The Surface Go Review Linus Didn't Do

[Turretgaming]

The Surface Go made to be a cheap alternative to the surface lineup for student and those on a tight budget, but does it give you what you expect for $399.99. Well kinda, I have the $399.99 model with 64GB of storage and 4GB of ram and its been great, at least the second one has, but I’ll get to that later. For now let’s take a minute to talk about the tablet. I call it a tablet because it’s sold as one with no keyboard, mouse or pen. As a tablet it’s crap, the on screen keyboard needs work and fails to be comfortable to use. windows 10 is no were near 8.1 in terms of tablet usability. Now once you pay another $99.99 for the keyboard, which is now $129.99, you're already paying a hefty price for what could be a better laptop. That being said, I’m going to keep mine. I’m sorry Microsoft,  I’m not giving this loner back. I fell in love with it from day one for its small size and great battery. It easily gets me through the day of lectures and then some when I get back to my dorm for some Netflix, but that doesn’t mean it's great for productivity. I've yet to have page file errors in Edge but I do see ram hit max usage after 10 tabs, so as long as you aren't like Linus with his 50 tab addiction you should be fine. But I think it gets away with this as it ships with windows 10S so you can’t install anything that isn't on the Microsoft store app. So if you love chrome like me, it will take a while to learn to love edge, but it's worth it for me as all my work is done with google docs anyway. Now about this being my second version, I’d like to say that I had a hard time my first week with this device. My first model suffered from the sleep of death which was the first case Microsoft saw on this model. I told them about it, and they were quick to replace it but I would have to send it in and wait on a new model in the mail. So I drove 2 hours to the nearest store and had it swapped there. It was a setback, but I think they understood because they gave me free goodies and a voter card to the store. Good job on rectifying the problem and making it up to the customer, although a gas card would have been nice because the drive made me use a quarter of a tank of gas and I missed 2 classes that day. Although it was well worth it. The small 64GB SDD hasn't been a problem as the first day I had it I went and got a nice 128GB SD card that slipped nicely into the back of the device under the kickstand. Speaking of which the kickstand is really nice and has the perfect amount of restrictiveness and angles of tilt. Microsoft did a great job on the looks and feel of the device right down to the charger which is a magnetic reverse able connecter, nice touch to bad Apple dropped that for some reason. All in all I would recommend this device highly to any student or light user with almost no hesitation as it’s the nicest “laptop” at its, all be it a little higher than I’d like, price tag.

 

[Bustapalapeno]

Thanks for the thoughts. IMO, the Surface Go is meant to fill the space between a tablet and a laptop in the same way as an iPad Pro. A device for students that takes notes, reads textbooks, and looks up stuff on the internet. I can do other stuff, but that is what it is centrally designed for.

 

I actually really love the Surface Go's hardware. I think it is the best hardware for a student note-taking and productivity device. What is holding the Surface Go back is software. The iPad Pro has more and better note taking apps, textbook readers, PDF apps, everything. It's all optimized for touch and works well (enough) together to get the job done. If you like OneNote and Microsoft software, this isn't a problem. If there are features you feel are missing...you're stuck. 

 

For example, in physics, I will take notes in Noteability (for lecture recording and it's file system), but have Nebo on a pull in window for converting handwritten equations to text, and pasting them into Noteability. OneNote does equation conversion Ok, but not nearly as well, and it doesn't do simultaneous voice recording. 

 

Surface Go, great hardware, no apps. 

[jonrosalia]

good job its a good review of your experience with the go but I think this will end up being moved because we have a members review section.

 

personally I refuse to buy any surface products because they are being very apple now with products putting premium feel over performance and repairability. I would have liked to see an upgraded cpu with 6gb of ram and the 128 drive because the 128 storage is a faster drive. I can't see using 8Gb of ram with that cpu and don't understand why they only offer it. the only thing I can think of with offering a better cpu is it would take sales from the regular surface being more portable at 10".

personally at $500 local price here for tablet and the cheap plastic keyboard (not the nice one)I think people can do better in the laptop market right now some people only need a basic device but I have those and they cost $100-300 all in my HP X2 was $200 with the keyboard that ended up being a love hate relationship because of storage issues and lack of horsepower in a form factor I loved with all my ports I needed.

 

Microsoft also has to fix the fact that tablet mode is annoying more than helpful since the apps are mostly just desktop programs not optimized for touch I use windows in desktop mode even with touch its cleaner and less cluttered.

[Turretgaming]

26 minutes ago, jonrosalia said:

good job its a good review of your experience with the go but I think this will end up being moved because we have a members review section.

 

personally I refuse to buy any surface products because they are being very apple now with products putting premium feel over performance and repairability. I would have liked to see an upgraded cpu with 6gb of ram and the 128 drive because the 128 storage is a faster drive. I can't see using 8Gb of ram with that cpu and don't understand why they only offer it. the only thing I can think of with offering a better cpu is it would take sales from the regular surface being more portable at 10".

personally at $500 local price here for tablet and the cheap plastic keyboard (not the nice one)I think people can do better in the laptop market right now some people only need a basic device but I have those and they cost $100-300 all in my HP X2 was $200 with the keyboard that ended up being a love hate relationship because of storage issues and lack of horsepower in a form factor I loved with all my ports I needed.

 

Microsoft also has to fix the fact that tablet mode is annoying more than helpful since the apps are mostly just desktop programs not optimized for touch I use windows in desktop mode even with touch its cleaner and less cluttered.

tablet mode for me has never been good and the keyboard mod makes my wrist cry. I agree they should have gone with an i3 or something with a bit more power but then it would need a fan and cut into the battery life but I've yet to see cpu usage go over 50% unless in hill climb racer which uses around 60-70%. and the ram issue isn't too much of an issue as I mentioned in the review it really only falls behind with more than 10 tabs but it think that's do to only using the edge browsers and being in 10s mode which you can opt-out of but take a performance hit for it. I think it fills a gap in the low end of their line up that was needed to increase sales and market share. however I do feel that having only 64GB of storage was a huge mistake but thank fully it does have that sd slot how ever that doesn't excuse them from making the base model a 128GB with 6GB of ram with the 4415Y and the upper model a base i3 with 256GB storage and 8GB of ram. Making it $399.99 or even $459.99 with those specs would have made it a no brainer and a must have this Christmas season.

[Turretgaming]

37 minutes ago, Bustapalapeno said:

Thanks for the thoughts. IMO, the Surface Go is meant to fill the space between a tablet and a laptop in the same way as an iPad Pro. A device for students that takes notes, reads textbooks, and looks up stuff on the internet. I can do other stuff, but that is what it is centrally designed for.

 

I actually really love the Surface Go's hardware. I think it is the best hardware for a student note-taking and productivity device. What is holding the Surface Go back is software. The iPad Pro has more and better note taking apps, textbook readers, PDF apps, everything. It's all optimized for touch and works well (enough) together to get the job done. If you like OneNote and Microsoft software, this isn't a problem. If there are features you feel are missing...you're stuck. 

 

For example, in physics, I will take notes in Noteability (for lecture recording and it's file system), but have Nebo on a pull in window for converting handwritten equations to text, and pasting them into Noteability. OneNote does equation conversion Ok, but not nearly as well, and it doesn't do simultaneous voice recording. 

 

Surface Go, great hardware, no apps. 

The apps are very lacking. The Microsoft store needs a real over haul in terms of quality and quantity as they don't have many apps and the ones they do I really just don't want on my device. However as a Chromebook like device for web browsing I feel it fits well just missing the chrome browser and others.

[Bustapalapeno]

1 minute ago, Turretgaming said:

The apps are very lacking. The Microsoft store needs a real over haul in terms of quality and quantity as they don't have many apps and the ones they do I really just don't want on my device. However as a Chromebook like device for web browsing I feel it fits well just missing the chrome browser and others.

I don't really know if there is anything Microsoft can really do about 3rd party apps. The Apple developer community is so established, well supported, and filled with devoted developers I don't know if there is anything Microsoft can do to keep up. Microsoft can pretty up the store however they want but most up and coming developers can't see an advantage to the platform. The best they can do is build their own apps and buy other companies to add more first party apps and hope that they are good enough. They just, missed the boat on this one. Which sucks. 

 

Chromebook on the other hand, looks like it can make it. By pushing the price down and pushing heavy to get into schools, they've found a market big enough, but also structured enough that developers can see a reason to build things on the platform. 

[jonrosalia]

I would like them to offer the surface book in this form factor personally I don't like the floppy hinge and would love a 10-11" with hard hinge keyboard with a ssd and battery in the base? make that keyboard worth $120. I like the way they build them but they all fell like compromises in one way or another. also what's up with thunderbolt 3? 

[Turretgaming]

14 minutes ago, jonrosalia said:

I would like them to offer the surface book in this form factor personally I don't like the floppy hinge and would love a 10-11" with hard hinge keyboard with a ssd and battery in the base? make that keyboard worth $120. I like the way they build them but they all fell like compromises in one way or another. also what's up with thunderbolt 3? 

I have no idea. Its a real shame it's missing as it would have added a lot of value to more techy people but I think they left it cause most normal people don't know what thunderbolt 3 is and how useful it is. Cause adding another $50 to the price for thunderbolt 3 that most people wont know what it does or is probably seemed a waste to Microsoft. But they still allow you to charge and use docks with the 3.1 type c port which makes it almost better. I haven't tried charging through it but it is limited to 45w and 10gb transfer rate. All in all I think it was to keep costs down.

[Bustapalapeno]

3 hours ago, Turretgaming said:

I have no idea. Its a real shame it's missing as it would have added a lot of value to more techy people but I think they left it cause most normal people don't know what thunderbolt 3 is and how useful it is. Cause adding another $50 to the price for thunderbolt 3 that most people wont know what it does or is probably seemed a waste to Microsoft. But they still allow you to charge and use docks with the 3.1 type c port which makes it almost better. I haven't tried charging through it but it is limited to 45w and 10gb transfer rate. All in all I think it was to keep costs down.

seconded. Thunderbolt 3 has no real use on a device such as this. If you are the kind of user attaching Thunderbolt peripherals, you didn't buy yourself a student-focused tablet PC. 

[genexis_x]

8 hours ago, Turretgaming said:

Now once you pay another $99.99 for the keyboard, which is now $129.99, you're already paying a hefty price for what could be a better laptop

Microsoft tax

8 hours ago, Turretgaming said:

I've yet to have page file errors in Edge but I do see ram hit max usage after 10 tabs

What to expect from 4GB RAM? Already struggling to handle basic tasks

[Turretgaming]

5 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

Microsoft tax

What to expect from 4GB RAM? Already struggling to handle basic tasks

This was actually meant to show how well it handles only 4GB as I figured that it would be limited at 5 tabs so this was a welcomed surprise for me. And I agree the keyboard is a Microsoft tax like an Apple tax and I wish it was included but the keyboard to me is worth about $50 as it is the best feeling membrane keyboard ive ever used and I would go out and buy it again if it broke, but I would be mad as it is too expensive but I can almost see where they are coming from but it should have came in the box and the replacements be $129.99 cause that is a bit more far but still crazy.

[Ajin The Cliff Gamer]

Surface Go will be the only device you need to carry on the go. It has an USB C port and can con we the to external HDD/SDD/ Flash drive. It also has a port for a micro SD card. It can be used to browse full windows software and based on my experience it is powerful enough to do daily work. I run Spotify, couple of tabs on Google Chrome, while I actively take notes on OneNote. It is the correct size to be carried around all day and is the size of a notebook so you can comfortably take notes all day. Since it only has a 10 inch screen the Microsoft Office mobile site is completely free to use. You can also top up the charge on it using the same power brick you use for your phone . A great device which has a solid build quality.

[Turretgaming]

1 hour ago, Ajin The Cliff Gamer said:

Surface Go will be the only device you need to carry on the go. It has an USB C port and can con we the to external HDD/SDD/ Flash drive. It also has a port for a micro SD card. It can be used to browse full windows software and based on my experience it is powerful enough to do daily work. I run Spotify, couple of tabs on Google Chrome, while I actively take notes on OneNote. It is the correct size to be carried around all day and is the size of a notebook so you can comfortably take notes all day. Since it only has a 10 inch screen the Microsoft Office mobile site is completely free to use. You can also top up the charge on it using the same power brick you use for your phone . A great device which has a solid build quality.

Yes it has it's place but there are better options at the same price but not many beat the size.