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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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.