Surface Go - A new low cost Surface Pro - Starts at only 399$

[Arika]

12 minutes ago, bananabryan said:

DDR3...It hurts

in a device like this you would want LPDDR3, despite the fact that the CPU doesnt support DDR4, there would be no point to putting DDR4 in this kind of machine

[Amazonsucks]

If its anything like the normal surface itll be unreliable garbage.

 

 

And my 2015 Samsung S6 Active had LPDDR4 and UFS flash...

[GoodBytes]

59 minutes ago, bananabryan said:

Typo in title, 'Surface' not 'Surafce'

Thanks!

 

Quote

DDR3...It hurts

Nha. DDR3 (well LPDDR3) is plenty fast. You are not running a fancy Core i7 to take advantage of the DDR4 speed, and the CPU is too slow for gaming. As a result, having the Intel GPU to take advantage of DDR4 would not help, in any case. You can run Minecraft on it properly though, and many somewhat simple (visually) indie titles, and older games, but it pretty much stops there. DDR4 won't help in general. If anything, the CPU will enjoy the lower latency that DDR3 offers over DDR4 higher bandwidth.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

That would make sense in the performance perspective, except the emulation would still be crap, this processor will probably cost much more and will end up not being competitive for intensive workloads because of the architecture.

 

This Surface Go Pentium processor, for example, costs ~$135. The Snapdragon 835 costs ~$50. Microsoft and partners tried to sell the ARM 2-in-1 as if they were sporting high performance processors instead of putting on the right price-to-performance spot.

 

Still think that they should focus on ARM for casual/office use and keep x86 for heavy workloads.

I think Microsoft is more pre-occupied of delivering the best experience than to a statement, and they need a strong answer for schools that run WIn32 programs, and not make them raise questions about the performance of the device, creating hesitation for the IT dept. Google and Apple is eating MS pie, and MS doesn't like it.

 

I think they'll try once the SD 1000 is out when MS will be more pleased and confident with the performance/experience with x86 apps, and that there is more (hopefully) native AMR64 programs. The 850 is probably not out yet either.

[GoodBytes]

Update: Later in the year there will be a 256GB SSD NVMe option

[GoodBytes]

Microsoft posted  a short informational video showcasing the device:

 

[The Benjamins]

Wish the LTE version would release at the same time, and had 2 USB ports (preferably 1 C 1 A)

 

5 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

eMMC storage hurts far more. At least it starts with 4GB DDR3.

If you get the 128GB or 256GB version it will be a NVME SSD.

[Maticks]

Still not sure who this is for... It's not powerful enough to be a desktop system.

 

Assuming it's aimed a video consumption, light browsing. Commuting light work load.

Similar to what I do on my iPad pro. YouTube, Plex and a bit of email and web browsing.

Surface go  vs my iPad pro. More than one stand position with the keyboard.

When you get glare it's annoying and a product oversight.

Will be curious actual battery life on this surface go. I get 6 hours out of this iPad pro 10.5

The price is half the cost of an iPad pro. May not have the processing power to an A11 but seriously what can you do with it web browsing and video... It's pointless.

 

I was expecting it to be called the surface mini not surface go.

[Doobeedoo]

Hmm I kinda see that higher storage and memory as a base model. 

 

But whatever, I'd like to see updated Surface Laptop though. 

[Sauron]

Sounds like a better Macbook at half the price.

 

A single port is still stupid though.

[NinerL]

Do you think people will be able to run Photoshop/Illustrator? iPad has ProCreate/Affinity Photo, another thing windows lacks is good apps.

[GoodBytes]

22 hours ago, NinerL said:

Do you think people will be able to run Photoshop/Illustrator? iPad has ProCreate/Affinity Photo, another thing windows lacks is good apps.

You can Crysis too, but performance is another issue.

I think PhotoShop will run well, as long as you don't work with large complex brushes, or a lot of layers, or very large images (especially if you get the 4GB of RAM model). I think it can still caters to artists that wants to do sketches on the go, draw ideas and such, and are on a budget, and do the bulk of the work in finalizing work on their PC/Mac. Of course we need to see benchmark for sure.

[Sauron]

11 minutes ago, NinerL said:

Do you think people will be able to run Photoshop/Illustrator? iPad has ProCreate/Affinity Photo, another thing windows lacks is good apps.

Sure, and I would wager they will run better than they do on the iPad considering this has more ram (if you get the 8gb model) and an x86 cpu. Still, if that's the kind of work you're doing I'd say you should be looking for more powerful hardware in general...

 

And yes, UWP apps are few and bad, but I'd look at this more as an ultrabook with a touch screen than a tablet with a keyboard. On top of that it's significantly cheaper than an ipad pro.

[rcmaehl]

The thing is only SLIGHTLY better than the existing Lenovo YogaBook. 15% faster CPU. Comparable battery life. No pen unless you go for the more expensive option. Microsoft should have released this a year and a half ago...

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Sure, and I would wager they will run better than they do on the iPad considering this has more ram (if you get the 8gb model) and an x86 cpu. Still, if that's the kind of work you're doing I'd say you should be looking for more powerful hardware in general...

 

And yes, UWP apps are few and bad, but I'd look at this more as an ultrabook with a touch screen than a tablet with a keyboard. On top of that it's significantly cheaper than an ipad pro.

 

You can't run full-fledged Photoshop/Illustrator on an iPad, so I would focus more on that than relative performance.  Mind you, the iPad also has a ton of creative (and sometimes Photoshop-compatible) apps like Pixelmator.  It's not a straightforward comparison.

 

I would like to see if there's a way to fairly benchmark the Surface Go versus the iPad and iPad Pro.  Of course, this would as much be a test of OS overhead as it would be computing power, since iOS is lightweight next to Windows.

[GDRRiley]

12 hours ago, Christophe Corazza said:

Yeah on paper this sounds great but in reality this tablet costs as much as a good Windows 10 laptop (or a very good one if OK with refurbished). I based this on the $ 400 base price + $ 100 for keyboard + $ 50 to upgrade to Windows 10 home (S-mode comes as default) = $ 550.

~$ 650 if go for spacious RAM and storage space. In short its not worth it. 

About the only plus I can give this is at least MS has finally learned that the 2 GB RAM and 32 GB storage option is unacceptable in the Windows 10 era and all those sub $ 200 devices that don’t splurge for the extra $ 10 to upgrade to a minimum of 4 GB RAM / 64 GB storage are being extra special douches counting on buyers not knowing better.

 

(Really do not buy anything at 32 GB regardless of price. You spend way to much time on space management and dealing with Windows 10 updates failing due to lack of space.)

 

few things 1 it comes with a free upgrade to pro so that cuts some of the price off.

I got to agree on ram. 

[mynameisjuan]

Finally an ipad competitor and out of the gate a better buy. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

15 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

I want to know how much free space is left on that 64GB model? Windows 10 is quite bloated and Windows 10S simply disables stuff like Power Shell and running programs outside of the Windows Store so I don’t think there’s a big difference when it comes to storage space consumption. 

On my Chuwi HI10 pro with 64GB eMMC, about 35-40GB (including the storage allocated to android).

[Morgan Everett]

Definitely a candidate to replace my iPad Pro. 

[Trixanity]

16 hours ago, captain_to_fire said:

I want to know how much free space is left on that 64GB model? Windows 10 is quite bloated and Windows 10S simply disables stuff like Power Shell and running programs outside of the Windows Store so I don’t think there’s a big difference when it comes to storage space consumption. 

Windows can compress the system image to take up a lot less space. And you can disable hibernation. I've regained a lot of space via those two.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

I would like to see if there's a way to fairly benchmark the Surface Go versus the iPad and iPad Pro

There isn't, they are too different. The only real test that can be made is to compare their performance in everyday tasks.

[mynameisjuan]

15 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The only real test that can be made is..

..is geek bench ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Sauron]

13 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

..is geek bench ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

T R I G G E R E D

[Shreyas1]

16 hours ago, Arika S said:

 

makes even less sense. i wonder who these are supposed to be marketed for.

 

I'm glad they made a budget option, but im not sure what it's purpose is...

Education probably?

[vanished]

On 2018-07-09 at 7:52 PM, captain_to_fire said:

I want to know how much free space is left on that 64GB model? Windows 10 is quite bloated and Windows 10S simply disables stuff like Power Shell and running programs outside of the Windows Store so I don’t think there’s a big difference when it comes to storage space consumption. 

probably a lot more than you think.  I have 32 GB on my 2 in 1 with the following "extra" apps (things that don't come with Windows that I added) installed to C:\

• Office 356
• Firefox
• MPC-HC
• Spotify
• WinRAR

And my drive looks like this:

 

And it's not like I've gone out of my way to slim it down at all, this is relatively stock.  I still have a pagefile, for example (kinda needed on 4 GB of RAM lol), and I have other apps installed too (to another location) so while the bulk of their data goes elsewhere, they still do put some on C:\.  Not to mention all relevant drivers and stuff which can add to a GB or two.

 

And in fact this is a little more full than usual... I recall it normally sitting around 10 GB free so I should probably run disk cleanup again.