Microsoft Surface Pro 4 review: Slaying notebooks since 2015

An evolutionary step forward

The Surface Pro 4 may look a lot like the Surface Pro 3, but it enters quite a different market than its predecessor did slightly over a year ago. Back then, Microsoft still had a lot to prove. The parade of flawed and unpopular iterations that came before it, including devices like the Surface RT and Surface Pro, meant that Microsoft needed to acquit itself of a lot and convince customers that the line between tablet and notebook was actually a false divide.

And convince us it did. The Surface Pro 3 was a veritable notebook killer, inspiring a host of other similar devices from other brands, the latest versions of which include the likes of the HP Spectre x2 and Lenovo Miix 700.

With the Surface Pro 4, Microsoft instead faces a different kind of pressure with an audience that is already sold on the device – that of improving on an already great product and satisfying consumers who have waited a long while for its successor.

Let’s just say that it’s something of an understatement when we say that we’ve waited a long time for the Surface Pro 4. It’s understandable that Microsoft wanted to wait to include the new Intel Skylake processors in its new hybrid device, but the Surface Pro 3 was released in May 2014, a lifetime ago in the timeline of yearly product refreshes. There was even one false start earlier this year when the rumor mill came alive with whispers of a new Surface device, which turned out to be just the Surface 3, a lower powered version of the Surface Pro 3 that came with more tamer features like an Intel Atom processor and eMMC flash memory instead of a full-fledged mSATA SSD (bummer).

But now we finally have the real deal in our hands and for quite some time now to really use it out in the field and bring you our real world experience. And by all initial appearances, the Surface Pro 4 has already succeeded in what it set out to do.

 

What’s really new?

At first glance, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the Surface Pro 4 apart from its predecessor. They use the same impeccably constructed magnesium alloy bodies and are even the same size, with both measuring 201 x 292mm. Sure, there are certain minor aesthetic changes, like the removal of the Windows logo from the border for a cleaner look (although that’s really because of Windows 10 and the resurgent place of the Start button), but what Microsoft has done is really to make subtle upgrades to nearly every aspect of the device, that when taken as a whole, creates quite a compelling upgrade option. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts after all.

For starters, despite being the same in length and width, the Surface Pro 4 is actually thinner (8.5mm vs 9.1mm) and slightly lighter (786g vs. 800g) than the Surface Pro 3. However, in real-world use, the difference is frankly neigh impossible to perceive, although it’s possible that more sensitive folks might notice the improvement.

The new 12.3-inch PixelSense display has a resolution of 2,736 x 1,824 pixels, giving it a pixel density of 267ppi and the same 3:2 aspect ratio of the Surface Pro 3. However, it’s actually an upgrade over its predecessor as the latter tablet has a lower resolution 12-inch screen of 2,160 x 1,440, which translates into a pixel density of 216ppi. The screen is also uses a sheet of Gorilla Glass 4, compared to Gorilla Glass 3 on the Surface Pro 3, so you’re really getting all the latest parts in this machine.

That’s not all though, and the new display is also noticeably brighter and sports a reduced parallax distance – the separation between the surface of the screen and the display panel below – which means a shorter distance between the Surface Pen’s tip and digital ink. You’ll get a more natural and responsive writing experience as a result, which is helped along by the use of a new G5 touch controller, the product of Microsoft’s acquisition of Israeli company N-trig earlier this year. The G5 controller reportedly uses GPU-based computation for processing touch input as opposed to application-specific methods, which allows even lower latencies and a better writing experience.

But in order to increase the screen size without actually making the device larger, Microsoft has gone with a narrower bezel to accommodate the larger display, a move that we wholeheartedly endorse. The 3:2 aspect ratio makes it great for productivity tasks like working on documents and spreadsheets, but less ideal for entertainment purposes like watching movies. Still, the Surface Pro 4 is primarily a business device (it even ships with Windows 10 Pro), which is why Microsoft is prioritizing work applications above others.

Other improvements include an upgraded 8-megapixel rear camera with autofocus (actually similar to what’s found on the smaller Surface 3), and a 5-megapixel front camera. This compares with the 5-megapixel shooters on the Surface Pro 3 that came without autofocus capabilities. Here’s a look at the 8-megapixel rear camera, with an LED status indicator and microphone beside it:

And here’s the front camera apparatus, which features a 5-megapixel webcam alongside two other peepholes, presumably for infrared facial recognition for use with Windows Hello. The smaller opening apart from the rest is another microphone.

Wireless connectivity is handled by a Marvell Avastar 88W8897 chip that combines support for 2x2 MIMO spatial multiplexing, NFC, and Bluetooth 4.2, the same as that found on the Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3.

There are no major differences compared to the Surface Pro 3 in terms of port layout and selection, although the volume rocker has now been shifted beside the power button on the device’s length. 

Other than that, there is the same selection of one USB 3.0 port, one mini DisplayPort connector, one microSD card slot under the kickstand, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, all in the same place as they were with before. The reversible charging port also remains unchanged.

There’s actually a reason why Microsoft left everything untouched but chose to relocate the volume button. That’s because it wanted to leave the left edge of the tablet bare in order to create a magnetized surface to which you could attach the included Surface Pen. As it turns out, this works quite well, and the magnets feel sufficiently strong without making it excessively hard to detach the pen. Sure, it may be slightly more intuitive to use the volume rocker in its previous vertical orientation, but the convenience of being able to attach the Surface Pen to the tablet’s side more than makes up for this (you can also attach the new pen to the Surface Pro 3’s side, but it is a lot less secure).

Our review unit of the Surface Pro 4 came with the new sixth-generation Intel Core i5-6300U processor, 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and a 256GB Samsung-branded NVMe M.2 SSD, which arguably puts it in the middle of the pack of all possible configurations. The base model starts with a 4.5-watt Intel Core m3-6Y30 processor, while the top model can be equipped with a 15-watt Intel Core i7-6650U processor with Intel Iris graphics and 16GB of RAM.

Here’s a table summarizing the available specifications and their prices:

Compared to the fourth-generation Core i5-4300U processor (1.9GHz, 3MB L3 cache) found on the equivalently configured Surface Pro 3, the newer Skylake processor should offer more performance-per-watt, even if they have the same Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 15 watts. As we’ll see later, this was borne out in our battery tests, where the more powerful Surface Pro 4 lasted a bit longer than the Surface Pro 3 despite its smaller battery capacity (39Wh vs. 42 Wh).

Incidentally, this marks the first time when Microsoft has cut down on the battery capacity since releasing the first Surface Pro, and the smaller battery might have been a necessary trade-off in the process of making the device slimmer. However, as it turns out, the improved efficiency of Intel’s Skylake processors may very well compensate for the slight drop off in capacity, although your mileage may vary.

A word about cooling

Other than upgrading the innards of the Surface Pro 4 and putting on various polishing touches, Microsoft has also dug deeper and installed a new cooling system to keep its latest tablet running cool. A teardown of one unit revealed a so-called hybrid cooling system, where two different systems – one active, one passive – worked to draw heat away from the CPU. The larger copper plate between the display and battery unit essentially serves as a passive heatsink, helping dissipate heat from the CPU across a larger surface area.

To the left of the copper block is a fan that kicks in under more demanding workloads, drawing heat through the second heatpipe and expelling it out of vents that run along the upper edges of the device. Since we had the Core i5 version of the tablet, we got to feel the fan kicking in at times, but one thing to note is that the Core m3 version lacks the fan and relies solely on passive cooling.

How is this better than the Surface Pro 3? Well, other than providing more powerful cooling that should help prevent performance throttling, the dual cooling system on the Surface Pro 4 should also distribute heat more evenly instead of concentrating it in one area, which some Surface Pro 3 users found it be an issue when they reported excessive heat in the upper right quadrant of the tablet.

The same accessories, but better than before

But improved specifications aside, the new Surface Pen and Type Cover keyboard are a big part of why the Surface Pro 4 can be considered more than just an incremental upgrade over the Surface Pro 3.

Right off the bat, one of the most compelling new features of the new Surface Pen that is included with the Surface Pro 4 is its 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, up from just 256 on the previous version. That’s a quadrupling of how sensitive the pen is, and when using it in OneNote, the difference is clearly palpable.

The pen could distinguish between a light touch and a bold stroke, and the more nuanced ability to respond to different pressures allowed for a more natural writing experience. The old Surface Pen is good, but the new one is just that much better. The palm detection feature is as good as ever, and we were able to doodle, scribble, and scrawl bad drawings (we ain't artists) on OneNote’s canvas.

The other important feature on the new pen is the eraser function, which like a regular eraser, is located on the rear end. But don’t worry, it’s still clickable, so a single click launches OneNote instantly like before, and holding it down launches Cortana. Microsoft says that it has intended for the eraser to simulate the tactile feel of a real eraser on paper when it is used on the screen.

Well, we’ve used it, and while we can’t say that it feels quite like rubber on paper, there is enough friction involved that still feels quite satisfying. The eraser works by detecting and erasing continuous strokes, so if we wanted, we could get rid of all that wonky shading in that house below without accidentally breaking the outlines. The eraser is both accurate and fast, and we found ourselves loving the feature after just a short time with it.

The pen also now has a flat edge on its entire length for a magnetic strip that attaches to the Surface Pro 4. The right-click function on the previous pen has also been ported to the magnetic strip, which is now clickable. This is a lot more intuitive to use, but in order to ensure that you don’t accidentally activate the function while writing, Microsoft has made it such that it only works if you hold down the button before touching the nib to the screen.

The Surface Pen is also sold separately for S$99, where you can get it in a color other than the default silver (dark blue or red), together with a set of four different pen tips. One thing to note is that the pen tips aren’t just replacements for the default tip, and actually offer different levels of friction to suit your writing preferences. Microsoft has labeled them 2H (very low friction), H (low friction), HB (medium friction), and B (high friction) in order of friction, a tongue-in-cheek reference to real pencil leads.

The HB tip is the default one that comes with your bundled Surface Pen, and you can swap it out with the pincer tool built into the pen tip holder. You can just use the pincer to grip the installed tip and pull it out, and push the new tip in. We found that the medium-friction HB tip worked just fine and offered just the right mix of traction and glide. The B tip was a bit too grippy, but people who prefer a more controlled writing experience will probably like it. The 2H and H tips had a noticeably smoother glide, although the difference between the two appeared minimal to us. The pen tip kit can be bought separately at S$14 on the local Microsoft store.

Then there’s the new Type Cover keyboard, which is quite a big upgrade over the old design. Gone are the closely-spaced keys. Instead, the key layout is a familiar chiclet-style that is found on the keyboards of many full-fledged notebooks. The key travel distance has also been increased, allowing for a more tactile typing experience. The result is a much more spacious layout that is far more enjoyable to use.

On top of that, the trackpad has been upgraded to a larger glass one, which is a lot smoother and offers more room to maneuver. Finally, Microsoft says that they’ve also used a different material on the new keyboard, one that should be more resistant to those abominable grease stains that we all detest. We haven’t used the keyboard for long enough to actually verify that claim, but for what it’s worth, your keyboard will probably look clean for longer.

Frankly, it’s quite heartening that Microsoft has continued to improve on its accessories on top of the main device. The Type Cover keyboard with this year’s Surface 3 had increased key travel distance over the one on the Surface Pro 3, and the latest iteration represents an even larger step forward. What’s more, you can even use the new Type Cover keyboard on the Surface Pro 3. Combine that with the more portable dock and the new Surface Pen, both of which can also be used interchangeably with the Surface Pro 3, and we’re happy to see that Microsoft isn’t going down the track of nudging users to upgrade by making better accessories exclusive to the new model.

Unfortunately, the keyboard is still not bundled with the tablet, and you’ll have to purchase it for S$199 for the full Surface experience. It is available in blue, bright blue, and black on the local Microsoft Store.

Performance Benchmarking

We’ll be testing the Surface Pro 4 using our usual suite of benchmarks. For comparisons, we will include results from the two most recent Surface devices from Microsoft, 2015’s MacBooks, and the Dell XPS 13.

• PCMark 8
• 3DMark 2013
• Tomb Raider
• Far Cry 2

Here’s a quick look at how the Surface Pro 3 compares against our other tested ultrabooks:

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PCMark 8

The Surface Pro 4 actually stood its ground quite well in PCMark 8, posting scores that were within the top three for all but one of the benchmark suites, the exception being the Storage test. In the general Home benchmark which assesses performance in applications that a casual user is most likely to engage in, for instance Web browsing, writing, and video conferencing, the Surface Pro 4 turned out to be around 11% faster than the Surface Pro 3.

In fact, it took the lead over its predecessor in all the tests except the Work and Storage benchmarks, where it lost out slightly. It isn’t entirely clear why the newer tablet might fall behind the old one in the Work benchmark, but that could be due to factors like the higher screen resolution on the Surface Pro 4.

And while we might expect the NVMe SSD – after all the NVMe standard was designed for SSDs, right? – on the Surface Pro 4 to come ahead in the Storage test, that wasn’t the case. As it turns out, having an NVMe drive doesn’t automatically translate into faster performance because NVMe drivers behave different from the older SATA/AHCI drivers. New NVMe drives run on an entirely new software stack, and a new driver in Windows – either from the drive manufacturer or from Microsoft – is used instead of the traditional SATA ones.

As a result, the entire process functions differently from the old software stack, and a command called force unit access (FUA) is now implemented in Microsoft’s driver that forces all write operations to be written in both the cache and non-volatile media like your NVMe drive. AHCI didn’t do this, and the new implementation leads to reduced performance, although one benefit is that your data is kept safe in the event of a power outage or system failure.

3DMark 2013

Although the Surface Pro 4 demonstrated only a modest advantage over the Surface Pro 3 in PCMark, the Intel HD 520 integrated graphics really showed its chops here over the Intel HD 4400 used with the Surface Pro 3’s Intel Core i5-4300U processor.

It took an impressive 86% lead over the Surface Pro 3 in 3DMark Fire Strike, and came within striking distance of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. And considering that the Surface Pro 4 is still technically not a full-fledged laptop, that’s fairly impressive.

But don’t let the large improvements in synthetic benchmark scores fool you. As our real-world gaming benchmarks will show, you still aren’t going to be playing many games on Microsoft’s 2-in-1 hybrid, and the markedly improved 3DMark scores say more about the improved integrated graphics capability on Intel’s Skylake processors than the gaming prowess of the Surface Pro 4.

Far Cry 2

In Far Cry 2, the Surface Pro 4 posted a respectable average of 37.30fps at medium settings and a 1080p resolution. That’s definitely playable, but most games today aren’t as easy to run as Far Cry 2. At high settings, things were still playable at 22.27fps, around a 46% improvement over the Surface Pro 3’s barely playable 15.27fps.

As in 3DMark, the Surface Pro 4 also managed to outstrip the other ultrabooks, losing only to the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider proved to be more demanding than Far Cry 2, and suffice to say that you won’t be running games of its ilk on the Surface Pro 4. Still, the relative performance rankings we observed in 3DMark 2013 and Far Cry 2 are unchanged, and the Surface Pro 4 managed to beat all the other systems except the MacBook Pro.

Graphics performance may nearly have doubled compared to the Surface Pro 3, but there’s still a long ways to go till we’re running 3D games on ultrabooks and 2-in-1 hybrids.

Battery Life & Power Consumption

The Surface Pro 4 managed to outlast the Surface Pro 3 by 16 minutes despite its smaller battery (39Wh vs 42Wh), most likely thanks to its more power efficient Intel Skylake processor. We measured the battery life using the battery test in PCMark 8’s Home benchmark suite, so the results you get in daily, real-world use may vary. Of course, the smaller battery of the Surface Pro 4 couldn’t match up to the larger batteries on the other test systems, for instance the 74.9Wh pack on the MacBook Pro.

Our power consumption figures go on to show that the Intel Core i5-6300U is just that much more efficient than the Core i5-4300U on the Surface Pro 3. It’s still not up to the power-sipping Atom processor on the Surface 3 of course, but it does compare fairly favorably with the other ultrabooks.

Portability

Our portability index takes into account battery life, weight, and volume to provide a measure of how easy a notebook is to carry around relative to other compared systems. The higher the figure, the better, and the Surface Pro 4 came ahead of the Surface Pro 3 (both with Type Cover keyboard installed), which is unsurprising given its stronger performance in our battery tests and thinner profile.

We also calculated the portability index for the Surface Pro 4 without the Type Cover keyboard. While the figure looks to have more than doubled, do note that this doesn’t mean that the keyboard makes the device that much less portable. The Type Cover keyboard in question adds just 4.9mm in thickness to the tablet, but it does weigh 310g, which is why the portability index went down. However, the Surface Pro 4 tablet and Type Cover keyboard combine for just 1.096kg, so despite what the figures purport to show, it is still exceedingly portable. The index is intended as a relative figure for comparisons, and we can see that even with the Type Cover keyboard on, the Surface Pro 4 managed to beat top ultrabooks like the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air and the Dell XPS 13.

An incremental but worthy upgrade

Let’s set a few things straight first. The Surface Pro 4 is not some revolutionary device that is going to obliterate all notebooks. Instead, what it does – and does very well in fact – is build on the very solid foundation set by its predecessor in order to make a combination of carefully considered tweaks and create an even better device. And this better device just might convince more owners of both notebooks and tablets that they can do with a single device that functions as both.

That’s actually easier said than done, but we think Microsoft has actually succeeded. It has kept everything that people loved about the Surface Pro 3 and upgraded it with better hardware, specifications, and even accessories. This effectively ensures that the Surface Pro 4 will be a familiar device for converts. And when combined with a host of calculated improvements, the Surface Pro 4 gains the ability to appeal to new consumers and win over an even larger following.

With the Surface Pro 4, it is the details that matter. At first glance, it is the same silver-gray magnesium alloy device as the Surface Pro 3, with the same wonderful build quality and portability. But dig deeper, and you’ll notice the larger and higher resolution display, the more efficient and faster processor, and even the improved cooling system. And then there’s the new Surface Pen and Type Cover keyboard, which in all honesty, are quite a delight to use.

If you weren’t convinced by the Surface Pro 3, the Surface Pro 4 might just do the trick. Setting benchmark numbers aside, our review unit with the Intel Core i5-6300U processor and 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM performed admirably in daily use, with no perceivable slowdowns. And when used with the excellent new Type Cover keyboard, we could almost forget that the device wasn’t a full-fledged laptop.

That in itself should say a lot about the Surface Pro 4. When you can use it as a laptop and fail to notice that it is not in fact a laptop, a true hybrid device is created. We called the Surface Pro 3 a notebook killer, but the Surface Pro 4 does an even better job at that.

Of course, there will still be a segment of the market that continues to resist its charms, and these are the consumers who have no need for a tablet and prefer to type on a keyboard that doesn’t come off. These consumers will also probably prefer the longer battery life that comes from being able to cram larger juice packs onto proper notebooks.

Furthermore, the Surface Pro 4 is still subject to limitations like having only a single USB 3.0 port and no SD card reader (microSD only), weaknesses that aren’t present in a notebook like the Dell XPS 13. Sure, the S$314 dock would solve these problems, but that amounts to an added expense for features that are already found on regular notebooks.

So while the Surface Pro 4 may be a notebook killer, it doesn’t absolutely massacre the market. That’s not exactly a failure on Microsoft’s part though, because the Redmond-based company isn’t out to kill the notebook. The release of the Surface Book proved that Microsoft still sees a place for notebooks in the Windows 10 ecosystem. Instead, what the Surface Pro 4 does is slightly more nuanced – it can replace some notebooks for some users, in particular those that want the best of both worlds when it comes to laptops and tablets.

But this comes at a premium, and the Surface Pro 4 is a little pricey compared to its non-hybrid competitors, especially considering that you have to buy the keyboard for an extra S$199. We’ve compiled a table with all the five available configurations for your reference here:

We’d argue that the configuration we got for our review unit, which sits in the middle of the pack, offers the best balance between price and performance. You get 256GB of storage, 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, and an Intel Core i5 processor, which should be more than enough for most daily productivity tasks and things like photo editing. And unless you’re going to be doing some professional AutoCAD work, you probably won’t see any tangible performance difference in upgrading to the Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM (remember, RAM that you aren't utilizing is wasted RAM!). But if you want even more storage, the only 512GB model also comes with the upgraded processor, so you might have no choice but to pony up the cash if the additional storage is really necessary.

But when all’s said and done, the Surface Pro 4 is a worthy successor indeed to the Surface Pro 3. By keeping the best aspects of the latter device and piling on upgrades, Microsoft just made the year-and-a-half wait for its new Surface hybrid worth it. If you still need convincing that a tablet and notebook can function perfectly well as one, this is the device to look at.

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