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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YuLeven - Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - link
Blimey, can't you understand a simple metaphor?bull2760 - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Why are you running a battery comparison with the surface Pro 2 against ARM based tablets. Although the Surface Pro 2 is a tablet it by no means is meant to compete against them. It's designed to compete in the thin and light segment. This comparison is a waste of time. If your going to compare and apple to and apple than run battery tests against other x86 computers not ARM.Da W - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
204 commentSeems like Microsoft finally got interest in its products.
ikkaiteku - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
"Since there's no connected standby 64-bit version of Windows 8/8.1 yet"I can't find this referenced or documented anywhere. In fact, several pieces of documentation like this one explicitly state the client versions of the OS *do* support it on x64: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/ha...
Are you sure it's not just a limitation from their choice of TPM 1.2 on the Surface 2 Pro?
burntham77 - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
The CPU on the first gen Surface Pro was pretty fast. They could have gotten away with something similarly fast from the 4th gen Intel chips, which could have allowed for lower power draw, which might have let them use a thinner case. Honestly, the thickness and heaviness of the Pro is what ultimately has me looking elsewhere. I'd be willing to pay near 2000 dollars for the 512 gig model if it was thinner. They are so very close to giving me something that can replace my tablet and desktop.mkozakewich - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
It seems utterly impossible for people to compare this properly to anything else. I'd say the weird space in inhabits is its number-one strength, and anyone who's looking for a device right there will be wonderfully happy with it. Everyone else will look at it weird.Frankly, I can't think of a better device for me. (This is what any device choice boils down to: personal fit.)
Imaginer - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Anand saying it needs to be thinner and lighter? Does everyone but me have girl hands, wrists, and arms? Does one not cradle their clipboards, books, etc in their forearms like people have done in the past?If anything, it feels like a good thin hardback book in my hands. any thinner and it feels weird.
Imaginer - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Would appreciate it, but if it keeps the same size, a slight increase in battery would be nice. But the real estate seems full on the circuit board to me - considering this crams the equivalent of a laptop in one tablet chassis.ptman - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Reading Surface Pro 2 reviews from different sites I'm seeing quite the range of battery life reports - often reported without brightness figures and often compared with the iPad 4.Here I'm assuming the iPad4 9:48 figure coms from:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6472/ipad-4-late-201...
and states "displays are calibrated to 200 nits"
Was the Surface Pro 2 calibrated to 200 nits for this battery test?
Reading this:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/microsoft-surface-pr...
The brightness was set at 40% (assuming a linear scale w/max 470 this would be ~188 nits) and the measured life was nearly 8 hours (although clearly running a different test).
I'm also confused by the inconsistency with
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7180/apple-macbook-a...
which also states the iPad 4 achieved 9.48 but states that the Surface Pro got 6.00, not 4.72.
I understand the discrepancy may be a distinction between the "Tablet Web Browsing Battery Life" test and the "Web Browsing Battery Life" test, but in this case the iPad 4 result would be 9.37, or am I missing something perhaps?
ptman - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Just realized ananduser already brought this up - my bad