the very fact that this thing exists is like a slap in the face to intel you see
intel has been trying to make processors for mobile devices for years yet almost
every surface pro since the three has looked about the same with a thick body
fan venting and sharp edges then 2019
rolls around and alongside the more traditional surface pro 7 microsoft
unveils the surface pro x an extremely
thin fanless machine with beautiful curved edges super thin bezels and
all-day battery life to boot i mean it looks like a surface pro
machine from the far future a future where arm processors like the
one in this device rule the world and intel scurrying around trying to survive
under the rubble but that future may yet be averted
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so why did microsoft need to switch from an intel processor to arm to make a slim
and sleek surface pro instead of this thick boy well the arm architecture has
a smaller instruction set which makes it lighter and more power efficient than
the x86 architecture used by intel and amd that makes it great for mobile
devices like phones and tablets but it also makes it less suitable for the kind
of powerhouse computing that's expected of desktops and laptops microsoft has
started experimenting with non-intel chips and laptops there's an amd version
of the surface laptop 3 now and our review is coming soon so get subscribed
if you want to catch it but as mobile devices get more powerful and laptops
get smaller and lighter we've seen arm processors start to pop up in laptop
two-in-ones like the hp envy x2 lenovo's
yoga c630 and now in microsoft's own
surface pro x the pro x runs on the microsoft sq1 a custom chip developed in
collaboration with qualcomm it's essentially a tweaked version of the
octa-core snapdragon 855 but with a higher clock speed of three gigahertz
more cash and more io microsoft says
that it performs great for working and connecting without an office thanks to
its built-in lte support and its supposed 13-hour battery life we got
more like 9 or 10 but that's still impressive and that's really the most
attractive feature of arm-powered devices at the launch event microsoft
said the surface pro x has 3x more performance per watt than the surface
pro 6. it's faster thinner lighter while
still running the full power of windows and
they almost got it right there you see while arm processors are super efficient
they can't run x86 apps natively microsoft has gotten around that issue
by creating windows 10 on arm which enables 32-bit x86 apps to run via
emulation notice i didn't say run perfectly well
while chrome opens just fine and runs decently well most of the time hitching
lag and waiting for a page to load properly were regular occurrences while
writing this review and while you can technically install professional
creative apps like photoshop using them was an exercise in
masochism now adobe and microsoft said arm compatible versions of creative
cloud apps are coming soon but they're not here yet
there are arm 64 compatible versions of the new chromium edge and firefox
available in beta and they were a bit smoother to use than regular ole x86
chrome that was borne out by our browser tests which saw chrome perform
significantly worse than the native arm versions
as for 64-bit x86 apps
well they won't run at all you'll simply get a message saying this app can't run
on your pc when you try to run cinebench for example so it was a bit difficult to
quantitatively benchmark the surface pro x although the geekbench cpu test showed
it losing pretty badly to our lower spec and cheaper surface pro 7 with an intel
core i5 1035 g4
love those 10th gen processor names microsoft says they're working to bring
emulation of 64-bit x86 apps to windows
on arm but we might not get it until 2021 and even then performance will
likely be even worse than 32-bit emulated x86 apps
so wait what apps are you supposed to run
on this thing well everything else the windows store has a
filter which only shows compatible apps there's no guarantee they'll run well
but you can install them and we were able to install and use browsers
messaging apps and office programs overall using the surface pro x was
fine but the experience was surprisingly disappointing on a device that looks and
feels as good as one of our merch items from lttstore.com
which reminds me we haven't even talked about the physical hardware here so
let's the surface pro x is super thin at
7.3 millimeters and weighs less than two pounds it's got the same great hinge
we've seen in other parts of the surface lineup and it overall looks really sleek
especially with the new curved edges the 13-inch 2880 by 1920 display fills
out the front of the device nicely with the thin side bezels and yes that's a
three by two aspect ratio
the top bezel is a bit thicker but that's because of the windows hello
sensors so i'll allow it for i o we've got an interesting
situation in the back there's a removable ssd and i say it with air
quotes because you're not supposed to remove it microsoft says to take it to a
microsoft store for repairs and there's also a nano sim card slot back there and
other than the surface connect port the only other i o we've got here are two
usbc ports now i understand the lack of
a usb a port the device is just too thin for that but it would be a lot easier to
swallow if there was also a headphone jack which there isn't oh it's connected
sure just not to my headphones now inside our machine is the version with
16 gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage which is 1499 us the lowest tier model
comes with eight gigs of ram and 128 gig ssd for a thousand bucks which is
pretty normal for a high-end windows thin and light but i'm not sure if that
standard should apply to something that's like 80 percent of a full windows device
moving on to the 139 dollar keyboard
it's fine the bottom of the key press is a bit mushy but there's a nice tactile
bump the track pad is very precise and
responsive but why is it so small
making it a bit taller would have done wonders for productivity not to mention
the fact that it's squished a vertical shape doesn't match the taller 3x2
display microsoft has had this problem with their otherwise excellent keyboard
folios for years it's time for an update guys
now they did change one thing here though the addition of a magnetic
charging cradle for the new slim pen this is great the smaller flattened
design makes it feel like a carpenter's pencil and throwing it in its slot
before packing up and going just feels natural
however the keyboard now tends to obscure the windows taskbar a bit when
using the pro-x on your lap perhaps due to the added bulk oh and the pen is also
145 dollars so we're now at almost 1800
bucks for the whole setup that's gonna be a yikes from me chief
now despite those minor annoyances using the surface pro x is mostly an enjoyable
experience provided you've got dongles on hand and there's no question that
this machine is far removed from microsoft's first arm-powered surface
the surface rt which launched back in 2013.
it ran on an nvidia tagger 3 processor and everyone hated it
there was no x86 emulation on it so you were stuck with the built-in apps and
whatever full screen windows 8 metro apps you could find on the fledgling
microsoft store it was a dark time
so in that context the surface pro x is
a triumph an extremely thin and light machine that wakes in an instant lasts
all day and can run full windows apps with a few exceptions
whether those exceptions are addressed with native arm 64 versions of desktop
apps will be the deciding factor in intel's fate because this device seems
to represent design changes that microsoft has wanted to make with the
main surface line for a while and we're finally able to make with an arm chip i
mean a surface pro x that runs all windows apps just as well as an intel
laptop could blow intel thin and lights out of the water
if the pressure from amd on desktop continues and arm continues its path
towards mobile dominance intel might just be up against the ropes
for now though this machine's getting a little ahead of
itself i mean with the keyboard and slim pen bundle our mid-tier machine here
comes to 1768.
a similarly spec'd surface pro 7 with an intel core i5 comes to
1628 that's cheaper and it can run photoshop
so right now it seems like arm-powered windows machines are kind of like the
plucky freshman he's got some natural talent and a load of potential
but he's not getting the nobel prize until he hits the books
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fastest mac on the planet
great i need to go back to tech linked