At least my Surface is getting all hot and throttles like crazy unless it’s plugged in. Pretty much from day one. The battery barely lasted 4 hours when new (forget the advertised “up to 16 hrs”).
The tablet functionality is horrible - it’s the combination of Windows not being well optimized to be used in a tablet mode, and the hardware quirks.
My use case is taking field notes, with many marked up photos, and marking up large PDFs (detailed layouts).
Here are some of the most glaring issues I ran into while trying to use Surface as a tablet. I have I7 with 32Gb memory so it’s not like it’s underpowered.
- Random lags and freezes
- Random, inexplicable changes in screen orientation, in the middle of me writing on it and without me moving the tablet.
- Alternatively, it often won’t change screen orientation when I rotate it. I have to do it a couple times.
- The loaded PDFs constantly refresh if I zoom in too much. Extremely annoying. Granted this is software related, but the only app that I tried so far that is somewhat stable is OneNote and it’s not perfect for PDF markup. Every other app that I tried (Inkodo, Scribl, Adobe) seems to have major memory or video memory issues.
- Taking photos and marking them up is a multi step process compared to iPad.
- Photo quality is bad, especially in a poorly lit, backlit or high contrast environment (which is pretty much the inside of every manufacturing facility).
And it’s heavy.
After a while, I just started taking my personal iPad everywhere. Despite having a lot less memory, it’s an entirely opposite experience in pretty much every way. It takes better photos, marking them up is just a tap away, it’s fluid and responsive, it changes screen orientation when I want it to and doesn’t change it when I don’t expect it to, it doesn’t choke on large PDFs, and the OS is optimized for touch.
So, if I can’t use Surface as a tablet, it’s just a laptop - with a terrible battery life, cramped keyboard, and a small screen.
By the way, I used to have an Acer 2-in-1 laptop (personal device) that was about 1/3rd the price of that Surface. It was actually a better tablet - it was still held back by W11 not being a true tablet OS, but the battery life was good and it didn’t lag nearly as badly despite having a quarter of RAM. I think there’s a lot of throttling going on behind the scenes, because of the small form factor and a hot, hungry CPU.
Oh yeah, the performance between the iPad and the Surface Pro is night and day difference. The iPad absolutely smokes the Surface Pro in my experience with display models. If you open enough things on the Surface Pro (now granted, it’s a display model, so likely not a high spec configuration), it will begin to stutter and get very hot. The fans kick on, and everything kind of starts to grind to a halt. The Qualcom version seemed a bit better performance wise, but still felt sluggish in several areas where even my older M1 iPad Pro just zips.
Yeah, the battery life seems very abysmal from everything I’ve read. The general consensus is that the advertised battery runtime for the Surface Pros is generally at least double what it actually gets, which is really pretty shoddy of Microsoft to make such big claims when you really can’t replicate those kinds of battery runtime with actual typical use… The iPad gets spectacular battery runtime. I think the biggest problem with the Surface Pro really boils down to Windows. Windows just isn’t well optimized for the hardware even beyond the lack of touch optimization, Windows isn’t well optimized to run on a device with that small of a battery, and neither are many apps. iPadOS is actually fully optimized to run on a tablet with a smaller battery than a laptop offers. And this is actually one of several reasons why slapping macOS on the iPad would be a bad idea, it would likely blow right through battery because of the lack of optimizations that iPadOS provides…
I actually recall a display model exhibiting that same screen rotation behavior. It was one I looked at probably a year or two ago. It was propped up on its kickstand with the keyboard attached, but the display kept wanting to switch orientation whenever I tapped on the keyboard case. It seems that they can be temperamental at times with that screen rotation. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the gyro sensor, or with the software, or both, but it seems to be a thing, at least on some. I haven’t consistently had that experience with display models though, so I’m guessing it probably doesn’t affect all.
Yeah, I think the keyboard on the iPad is better personally. Beyond the feel of the Magic Keyboard, which is very similar to the feel of the Magic Keyboard on Macs, the keyboard doesn’t bounce as you type. The Type Cover on the Surface Pro feels very bouncy to me. And you can absolutely forget using that thing on your lap. Between the kickstand being required to hold the Surface Pro up, and then the bouncy cover that can shift up and down on your lap and isn’t firm, it just really doesn’t work at all on the lap. You have to be working at a table or desk in order for that combination to work. Where the iPad Magic Keyboard case with the cantilever solution makes it possible to use on the lap. And I think even the 11” iPad model offers a better keyboard experience than the Surface Pro due to lack of bounciness, it’s able to be used on the lap, and even though the 11” has a bit narrower of a keyboard due to it being smaller, they trimmed the keys at the edges, which makes for a decent typing experience, even though it is a bit more cramped than a full-sized keyboard. The 13” model, the typing experience on that iPad feels much better than on the Surface Pro.
Overall, I think that unless you’re really sold on Windows, the Surface Pro is a pretty bad tablet experience. Back in 2021 when I bought my iPad, I actually was considering the Surface Pro as one of the options I was looking at because I had seen so many articles complaining about the iPad supposedly not being capable. But after doing lots of research, I decided against it and decided to try out the iPad instead, and if it wasn’t enough for my needs, I could always lean back on my Intel MacBook. But once I began using the iPad, my MacBook ended up going into storage, I was completely blown away by how capable iPadOS was after all the negative articles I came across denigrating it and claiming it was “only good for content consumption”… I initially expected that my iPad would be a companion to my Mac, but it outright completely replaced it, and actually made several major improvements to my workflow. iPadOS actually completely won me over. It’s so much more capable than many give it credit for, and I am so glad I didn’t decide to go off of the negative articles I came across when researching it. That’s actually part of why I got into SubStacking. I want to provide some more positive information for those who may be on the fence like I was. I want to provide some counterbalance to all of the negative content out there. And I also really enjoy writing about tech and the iPad because it’s something I’m passionate about. 👍🏻
To me, the Surface Pro just fundamentally feels like a laptop pretending to be a tablet that really can’t pull off either all that well. It makes for a bad tablet experience due to it’s thicker and clunkier build, poor battery runtime, non-optimized software, etc., and it makes for a bad laptop experience due to small battery, bouncy keyboard, no ability to use it on the lap with the keyboard cover (which is kind of literally in the name laptop), and it’s crammed internal components which leads to it getting hotter faster. That’s why I would really only recommend a Surface Pro to someone aware of the cons, and who is still sold on Windows and is okay with poor battery runtime and the thermal issues… And now at this point, I would strongly suggest against the Intel models, even though many softwares still have to run via emulation on the Qualcomm Surface Pros. The ARM chips definitely make an improvement on the heat, and I’ve heard they do make a bit of an improvement on battery runtime, though still nowhere near advertised battery runtimes. I think that also goes to show that much of the problem with battery runtime just inherently comes from lack of battery optimization on desktop OSes like Windows, an Android tablet with the same Qualcomm chip and a thinner chassis should provide far better battery runtime, and everything I’ve seen suggests it does. 👍🏻
