It’s way too heavy and thick. I have a Surface RT and am very impressed its design and performance. Looks just elegant. But when I first saw the Surface Pro I was just so disappointed. It looks just twice thick as RT and heavy like hell as a tablet. This trying to make both world happy approach will never work out for Microsoft.
True, but on the Surface RT you can use only touch apps. No desktop apps, not much productivity there.
The Surface RT is mostly for consuming content and not for doing too much work.
I mostly use it for consuming content, not much for producing any real work. That’s what my intention is in the first place anyway because I don’t believe the tablet/laptop-in-one shit will ever work. Even though I embraced Surface RT’s design, I was disappointed at first because I couldn’t find a good app to read my Feedly feeds, until Readily app was released. I am becoming increasingly like its mail app and started to use it a lot. I use IE on RT a lot too, like YouTube, Pocket, etc. because there aren’t any decent apps for it. The number, and quality of apps really kill this elegantly designed piece of device.
Frankly, I could use a 7″ Nexus 2nd tablet a lot more than this Surface RT.
Darrellmsu
10 years ago
So I had a surface 2, and returned it. Had the 256gb model, just couldn’t justify the 1200 bucks for what I wanted/needed it for. A laptop made much better sense for 800 to me. Mainly I wanted to use it as a laptop (already have an iPad, and we have a Kindle Fire in the house), and the floppiness of the whole thing, with no hinge that could support it’s weight meant it went back. Battery life was decent, I got about 4 hours out of it playing games (most taxing thing I could think of).
I then bought the Dell 8″ Venue Pro (because it had a stylus) and loved the device. Even though it was an Atom processor with only 2gb of ram, it handled everything that I had thrown at it, and the battery life was decent. Ordered the Stylus from Dell, but the fact the technology wasn’t WACOM, read lots of bad reviews. 3 delays later, I cancelled the Stylus order( can’t even find it listed on Dell’s site anymore) and returned the Venue Pro, because I want the stylus and Asus had announced their 8″ WACOM Win 8 tablet.
But then, something happened. BestBuy and Microsoft put the 1st Surface up for $500 with 128gb of storage. I thought to myself, would I rather pay 350ish for the 64GB Asus, or just $150 more and get a Surface, higher res screen 2x the ram, 2x the storage. So I did that. Then I created my own power profile on the device, and watched 4 hours worth of Movies on it straight until the battery died. Trying to decide if I will keep it. It is big and heavy, unlike the other devices, the battery is mostly bad. I want something that gets about 6-8 hours of battery life with a Micro SD (because putting movies on it is so much easier than an iPad for flights). But the Surface might could take the place of my laptop 80% of the time. When I am really working though writing code, I doubt it.
Similar experience here too, but you should try RT version of Surface. It’s designed mainly just for using as tablet. I can watch movies straight for 6-8 hours without worrying about the battery. Just like you said, having SD on RT is just much easier transferring the movies to it. I bought a 64GB version but I really should have bought the 32GB version because I can easily throw in 64G SD to make that up. Microsoft made a huge mistake pricing the 1st generation of Surface RT. Should they have priced at the current range they would have sold a lot more of them.
Thanks for sharing your story. I’m sure many other readers will appreciate reading it.
Alexei
10 years ago
This is an excellent review. Rather than a rehash of specifications (as are 99% of “reviews” nowadays), this conveys useful information about the user experience that helps me in making my buying decision. Well done!
It’s way too heavy and thick. I have a Surface RT and am very impressed its design and performance. Looks just elegant. But when I first saw the Surface Pro I was just so disappointed. It looks just twice thick as RT and heavy like hell as a tablet. This trying to make both world happy approach will never work out for Microsoft.
True, but on the Surface RT you can use only touch apps. No desktop apps, not much productivity there.
The Surface RT is mostly for consuming content and not for doing too much work.
What do you use it for?
I mostly use it for consuming content, not much for producing any real work. That’s what my intention is in the first place anyway because I don’t believe the tablet/laptop-in-one shit will ever work. Even though I embraced Surface RT’s design, I was disappointed at first because I couldn’t find a good app to read my Feedly feeds, until Readily app was released. I am becoming increasingly like its mail app and started to use it a lot. I use IE on RT a lot too, like YouTube, Pocket, etc. because there aren’t any decent apps for it. The number, and quality of apps really kill this elegantly designed piece of device.
Frankly, I could use a 7″ Nexus 2nd tablet a lot more than this Surface RT.
So I had a surface 2, and returned it. Had the 256gb model, just couldn’t justify the 1200 bucks for what I wanted/needed it for. A laptop made much better sense for 800 to me. Mainly I wanted to use it as a laptop (already have an iPad, and we have a Kindle Fire in the house), and the floppiness of the whole thing, with no hinge that could support it’s weight meant it went back. Battery life was decent, I got about 4 hours out of it playing games (most taxing thing I could think of).
I then bought the Dell 8″ Venue Pro (because it had a stylus) and loved the device. Even though it was an Atom processor with only 2gb of ram, it handled everything that I had thrown at it, and the battery life was decent. Ordered the Stylus from Dell, but the fact the technology wasn’t WACOM, read lots of bad reviews. 3 delays later, I cancelled the Stylus order( can’t even find it listed on Dell’s site anymore) and returned the Venue Pro, because I want the stylus and Asus had announced their 8″ WACOM Win 8 tablet.
But then, something happened. BestBuy and Microsoft put the 1st Surface up for $500 with 128gb of storage. I thought to myself, would I rather pay 350ish for the 64GB Asus, or just $150 more and get a Surface, higher res screen 2x the ram, 2x the storage. So I did that. Then I created my own power profile on the device, and watched 4 hours worth of Movies on it straight until the battery died. Trying to decide if I will keep it. It is big and heavy, unlike the other devices, the battery is mostly bad. I want something that gets about 6-8 hours of battery life with a Micro SD (because putting movies on it is so much easier than an iPad for flights). But the Surface might could take the place of my laptop 80% of the time. When I am really working though writing code, I doubt it.
Similar experience here too, but you should try RT version of Surface. It’s designed mainly just for using as tablet. I can watch movies straight for 6-8 hours without worrying about the battery. Just like you said, having SD on RT is just much easier transferring the movies to it. I bought a 64GB version but I really should have bought the 32GB version because I can easily throw in 64G SD to make that up. Microsoft made a huge mistake pricing the 1st generation of Surface RT. Should they have priced at the current range they would have sold a lot more of them.
Thanks for sharing your story. I’m sure many other readers will appreciate reading it.
This is an excellent review. Rather than a rehash of specifications (as are 99% of “reviews” nowadays), this conveys useful information about the user experience that helps me in making my buying decision. Well done!
Thanks Alexei. I’m happy you found it useful. There was a lot of work put into making this review. 😀