Looking at tablet announcements from MSFT and Apple it is clear that Tablet and Ultralight laptop segments should be merged. Seriously paying >$1299 for a tablet (i.e. all of the Core i7 options of Surface Pro4) is stupid. Better buy a high end of laptop if you need that much horsepower.
It is not that powerful, just having the same two ULV cores. If you need serious power you should get the VAIO canvas with real quadcore i7 and iris pro GPU.
I know seriously these comments make me laugh. The SP4 and SB are the ultimate in business class tablets. They can replace an ultrabook in many cases but not all - hence why we have the option to buy a different format hybrid, or ultrathin, laptop, etc.
Might as well say "You can get a more powerful ITX desktop for less and just stick it in a briefcase!"
Wow you're right. The new VAIO Z Canvas is the fastest (and most expensive) tablet I've seen. The 1TB model is $3100. Looking at it, the Canvas has some serious cooling and I'd bet it still doesn't turbo very well for any length of time. They certainly aren't running it at the full TDP, but I'd bet it still devours power too. So, the Surface Pro 4 is still likely better overall in the business tablet arena.
But you're right it does have a true quadcore and thus should be pretty smoking fast in heavily threaded loads. I'd like to see it benched alongside the SP4. If you're taxing the GPU I'd say the eDRAM will help the SP4, otherwise that quad core behemoth will be tough to beat.
Clearly this means something. Something. Yes. It means... it means... they blow away competing processors in this form factor! Wait, was that the point he was trying to make? Cause that's what I'm getting out of this.
I'd be getting one of these to replace a high end laptop (Lenovo at the moment), since the high end SP4 at the moment appears to have better specs overall than my T420s. After swapping in a 750GB SSD and upgrading ram to 16GB, my T420S has cost almost $3000, making the top of the line SP4 a near dollar-for-dollar replacement, whenever my laptop finally dies. For that matter, if they come up with a solution to let me easily dock the SP4 and connect to the 2 monitors and kb/mouse on my desk, the SP4 could also replace my aging desktop which is still rocking a quad core socket 775 cpu and 8GB DDR2. I also have an ASUS transformer tablet that runs win10 very nicely and is great for taking around the house or out to the garage whenever I need more screen size than my phone for *whatever*, and it looks like an SP4 could replace all 3 of those systems for the price I'd pay for a full replacement of either the laptop or the desktop.
The only thing the SP4 can't provide is high end gaming. I like flight simulators and there's no substitute for cpu and gpu horsepower with those, so the SP4 would be wholly unsatisfactory for me personally as a gaming machine.
Not really. They're nice devices, but the big players haven't announced or released Skylake based tablet/laptops yet. I'd expect the Macbook Air / Pro to be at least on par with the Pro and Book.
At least Microsoft is listening to it's customers. Unlike Apple they don't release 1 port turds with less performance like the Retina Macbook when everyone was asking for a Retina Macbook Air... And that horrid 1-port iPad Prosumer'... I want Microsoft to slap Apple around as Apple is basically resting on their laurels...
Can you confirm that the Pro 4 offers facial recognition? Arstechnica's live blog states that it does, in addition to the fingerprint sensor of the Type Cover (for $159), but I can't find mention of it anywhere in the product page or various hands ons.
"Windows Hello" encompasses Iris, Facial, and Fingerprint/Biometric though, correct? I'm still not sure if the Surface has only the fingerprint support, or if it also unlocks via Camera stuff.
If I misunderstood and that already means that facial recognition is supported, then my apologies. Thank you!
Core m is the same as broadwell/haswell/every other i-Y processor. The surface pro series has always started with a -Y model at the base, so nothing has really changed...
Meanwhile non-Ultrabook non-2-in-1s could come with an i7 under $1000. You had better care about form factor if you are willing to double or triple the price.
I am waiting for Intel to release its GT4e Skylake parts...
I'm getting this to replace my girlfriends 15" 2011 MBP which I am currently borrowing for studies. The 15" is awesome and very capable, but the 5 pound weight is slowly killing my back alongside the heavy books.
I wasn considering the Surface Book for a moment(seroiusly impressive) but the option with 16GB RAM and the dGPU was a bit out of my price range.
Pretty good bet that CPUs are: i5-6300U i7-6650U Will be interesting to see what the Core M option is. Also what the impact on battery life will be moving from m3 to i5 to i7.
I waited a long time for this product and certainly didn't expect Microsoft to be the first one to deliver it.
Apple has painted themselves into a corner with their two platform philosophy - they can't easily copy this with ARM/iOS vs x86/OSX unless they a.) allow OS X to have touch input (hell will freeze over before this happens) or b.) do a monumental platform rewrite and merge iOS and OS X (virtually impossible) or c.) strap an iPad to a Macbook Air base, both running their native OSes with some form of data syncing between the two.
Meanwhile Microsoft has a very elegant solution here. Unlike Windows 8.0, Windows 10 is an acceptable OS in both modes. Having the CPU & battery in the screen and GPU & battery & ports in the keyboard gives them more battery capacity and more room for heat dissipation. Theoretically this would enable them to use significantly higher TDP parts than a traditional Macbook at no tradeoff (but weight and cost).
I could count on one hand the number of people I know that bought one for themselves, but I see more and more surfaces show up in business and client meetings. It is very slowly carving itself out a niche.
I wonder how many of those are functioning installs, rather than install attempts that failed and rolled back like happened on the only one of my PCs that I attempted to install 10 on. The other PCs are still saying that MS is still preparing 10 for my PC, but I'm in no hurry.
i5 from 128GB - 256GB and 4GB to 8GB: $300 i5 from 256GB - 512GB (no other changes): $400
Either way it's a win for MS. Buy the low storage SP4 and have to rely on MS OneDrive cloud storage. Buy the high storage version and they get another $400 for $50 BOM increase.
God help us if we have to rely on OneDrive storage. That thing lost far too many documents while synchronizing for my taste. Not to mention when it mysteriously duplicates all my files forcing me to resort to black magic-ish shell scripts to sort the bloody mess out.
I have held onto my Surface Pro 1 since it launched. I have been waiting for a reason to upgrade mainly because pen accuracy was always meh and the device lasts me 3 hours on a charge at best. So the Surface Pro 4 has peaked my interest. My debate is whether to choose the m3 or i5. I really just want to write and use Photoshop, probably not much gaming.
Of course the grinding issue is the lack of storage or ram options. I would love the m3 with 256 gb of storage. Save $100 and go with the m3 or just suck it up and go for the i5?
best wait for reviews first. for only 100 bucks more i'm inclined to say go for the i5, but if it turns out the m3 has better battery life and sufficient performance, it might be the smarter buy in some cases.
i'm confused by microsoft's power claims. they say it's 50% faster than a Macbook Air and 30% faster than a Surface Pro 3... so they're saying the Surface Pro 3 is faster than the Macbook Air? which models are they comparing? because the slowest MBA crushes the slowest SP3 and the fastest MBA kicks the pants off the fastest SP3. sounds like a lot of BS to me.
They're probably claiming that the $1599 Surface Pro 4 is 50% faster than the $899 MacBook Air 11. Which is fantastic! I'd expect nothing different when considering the gigantic price gap lol
This was an insanely disingenuous claim. What they did is compare the base clock speed of the Core i7-4650U Surface Pro 3 (1.7 GHz) to that of the Core i7-6650U Surface Pro 4 (2.2 GHz) to arrive at "up to 30% faster". And then they compared the base clock speed of the Core i5-5250U MacBook Air (1.6 GHz) to that of the Core i5-6300U Surface Pro 4 (2.4 GHz) to get to "50% faster". Which anyone paying any attention will realize has no bearing whatsoever on real-world performance, because it's not like Intel made some 30-50% leap in performance between Haswell/Broadwell and Skylake.
Not that equal chips will be 50% faster, no, but if a machine now has a 50% higher clock rate than a similar CPU, it'll get slightly better than 50% more performance.
Microsoft can't even get devs to update their software for things like high res displays or newer features. How can they expect devs to make the (much greater) effort to create touch optimized versions of their software?
I'd never spend $2000 on a powerful tablet that I was stuck using as a laptop (with attached keyboard) because the software I want to use is clunky on the tablet.
Neither Microsoft nor, say, Apple can force the developers but the market can. For the most relevant software (and we have way more of it on Windows than on OS/X) the developers will do the right thing since they are interested in our money.
Well, but Microsoft could at least help us! At least IMHO, Cocoa makes it much easier to follow good practices compared to the mess that the Windows 10 SDK is. Not to mention that Microsoft's documentation for Universal Apps is a holy mess of JavaScript documents scattered everywhere whilst C# ones are very hard to find. After fiddling with it, it makes me very skeptical about whether I really want to deal with all that rubbish for making apps for a store that is still irrelevant (developer wise) compared to Google's or Apple's. Android at least has a massive perk (the gigantic user base) that makes using Java easier to swallow.
Am I the only one who thinks the pricing is horrific? The $900 and $1k options are fine, whatever. But from there the pricing steps are absolutely unacceptable. I was waiting to buy a SP4, now it's a 100% no go and I wont be getting any surface product.
But these aren't intended for consumer use. Consumers aren't buying Surface tablets. These are intended for enterprise purchasing, where price isn't as contentious an issue. Whether they will sell better than the Surface Pro 3 models will take some time before we know.
I looked and then thought $500 for a 500GB SSD upgrade was absurd. But then I looked at Newegg and a 512GB PCIe SSD is $300 and a 960GB is $650, and suddenly it's not actually that absurd.
Sure, it's still a premium, but instead of being a crazy premium, it's "only" a 50% premium. Rather than the $350 premium it would be on a SATA SSD where you can get the entire 1TB for $300
I want to point out that you are looking at retail prices, MS wont be paying those prices. I got nothing against making a profit, but the current listed pricing is just flat out unacceptable.
I see that the Surface Book will be $2700 for it's top i7 config with GPU etc. Why you put your lesser product at the same price? SP4 definitely should be cheaper, and there certainly should be a cheap i5/512/8 option as I suggested.
You want them to offer a 256GB pci-e SSD upgrade for $150? You were always going to be disappointed on that front. If you want inexpensive, there will be many options from OEM partners.
I'm not looking for inexpensive, I'm looking for reasonable. Average RETAIL rates between 256 and 512 SSD's are under $150, MS can buy in bulk directly for lower prices. They chose $1k as their base i5 config, meaning they are getting the profit they want at that level. So even if they charge retail rates for each upgrade level, they are making more profit than on the base config since they aren't paying retail.
On top of that, there is already a larger profit premium added to the RAM and CPU steps...so some of the models will make them more profit than others. In the long run it's always better to sell more units for lower profit when you make about the same total profit either way. Right now MS is going for "sell the least amount possible" route, while they broadly proclaim their goal is to get hundreds of millions of customers.
and we still have to pay 2200$, probably even more in €, if we want 512gb of storage, even if we don't need an i7, iris graphics or 16gb of ram. 2000+$ for 500gb, it's ridiculous.
Everyone keeps going on about how impressed they are but I'm not really impressed by these offerings at all. No built in LTE, no c-type connector, a small screen AND very expensive. I waited a long time for this reveal and it's pretty disappointing.
It's absurd that they tout the SP4 is 50% faster than MBA, which is thermally not possible. SP3 throttled when the core hit around 80 deg celcius, and MBA goes up around 100 deg, allowing higher clock speed for longer time.
@nerd1 I agree with your initial claim. The very marketing oriented 50% faster claim is marketing and should be given no credence. However, I also have to call you out on your thermal throttling argument. Had you said the MBA had a better cooling solution and keeps the processor further below the thermal shutdown threshold, I'd check it out, but it sounds like it could be true (larger surface area). However, you suggest that two devices that both use Intel silicon will have wildly different thermal shutdown thresholds as conveyed by the wildly different throttling temperatures (80C vs 100C). Granted the processors are one generation apart, but they are in the same class of product and have very similar thermal shutdown thresholds. If such a wild variation in throttling temperatures really does exist (and isn't modifiable in BIOS) then you have to consider what is happening to that MBA that is allowed to heat up so much closer to its thermal shutdown temperature. Perhaps you should look up what happens to the life expectancy of silicon devices with every 10C rise in temperature.
Note: I have not yet formed an opinion of the SP4 vs SB vs MBA vs iPAD Pro. I will save an opinion for after reviews, though my initial thoughts are upgrades from the base model on all of these lines are stupid expensive owing to the fact that none of them support after market upgrades.
That makes a lot more sense. So they didn't put a good enough insulation layer between the heat sources and the display. Still better to limit performance than to destroy the device over time. Need to consider the performance implications for the newer surface devices.
No USB Type C or USB 3.1 is just fucking stupid. Instead there is this "Microsoft Connect" port which is a proprietary garbage. It won't be long before all USB parts are type C, it's certainly going to happen in the lifetime of this product (unless you buy a new computer every year). I expected Microsoft to get this right where Apple screwed up with a single port. Instead they didn't even get close to right by completely leaving USB 3.1 off and adding a bogus proprietary port.
I'm simply shocked at the stupidity. It's a great product but it's worthless without USB C, at least IMO.
It's not worthless but loses a lot of value. USB 3.1 would definitely make sense with a PCIe SSD and make it future proof. Same for the surface book. It's probably worth waiting for the next generation of both, especially if you already have a SP3. In the meantime I will be buying the new type cover for my SP3...
I think we all want the latest (e.g. Type C) but I have to think that Microsoft has some idea of the needs of their target/core buyers. In business and enterprise, for example, what percent of peripherals will use a Type C connector even three years from now?
In 3 years 90% of all peripherals will be using type C. Every phone produced in 2016+ will have it. Up until a couple weeks ago there was only one chip supplier so prices remained high, two more went full production a couple weeks ago. By the end of the year USB C will be as cheap to use as USB 3.0 and it's going to virtually eliminate all other forms of USB in very short order.
It was beyond stupid for MS to leave the port off. The very least they could have done is match apple and used the USB C port for the power. One of the beauties of USB C is the power, now the big power brick you have to carry around with your laptop could actually have more USB ports on it because the power it supplies is via USB-C. This would allow the power brick to essentially provide a docking station like functionality because you have to carry it around anyway.
I thought Apple screwed up big time when they included only one port, I though Google stumbled with the Pixel when they only provided two but I had no idea microsoft would be so stupid as to not include any. Any tablet or laptop coming out in the next few months should have at least 2 usb C ports and preferably 3+. Not including them is so shortsighted it's just unbelievable.
MS is not competing with Acer and mass produced (cheaper) tablets - MS go for the high end. Surface Pro 4 have a clear target group (business, student/university etc.)
So is that dreadful IGZO panel going to be replaced with an IPS or will they still use IGZO? I've exchanged 4 (four) SP3 so far because of yellow tints and severe corner/side backlight bleeding and I gave up on the 5th ... all of them look good on day one, but then after less than a week they start developing screen issues.
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JoyTech - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Looking at tablet announcements from MSFT and Apple it is clear that Tablet and Ultralight laptop segments should be merged. Seriously paying >$1299 for a tablet (i.e. all of the Core i7 options of Surface Pro4) is stupid. Better buy a high end of laptop if you need that much horsepower.eddman - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
"Better buy a high end of laptop if you need that much horsepower."Again, there are people who specifically want or need that power in a tablet form. If they wanted a laptop, they'd buy one.
nathanddrews - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Yeah, what? It's better to have choice.nerd1 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
It is not that powerful, just having the same two ULV cores. If you need serious power you should get the VAIO canvas with real quadcore i7 and iris pro GPU.eddman - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
@nerd1It's still the most powerful tablet PC though, isn't it? That's the whole point. A laptop isn't a tablet and vice versa.
Alexvrb - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I know seriously these comments make me laugh. The SP4 and SB are the ultimate in business class tablets. They can replace an ultrabook in many cases but not all - hence why we have the option to buy a different format hybrid, or ultrathin, laptop, etc.Might as well say "You can get a more powerful ITX desktop for less and just stick it in a briefcase!"
nerd1 - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
Vaio Canvas is a 12 inch tablet.Alexvrb - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
Wow you're right. The new VAIO Z Canvas is the fastest (and most expensive) tablet I've seen. The 1TB model is $3100. Looking at it, the Canvas has some serious cooling and I'd bet it still doesn't turbo very well for any length of time. They certainly aren't running it at the full TDP, but I'd bet it still devours power too. So, the Surface Pro 4 is still likely better overall in the business tablet arena.But you're right it does have a true quadcore and thus should be pretty smoking fast in heavily threaded loads. I'd like to see it benched alongside the SP4. If you're taxing the GPU I'd say the eDRAM will help the SP4, otherwise that quad core behemoth will be tough to beat.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
And this so called "i7's" are just dual core HT cpu's with a bit more turbo headroom.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
and?Alexvrb - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Clearly this means something. Something. Yes. It means... it means... they blow away competing processors in this form factor! Wait, was that the point he was trying to make? Cause that's what I'm getting out of this.MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
... and the eDRAM and the faster and/or more power efficient GPU.flensr - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I'd be getting one of these to replace a high end laptop (Lenovo at the moment), since the high end SP4 at the moment appears to have better specs overall than my T420s. After swapping in a 750GB SSD and upgrading ram to 16GB, my T420S has cost almost $3000, making the top of the line SP4 a near dollar-for-dollar replacement, whenever my laptop finally dies. For that matter, if they come up with a solution to let me easily dock the SP4 and connect to the 2 monitors and kb/mouse on my desk, the SP4 could also replace my aging desktop which is still rocking a quad core socket 775 cpu and 8GB DDR2. I also have an ASUS transformer tablet that runs win10 very nicely and is great for taking around the house or out to the garage whenever I need more screen size than my phone for *whatever*, and it looks like an SP4 could replace all 3 of those systems for the price I'd pay for a full replacement of either the laptop or the desktop.The only thing the SP4 can't provide is high end gaming. I like flight simulators and there's no substitute for cpu and gpu horsepower with those, so the SP4 would be wholly unsatisfactory for me personally as a gaming machine.
Devo2007 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
They do have a solution to easily connect two monitors and some USB devices to a Surface.BMNify - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
You are looking for Surface dock: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/accessories...tipoo - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
I don't follow. This *is* a merger of the tablet and ultralight laptops, and the Surface Pros do everything a laptop does.kspirit - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Microsoft bringing the Slayage this year. Very impressed with everything they've announced today. .DigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Not really. They're nice devices, but the big players haven't announced or released Skylake based tablet/laptops yet. I'd expect the Macbook Air / Pro to be at least on par with the Pro and Book.Pneumothorax - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
At least Microsoft is listening to it's customers. Unlike Apple they don't release 1 port turds with less performance like the Retina Macbook when everyone was asking for a Retina Macbook Air... And that horrid 1-port iPad Prosumer'...I want Microsoft to slap Apple around as Apple is basically resting on their laurels...
Drumsticks - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Can you confirm that the Pro 4 offers facial recognition? Arstechnica's live blog states that it does, in addition to the fingerprint sensor of the Type Cover (for $159), but I can't find mention of it anywhere in the product page or various hands ons.Ian Cutress - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
It comes with Windows Hello, yes.Drumsticks - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
"Windows Hello" encompasses Iris, Facial, and Fingerprint/Biometric though, correct? I'm still not sure if the Surface has only the fingerprint support, or if it also unlocks via Camera stuff.If I misunderstood and that already means that facial recognition is supported, then my apologies. Thank you!
at80eighty - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
fingerprint recognition is SP3 only - only in the black keyboard & US only as of nowsorten - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
The Surface Pro supports both fingerprint and facial recognition for signing in. Panos showed a video of his kids using both options.ilkhan - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
it has facial recognition.The fingerprint reader cover is primarily for SP3 usage.
Drumsticks - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Awesome, thanks all.Chris_Kez - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
Panos Panay said it has "facial authentication". That stuck out to me because of his use of the word "authentication" rather than "recognition".iOSecure - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
It STARTS with an Intel Core M3 for $899. That's insane... The M3 is the 2nd lowest processor out of the entire Skylake lineup under Pentium.So yeah "2x" more powerful than a Macbook assuming you buy the $1,800 model excluding the keyboard.
If you can't afford a higher tier Surface Pro either save or look somewhere else..
Drumsticks - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Core m is the same as broadwell/haswell/every other i-Y processor. The surface pro series has always started with a -Y model at the base, so nothing has really changed...lilo777 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
What's wrong with paying more for premium product? Leave Macbooks for college students.melgross - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Ridulous! Grow up.nandnandnand - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Meanwhile non-Ultrabook non-2-in-1s could come with an i7 under $1000. You had better care about form factor if you are willing to double or triple the price.I am waiting for Intel to release its GT4e Skylake parts...
digiguy - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
this M3 is much more powerful than the I3 in SP3 (I own one) and it makes it fanless (you will see in benchmarks)tipoo - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
I'm starting to think the 2x was some arbitrary merger of CPU, GPU, and G5 chipset, since quads are unlikely in this.Laxaa - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I'm getting this to replace my girlfriends 15" 2011 MBP which I am currently borrowing for studies. The 15" is awesome and very capable, but the 5 pound weight is slowly killing my back alongside the heavy books.I wasn considering the Surface Book for a moment(seroiusly impressive) but the option with 16GB RAM and the dGPU was a bit out of my price range.
soliloquist - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Pretty good bet that CPUs are:i5-6300U
i7-6650U
Will be interesting to see what the Core M option is. Also what the impact on battery life will be moving from m3 to i5 to i7.
repoman27 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
The Core m3-6Y30 is the only m3 that Intel has announced, isn't it?ydeer - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I waited a long time for this product and certainly didn't expect Microsoft to be the first one to deliver it.Apple has painted themselves into a corner with their two platform philosophy - they can't easily copy this with ARM/iOS vs x86/OSX unless they a.) allow OS X to have touch input (hell will freeze over before this happens) or b.) do a monumental platform rewrite and merge iOS and OS X (virtually impossible) or c.) strap an iPad to a Macbook Air base, both running their native OSes with some form of data syncing between the two.
Meanwhile Microsoft has a very elegant solution here. Unlike Windows 8.0, Windows 10 is an acceptable OS in both modes.
Having the CPU & battery in the screen and GPU & battery & ports in the keyboard gives them more battery capacity and more room for heat dissipation. Theoretically this would enable them to use significantly higher TDP parts than a traditional Macbook at no tradeoff (but weight and cost).
melgross - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
They don't want to. So far, Microsoft's idea hasn't proven to be popular.at80eighty - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
http://i49.tinypic.com/sy44zq.jpgotherwise - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I could count on one hand the number of people I know that bought one for themselves, but I see more and more surfaces show up in business and client meetings. It is very slowly carving itself out a niche.JeffFlanagan - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
>such as 110 million Win10 installs in 10 weeksI wonder how many of those are functioning installs, rather than install attempts that failed and rolled back like happened on the only one of my PCs that I attempted to install 10 on. The other PCs are still saying that MS is still preparing 10 for my PC, but I'm in no hurry.
Morawka - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
i'm sure they dont count failed installs because they are not activated.Even if they did, it would be a super low number, like 1%
mkozakewich - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Ha, my failed installs were more like 90%.tipoo - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
Sample size of 1 person always wins, right?Chris_Kez - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
All Comments sections should include a reminder that N=1lilmoe - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Base model should have a Core M7, not M3...digiguy - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I guess M7 was too expensive to fit the $899 (starting) price tagwpcoe - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
Not sure if this is accurate but http://ark.intel.com/products/family/83613/Intel-C... shows the m3-6Y30 (2.2Ghz), m5-6Y54 (2.7Ghz) and m5-6Y57 (2.8Ghz) all at the same "tray" price: $281.Xailter - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
$200 for 8GB additional RAM (entry level i7)... jesus...IanHagen - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
And $400 for another 256GB of storage. Steve Jobs would be so proud!jaydee - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Definitely going the way of Apple here:i5 from 128GB - 256GB and 4GB to 8GB: $300
i5 from 256GB - 512GB (no other changes): $400
Either way it's a win for MS. Buy the low storage SP4 and have to rely on MS OneDrive cloud storage. Buy the high storage version and they get another $400 for $50 BOM increase.
IanHagen - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
God help us if we have to rely on OneDrive storage. That thing lost far too many documents while synchronizing for my taste. Not to mention when it mysteriously duplicates all my files forcing me to resort to black magic-ish shell scripts to sort the bloody mess out.mazeroni - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I have held onto my Surface Pro 1 since it launched. I have been waiting for a reason to upgrade mainly because pen accuracy was always meh and the device lasts me 3 hours on a charge at best. So the Surface Pro 4 has peaked my interest. My debate is whether to choose the m3 or i5. I really just want to write and use Photoshop, probably not much gaming.Of course the grinding issue is the lack of storage or ram options. I would love the m3 with 256 gb of storage. Save $100 and go with the m3 or just suck it up and go for the i5?
fokka - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
best wait for reviews first. for only 100 bucks more i'm inclined to say go for the i5, but if it turns out the m3 has better battery life and sufficient performance, it might be the smarter buy in some cases.mkozakewich - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Did you get the 128GB model? It'll be more of the same. The CPU should be roughly similar, too, but it should last three times as long.You could also pick up the Power Cover. It gives me an extra two hours, at least.
defferoo - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
i'm confused by microsoft's power claims. they say it's 50% faster than a Macbook Air and 30% faster than a Surface Pro 3... so they're saying the Surface Pro 3 is faster than the Macbook Air? which models are they comparing? because the slowest MBA crushes the slowest SP3 and the fastest MBA kicks the pants off the fastest SP3. sounds like a lot of BS to me.abrowne1993 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Obviously they're talking about the speed you can throw them.IanHagen - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
They're probably claiming that the $1599 Surface Pro 4 is 50% faster than the $899 MacBook Air 11. Which is fantastic! I'd expect nothing different when considering the gigantic price gap lolrepoman27 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
This was an insanely disingenuous claim. What they did is compare the base clock speed of the Core i7-4650U Surface Pro 3 (1.7 GHz) to that of the Core i7-6650U Surface Pro 4 (2.2 GHz) to arrive at "up to 30% faster". And then they compared the base clock speed of the Core i5-5250U MacBook Air (1.6 GHz) to that of the Core i5-6300U Surface Pro 4 (2.4 GHz) to get to "50% faster". Which anyone paying any attention will realize has no bearing whatsoever on real-world performance, because it's not like Intel made some 30-50% leap in performance between Haswell/Broadwell and Skylake.IanHagen - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
My Pentium 4 571 at 3.8 GHz just wanted to tell Nadella that he is more than 50% faster than the Surface Pro 4. =,)mkozakewich - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Not that equal chips will be 50% faster, no, but if a machine now has a 50% higher clock rate than a similar CPU, it'll get slightly better than 50% more performance.tipoo - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
I'm starting to think the 2x was some arbitrary merger of CPU, GPU, and G5 chipset, since quads are unlikely in this.ciderrules - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Microsoft can't even get devs to update their software for things like high res displays or newer features. How can they expect devs to make the (much greater) effort to create touch optimized versions of their software?I'd never spend $2000 on a powerful tablet that I was stuck using as a laptop (with attached keyboard) because the software I want to use is clunky on the tablet.
lilo777 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Neither Microsoft nor, say, Apple can force the developers but the market can. For the most relevant software (and we have way more of it on Windows than on OS/X) the developers will do the right thing since they are interested in our money.IanHagen - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Well, but Microsoft could at least help us! At least IMHO, Cocoa makes it much easier to follow good practices compared to the mess that the Windows 10 SDK is. Not to mention that Microsoft's documentation for Universal Apps is a holy mess of JavaScript documents scattered everywhere whilst C# ones are very hard to find. After fiddling with it, it makes me very skeptical about whether I really want to deal with all that rubbish for making apps for a store that is still irrelevant (developer wise) compared to Google's or Apple's. Android at least has a massive perk (the gigantic user base) that makes using Java easier to swallow.EliteRetard - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Am I the only one who thinks the pricing is horrific?The $900 and $1k options are fine, whatever. But from there the pricing steps are absolutely unacceptable. I was waiting to buy a SP4, now it's a 100% no go and I wont be getting any surface product.
I think reasonable price tiers should be:
$900..........m3/128/4
$1,000.......i5/128/4
$1,150.......i5/256/8
$1,300.......i5/512/8 NEW CONFIG OPTION
$1,300.......i7/256/8
$1,400.......i7/256/16
$1,550.......i7/512/16
$1,800.......i7/1TB/16
lilo777 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I always think the pricing is horrific :-) but then I still pay for some stuff that I deem worthy.melgross - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
They're too expensive.But these aren't intended for consumer use. Consumers aren't buying Surface tablets. These are intended for enterprise purchasing, where price isn't as contentious an issue. Whether they will sell better than the Surface Pro 3 models will take some time before we know.
Lonyo - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I looked and then thought $500 for a 500GB SSD upgrade was absurd.But then I looked at Newegg and a 512GB PCIe SSD is $300 and a 960GB is $650, and suddenly it's not actually that absurd.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...
Sure, it's still a premium, but instead of being a crazy premium, it's "only" a 50% premium. Rather than the $350 premium it would be on a SATA SSD where you can get the entire 1TB for $300
Lonyo - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
(Also it has an SD card slot so you can get a 512GB SD card for.... $350 or 256GB for $100 or soEliteRetard - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I want to point out that you are looking at retail prices, MS wont be paying those prices. I got nothing against making a profit, but the current listed pricing is just flat out unacceptable.nerd1 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Fact is that most people do not need PCIe SSD at all. m2 SATA SSD can be bought around $150 for 500gb.wpcoe - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
Any chance that the SSD is user upgradable?EliteRetard - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I see that the Surface Book will be $2700 for it's top i7 config with GPU etc. Why you put your lesser product at the same price? SP4 definitely should be cheaper, and there certainly should be a cheap i5/512/8 option as I suggested.sorten - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
You want them to offer a 256GB pci-e SSD upgrade for $150? You were always going to be disappointed on that front. If you want inexpensive, there will be many options from OEM partners.EliteRetard - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
I'm not looking for inexpensive, I'm looking for reasonable. Average RETAIL rates between 256 and 512 SSD's are under $150, MS can buy in bulk directly for lower prices. They chose $1k as their base i5 config, meaning they are getting the profit they want at that level. So even if they charge retail rates for each upgrade level, they are making more profit than on the base config since they aren't paying retail.On top of that, there is already a larger profit premium added to the RAM and CPU steps...so some of the models will make them more profit than others. In the long run it's always better to sell more units for lower profit when you make about the same total profit either way. Right now MS is going for "sell the least amount possible" route, while they broadly proclaim their goal is to get hundreds of millions of customers.
fokka - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
and we still have to pay 2200$, probably even more in €, if we want 512gb of storage, even if we don't need an i7, iris graphics or 16gb of ram. 2000+$ for 500gb, it's ridiculous.flensr - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
In the first table, the camera MP sizes are swapped backwards, showing "8mp/5mp front/rear" when it should be 5mp/8mp front rear.Magichands8 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Everyone keeps going on about how impressed they are but I'm not really impressed by these offerings at all. No built in LTE, no c-type connector, a small screen AND very expensive. I waited a long time for this reveal and it's pretty disappointing.nerd1 - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
It's absurd that they tout the SP4 is 50% faster than MBA, which is thermally not possible. SP3 throttled when the core hit around 80 deg celcius, and MBA goes up around 100 deg, allowing higher clock speed for longer time.BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
@nerd1 I agree with your initial claim. The very marketing oriented 50% faster claim is marketing and should be given no credence. However, I also have to call you out on your thermal throttling argument. Had you said the MBA had a better cooling solution and keeps the processor further below the thermal shutdown threshold, I'd check it out, but it sounds like it could be true (larger surface area). However, you suggest that two devices that both use Intel silicon will have wildly different thermal shutdown thresholds as conveyed by the wildly different throttling temperatures (80C vs 100C). Granted the processors are one generation apart, but they are in the same class of product and have very similar thermal shutdown thresholds. If such a wild variation in throttling temperatures really does exist (and isn't modifiable in BIOS) then you have to consider what is happening to that MBA that is allowed to heat up so much closer to its thermal shutdown temperature. Perhaps you should look up what happens to the life expectancy of silicon devices with every 10C rise in temperature.Note: I have not yet formed an opinion of the SP4 vs SB vs MBA vs iPAD Pro. I will save an opinion for after reviews, though my initial thoughts are upgrades from the base model on all of these lines are stupid expensive owing to the fact that none of them support after market upgrades.
nerd1 - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
SP3 thermal threshold is lower than laptops because the screen is right next to the chip. My SP3 hovered around 2.0~2.2Ghz under full load.BurntMyBacon - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
That makes a lot more sense. So they didn't put a good enough insulation layer between the heat sources and the display. Still better to limit performance than to destroy the device over time. Need to consider the performance implications for the newer surface devices.coolhardware - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
What size screen were you wanting? This is the largest screen surface tablet they have ever made: http://pixensity.com/search/?search=surfaceExpensive yes, but they seem to be wanting to target their "Pro" tablet at businesses and that makes some sense.
Were you just looking for a lower price point or were there other significant features they missed? (Beyond USB-C and LTE).
Apple charges a fairly high price for the iPad "Pro" and it seems *more* limited in many areas.
PS does anybody know how the speakers are in Surface Pro 4???
Prod1702 - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link
I am wondering on the speakers as well. I will use headphones but having nicer speakers is nice.rahvin - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
No USB Type C or USB 3.1 is just fucking stupid. Instead there is this "Microsoft Connect" port which is a proprietary garbage. It won't be long before all USB parts are type C, it's certainly going to happen in the lifetime of this product (unless you buy a new computer every year). I expected Microsoft to get this right where Apple screwed up with a single port. Instead they didn't even get close to right by completely leaving USB 3.1 off and adding a bogus proprietary port.I'm simply shocked at the stupidity. It's a great product but it's worthless without USB C, at least IMO.
digiguy - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
It's not worthless but loses a lot of value. USB 3.1 would definitely make sense with a PCIe SSD and make it future proof. Same for the surface book. It's probably worth waiting for the next generation of both, especially if you already have a SP3. In the meantime I will be buying the new type cover for my SP3...Chris_Kez - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
I think we all want the latest (e.g. Type C) but I have to think that Microsoft has some idea of the needs of their target/core buyers. In business and enterprise, for example, what percent of peripherals will use a Type C connector even three years from now?rahvin - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
In 3 years 90% of all peripherals will be using type C. Every phone produced in 2016+ will have it. Up until a couple weeks ago there was only one chip supplier so prices remained high, two more went full production a couple weeks ago. By the end of the year USB C will be as cheap to use as USB 3.0 and it's going to virtually eliminate all other forms of USB in very short order.It was beyond stupid for MS to leave the port off. The very least they could have done is match apple and used the USB C port for the power. One of the beauties of USB C is the power, now the big power brick you have to carry around with your laptop could actually have more USB ports on it because the power it supplies is via USB-C. This would allow the power brick to essentially provide a docking station like functionality because you have to carry it around anyway.
I thought Apple screwed up big time when they included only one port, I though Google stumbled with the Pixel when they only provided two but I had no idea microsoft would be so stupid as to not include any. Any tablet or laptop coming out in the next few months should have at least 2 usb C ports and preferably 3+. Not including them is so shortsighted it's just unbelievable.
prisonerX - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
3 years is an eternity in tech. USB C will be universal in laptops and tablets by then since it's a single cable docking and charging solution.theNiZer - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
MS is not competing with Acer and mass produced (cheaper) tablets - MS go for the high end. Surface Pro 4 have a clear target group (business, student/university etc.)alexrw - Sunday, October 11, 2015 - link
So is that dreadful IGZO panel going to be replaced with an IPS or will they still use IGZO? I've exchanged 4 (four) SP3 so far because of yellow tints and severe corner/side backlight bleeding and I gave up on the 5th ... all of them look good on day one, but then after less than a week they start developing screen issues.