Microsoft Unveils the New Surface Pro X and the Surface Laptop Go

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

Surface Pro X (Starts at $999)

Spoiler

 

There's not really a lot new. Its more of a refresh than anything.

• Microsoft SQ2 Processor (In more expensive models)
• New platinum color (in addition to the black color)
• Starts with an SQ1 Processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of upgradable storage
• I would probably recommend the $1,499 model which has the new SQ2 Processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Of course you will need to factor the pen and the type cover into the cost before you buy. If you're planning on using this surface as a tablet, please just get an iPad or a Tab S7, I just saved you months of frustration from your life.

 

Surface Laptop Go (Starts at $549)

Spoiler

• 12.4" Rounded PixelSense Display 1536 x 1024 (148 PPI)
• 3 Colors (Ice Blue, Sandstone, and Platinum)
• Windows Hello Fingerprint Reader in the power button (in higher-end models)
• No Alcantara keyboard (People have reported their screens shattering with the metal keyboard option on the SL3 because Microsoft doesn't include a lip around the display as other laptop manufacturers do. You have been warned!)
• 10th Generation Intel Core i5 Processor standard (Core i5-1035G1)
• 720p Webcam (because it's 2012)
• 13 hours of battery life
• 64GB of storage (eMMC!!!), 128GB and 256GB SSD options
• 4GB of RAM, 8GB Ram option (LPDDR4x)
• I would probably recommend the 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD model for $699. Assuming the storage is upgradable like it's older brother, you could theoretically save a bit of money by upgrading the storage to 256GB yourself.

 

 

My thoughts

Spoiler

 

Let's start with positives. Beautiful devices, 100%. The Pro X is the same old same old, and the Laptop Go is just a smaller version of it's bigger brother, but my god are they gorgeous. Microsoft is the only company that can compete with Apple's sex appeal IMO. Microsoft just announced that a 64-bit emulation layer is coming to Windows on ARM, so that will make the Pro X a bit more usable, especially if its new processor will give it better CPU gains. Microsoft really just has to go up against Apple Silicon, which, uh good luck I guess...

 

The Laptop Go is the one I'm more excited about. Its base model is laughable in every sense of the word, but look, Microsoft is known for putting literal garbage for their base model to hit a $399 or $549 price point. No one expects you to buy a Surface Go 2 with a Pentium Gold when $150 more will get you an actual processor. For $699, it's not that bad compared to other premium options. If you want a small laptop that has great build quality, it's literally between an iPad, an old 12" MacBook, and this. And considering you may be able to upgrade the storage, for around $800 you're getting something that's pretty nice if you care about screen size. And also, 3:2 is a huge win for Microsoft. One thing I wish they had done is to use Ryzen 4000 series. They took a gamble on the Surface Laptop 3 15" using Ryzen 3000 series to lesser success (many just opted to use the business store and get the Intel processors due to better battery life and performance), but now that Ryzen Mobile APUs are actually faster than Intel's and cheaper, it should've been a no brainer to include them. It's not like yield's should've been a problem. Microsoft doesn't sell that many computers in the first place. I would much rather they include a Ryzen CPU and then use the money they save to include the fingerprint reader on all models, and Windows Hello Facial Recognition on the top end ones. The resolution is a bit crap, but to be honest most laptops around this price ship with a 1080p panel -at best-. I would've liked for them to spring for a 1080p panel, but if the colors and viewing angles are good, I think most will ignore the resolution.

 

 

Sources

DISCOVER SURFACE PRO X (microsoft.com)

New Lightweight Surface Laptop Go – The Everyday, Everywhere Laptop – Microsoft Surface

[RotoCoreOne]

Both are terribly underwhelming, especially for the price and especially for the pro x. Just buy an iPad Pro with the keyboard if you have $1500+ laying around

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

6 minutes ago, RotoCoreOne said:

Both are terribly underwhelming, especially for the price and especially for the pro x. Just buy an iPad Pro with the keyboard if you have $1500+ laying around

There are Pros to both side. I think the Surface Pro's pen is much better for note taking than the Apple Pencil, but honestly The iPad Pro with a keyboard does smack the Pro X in most cases. If you did need a Windows convertible, you would probably go with the Surface Pro 7 anyways for $899 (~$1200 w/ keyboard and pen) with a Core i5 and 128GB of storage. I think the Pro X is only part of the lineup to get people working for apps on ARM64. That would be the case anyways if WPF in .net5 was ported to ARM...

[Doobeedoo]

Specs are just so bad for that price...

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

1 minute ago, Doobeedoo said:

Specs are just so bad for that price...

Similar arguments are brought up against other premium laptops such as the MacBooks and the Dell XPS series. You will 100% find a Dell Inspiron or HP Pavilion for much less than all these laptops with similar specs. And hell, if you were actually on a budget, you would be going on eBay looking at used ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes. But a lot of people do want their laptops to look and feel good, and designing and manufacturing a premium laptop costs money. If you compare it to laptops in its class, is it actually that bad of a price?

[GoodBytes]

I think it is a great price.

The Laptop Go 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, Quad Core CPU (Core i5 - 1035G1), cost less than the Surface Pro of similar specs. 

I am glad the company is going full in with their display aspect ratio. 16:9 needs to disappear on laptops designed for work. I am glad to see more and more laptops opting with taller displays. 16:10 should be minimum, 3:2 of the Surface is excellent.

 

I think it will be a great device for someone who can get a BYOD device from work, or students.

Has the ports for today and tomorrow as well. And the magnetic power/dock connect port is welcomed.

 

Of course, it is not perfect, and for sure "you can find cheaper", but considering the quality, styling, reputation on its excellent trackpad and keyboard, and tall display, it is hard to beat.

[SupaKomputa]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

16:10 is welcomed.

I thought it was 3:2 or 4:3 looking at how tall it is.

They release Surface Go too for $399.

[WereCatf]

I would happily use an ARM-based Windows-laptop, if I could use Steam Remote Play and Parsec on it. Too bad that it doesn't seem either is available for ARM Windows.

 

Also, I quite like the looks of that sandstone-coloured Surface Laptop Go, very appealing.

[GoodBytes]

2 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I thought it was 3:2 or 4:3 looking at how tall it is.

They release Surface Go too for $399.

Sorry, I miss spoke. Fixed.

[GoodBytes]

Just now, WereCatf said:

I would happily use an ARM-based Windows-laptop, if I could use Steam Remote Play and Parsec on it. Too bad that it doesn't seem either is available for ARM Windows.

I am not sure if Steam Remote play uses a driver or not. Assuming not, The latest news I got is that Microsoft is making great progress on their x86-64 translator. Not sure when it will be released. So assuming there is no driver involved, when it will come out, it should be possible. No info on the performance impact difference between x86 and the x86-64 translation layers.

 

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

No info on the performance impact difference between x86 and the x86-64 translation layers

Neither Steam's Remote Play or Parsec actually do much themselves (that is, when using as remote-clients instead of as remote-hosts) , since they mostly just pass data through to Windows's encode/decode - pipelines and those would still run native ARM-code and, presuming the ARM CPU is little-endian, there'd be no need to do endiannes-swapon the data and thus any performance-hit should be entirely negligible.

[Doobeedoo]

34 minutes ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

Similar arguments are brought up against other premium laptops such as the MacBooks and the Dell XPS series. You will 100% find a Dell Inspiron or HP Pavilion for much less than all these laptops with similar specs. And hell, if you were actually on a budget, you would be going on eBay looking at used ThinkPads and Dell Latitudes. But a lot of people do want their laptops to look and feel good, and designing and manufacturing a premium laptop costs money. If you compare it to laptops in its class, is it actually that bad of a price?

No not really, this is quite far bad for spec/price we've seen yet. 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC are you serious, that's like 100$ machine barely. 

[GoodBytes]

4 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

No not really, this is quite far bad for spec/price we've seen yet. 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC are you serious, that's like 100$ machine barely. 

You do know that this device is there for the low price.. I won't be surprised if they have like 5 stock worldwide.

 

Microsoft, in my opinion, has been doing the low, med, high pricing models. Where low is too low-end, med is just right, and high-end is completely overpriced. You tend to see this in some flyers, like showing 3 car tires or wiper blades, or whatever. Stores that do this, want to sell the most the med one being displayed. Also, it adds perspective "oh it's only x more expensive.. sure why not!".

 

But yes I agree, these days, the base model is too low.

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

22 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

No not really, this is quite far bad for spec/price we've seen yet. 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC are you serious, that's like 100$ machine barely. 

I barely talk about Surface device low-ends because you're right. They are absolute hot garbage. That's why in one of my posts I said the Pro 7 starts at $899 instead of the i3 and 4GB of RAM you get for $749.

 

For $699 you do get a quad-core i5, 128GB of (maybe upgradable) storage, 8GB of RAM, and biometric authentication. That's $150 less than the Pixelbook Go, not even talking about the faster 10th gen i5 Processor the SLGo comes with.

[Doobeedoo]

28 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

You do know that this device is there for the low price.. I won't be surprised if they have like 5 stock worldwide.

 

Microsoft, in my opinion, has been doing the low, med, high pricing models. Where low is too low-end, med is just right, and high-end is completely overpriced. You tend to see this in some flyers, like showing 3 car tires or wiper blades, or whatever. Stores that do this, want to sell the most the med one being displayed. Also, it adds perspective "oh it's only x more expensive.. sure why not!".

 

But yes I agree, these days, the base model is too low.

I don't see these low price really though. True, the low is just too low end and the high end is way overpriced. They're good machines, but they need to offer better specs for those prices really. Like bellow 8GB and 128GB storage, should not exist no matter how low end. 

8 minutes ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

I barely talk about Surface device low-ends because you're right. They are absolute hot garbage. That's why in one of my posts I said the Pro 7 starts at $899 instead of the i3 and 4GB of RAM you get for $749.

 

For $699 you do get a quad-core i5, 128GB of (maybe upgradable) storage, 8GB of RAM, and biometric authentication. That's $150 less than the Pixelbook Go, not even talking about the faster 10th gen i5 Processor the SLGo comes with.

Mah, I'd just like to see them make Surface Laptop with like AMD APU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD. For a normal price. I know they make quality machines and portion of price goes there, but charging way more for more memory and storage is lame. Either way, this is current ones they shown, we'll definitely see more.

[GoodBytes]

10 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Mah, I'd just like to see them make Surface Laptop with like AMD APU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD. For a normal price. I know they make quality machines and portion of price goes there, but charging way more for more memory and storage is lame. Either way, this is current ones they shown, we'll definitely see more.

Yea, but Surface device should be compared to Apple's. Microsoft tries to avoid competing with its own OEMs. They said it in the early days of Surface, and seems that they are keeping that way. In my book, I think this is fantastic. Now we are seeing premium machines from OEMs that are interesting, giving consumer some good choices to consider.

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

33 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Mah, I'd just like to see them make Surface Laptop with like AMD APU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD. For a normal price. I know they make quality machines and portion of price goes there, but charging way more for more memory and storage is lame. Either way, this is current ones they shown, we'll definitely see more.

That's what the SL3 should've been. It came with AMD Picasso chips that were Zen+ instead of the Renoir chips that were Zen2, so most tried to get the Intel option that gave better battery life and performance. If they do use AMD 4000 series in the new Surface Laptop 4 next year, It will be a great competitor to the MacBooks with Apple Silicon.

 

And one thing I wish Microsoft would do that Apple does is Build to Order. You can buy a iMac with the smallest amount of RAM and buy the best GPU. If that was done with the SL, you could potentially buy a Ryzen 7 with 16GB of RAM and the smallest SSD and upgrade it yourself and potentially save hundreds.

[Doobeedoo]

21 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Yea, but Surface device should be compared to Apple's. Microsoft tries to avoid competing with its own OEMs. They said it in the early days of Surface, and seems that they are keeping that way. In my book, I think this is fantastic. Now we are seeing premium machines from OEMs that are interesting, giving consumer some good choices to consider.

I mean I get they don't want to compete with OEMs and they do separate well, comparable to Apple though, I guess yeah, though still their entry models need to be better.

 

[suicidalfranco]

would still pick an ipad over both. And the new iPad air makes that decision even easier.

A device that is well rounded enough to perform all types of task: work, entertain, play

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

34 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

would still pick an ipad over both. And the new iPad air makes that decision even easier.

A device that is well rounded enough to perform all types of task: work, entertain, play

ehhh... That and the Magic Keyboard would cost about ~$1000. For that price you could get a SLGo and an iPad. Over the Pro X though is a much better argument IMO.

[Commodus]

I can't help but feel like ARM may represent a major turning point for Microsoft, and not for the better.

 

The expanded emulation support is a good step, but Microsoft still has a compatibility problem. Not every app works, and those that do work don't always run quickly. It's hard to get people to make the leap when there's a must-have app that won't run or is too slow to be useful.

 

Contrast that with what Apple's doing. We still have to see how well its ARM support works in practice, but so far it's supposed to "just work," and isn't supposed to invoke a massive performance hit (maybe not even for games). You might still want to buy an x86 Mac if you need Boot Camp or absolutely want to guarantee compatibility, but there just won't be that same fear of switching that you get with Windows-based ARM machines.

 

And that could be a problem for Microsoft in the long run. If Intel doesn't get its act together (and AMD, as good as it is, doesn't offer dramatic breakthroughs), there really could be a moment where Macs are running rings around many Windows PCs simply because the ARM transition never really takes off for Windows users. Not that I suspect Apple will suddenly have the dominant platform, just that Microsoft may wind up holding users back in some areas.

[Lord Vile]

51 minutes ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

ehhh... That and the Magic Keyboard would cost about ~$1000. For that price you could get a SLGo and an iPad. Over the Pro X though is a much better argument IMO.

iPad has better specs though.

[leadeater]

@LAwLz Any idea how good the SQ2 Processor is?

[GoodBytes]

7 hours ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

That's what the SL3 should've been. It came with AMD Picasso chips that were Zen+ instead of the Renoir chips that were Zen2, so most tried to get the Intel option that gave better battery life and performance. If they do use AMD 4000 series in the new Surface Laptop 4 next year, It will be a great competitor to the MacBooks with Apple Silicon.

Right, in Microsoft case, Renoir wasn't out at the time. AMD released quite late, to be honest.

Hopefully they can release the next gen CPUs in time, so that OEMs can release their product with it, in time in the period of high sales.

 

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

@LAwLz Any idea how good the SQ2 Processor is?

All we know so far is that the SQ2 has:

• the new Adreno 690 GPU instead of the 685 one found in the SQ1 chip.
• It features the improved Snapdragon X24 LTE chip inside.
• Better battery life (although it is not clear if it is battery that is different or the chip is more power efficient)
• and "better performing".

I guess we will have to wait and see.

I want to say: Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, which feature Eight-Core Kyro 495 CPU, which is claimed to be 50% faster... but that chip adds Wi-Fi 6 support, which the Surface Pro X SQ2 chip model doesn't support... It support WiFi5 (AC)... so I guess only a OCed version of the SQ1 chip with a better GPU