SSDs here.
Surface Pro 2 is a completely different league of IO performance. The number to pay attention here is the tremendous increase in random write performance compared to the eMMC solutions we’ve tested. I suspect the gap increases if we were to look at worst case sustained random write performance. Killer sequential performance definitely helps Surface Pro 2 feel quick.
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Shivansps - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
You cant put a Kabini in a fanless tablet, in a 15W margin the I5-4200U seems to be a good choice, for a fanless tablet you have to use the A4-1200, that cant compite with BT.There is a reason for AMD not getting design wins.
JumpingJack - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
As stated by the other gentleman, Bay Trail and Kabini are in the same area in terms of computational performance, but Kabini chews over 3-4X the power. In terms of energy efficiency, Bay Trail crushes Kabini.kyuu - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
There is a lower wattage version of Kabini called Temash that still kicks Bay Trail's arse in GPU power and still offers better CPU performance than any of the ARM SoCs.Also, if you're basing your comparison of power consumption solely on TDP numbers, then you're doing it wrong.
Wade_Jensen - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
"Mechanically I don’t know the right solution for Microsoft but I do feel like for the kickstand to realize its true potential, it needs to be able to open and hold at multiple angles. It doesn’t necessarily need to have support for infinite angles, maybe even a few would work, but I do believe it’s necessary going forward."by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 5, 2013 9:00 PM EST
Wade_Jensen - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Anand, did you spend much time using SP2 on your lap? What's your opinion on the usability?Shame about the battery life, although still good enough for my own use case.
Wade_Jensen - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Sorry, went back to check. Missed a paragraph:"Surface Pro 2 inherits the same kickstand and branding decisions as Surface 2. As I mentioned in my Surface 2 review, the new 2-stage kickstand is awesome and a huge improvement over its predecessor. The kickstand now opens at 24 and 40-degree angles, the latter enables more comfortable use when you’re not typing at a desk. The new kickstand also ditches the Windows 8 logo in favor of the Surface logo across the back.'
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Way more usable than before, I wrote the entire review with SP2/S2 on my lap.Wade_Jensen - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Thank you.GTRagnarok - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
For being so crucial to the Surface experience, it's disappointing that the keyboard is still not included in the price.nerd1 - Monday, October 21, 2013 - link
Samsung galaxy devices have supported spilt-screen multitasking for a quite while. It is a bit sad that anand is now quite biased toward apple devices.