Microsoft Surface Pro X
Solid battery life married to sleek design make this is a fine mobile device, but don’t expect a full-blown laptop
SCORE
PRICE £1,015 (£1,269 inc VAT) from microsoft.com/uk
When Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro X, my mind zoomed immediately back to 2012. This was the year that Microsoft decided to take a leap into the unknown and unleash the Surface RT. Much like the Pro X, this ran a hobbled version of Windows but didn’t support legacy Windows apps. Ultimately, while the hardware itself was decent, the RT failed. Microsoft quickly reverted to regular Windows machines.
Now, Microsoft has decided it’s time for another try.
Build quality
The Surface Pro X is beautifully made. It’s ludicrously slim and the screen takes up most of the front of the chassis, with barely any bezels. And, despite measuring 1.2mm thinner, 5mm narrower and a mere 6mm taller than the Surface Pro 7, the Surface Pro X has a larger 13in display. Not bad considering the chassis still has room for the Surface Pro’s trademark kickstand. This flips out from the rear and allows you to tilt the screen at any angle you choose.
Choose the Surface Pro X over the Pro 7 and you benefit from other advantages. Buy the Pro X with the Type Cover and Slim Pen bundle and you’ll be able to stow the stylus in a slot just above the keyboard, which is a much better solution than the stick-it-on-the-side approach of the Pro 7. Keep in mind, though, that the pen and keyboard are only available as a bundle; if you buy the keyboard on its own, it doesn’t have the slot for stowing the pen – confusing, Microsoft.
As for connectivity, the X has two USB-C ports (one more than the Pro 7) and both can be used to charge the tablet. But physical connectivity remains limited. There’s no USB-A port – the chassis is just too thin – and no 3.5mm headset jack either, which is baffling.
Microsoft hits back with integrated 4G connectivity courtesy of a Qualcomm X24 modem built into the system-on-chip (more on that later). This is simple to set up. Either insert your own SIM in the slot under the kickstand or use the tablet’s eSIM capability to get it up and running.
In a highly unusual move, the system’s SSD is fully user replaceable. Just pop out the small access hatch that sits under the kickstand (a SIM ejector tool works for this), unscrew the Torx screw holding the SSD in place and you can swap it out with a drive of your choosing. Be warned, however: you’ll need a 22 x 30mm PCIe M.2 drive to replace it with, and right now these aren’t easy to find.
Keyboard is king
As with all other Surface Pro devices, the keyboard attaches to the tablet body with a strong magnet and a couple of lugs to hold it in place. It’s coated with soft Alcantara fabric on both sides, which feels lovely under your palms, and the keys themselves combine good travel with a sensible amount of feedback and plenty of space around each one. Typos on this keyboard are minimal.
The touchpad is just as good. At 100 x
56mm, it’s ever so slightly taller and narrower than the one on the Surface Pro 7’s keyboard cover, but not so much as would make a tangible difference. It works just fine with Windows 10’s multitouch gestures and the click is perfectly weighted. Being a diving board type touchpad, you can’t click it right at the top edge, but move your finger a centimetre or so down towards the centre and it works just fine.
The stylus works well, too. Even though Microsoft has flattened it to make it fit in the charging slot, it has similar features and specifications to the regular Surface Pen: a button on the barrel and a button/eraser function on the top of the stylus. It’s pressure-sensitive, detects the angle of the pen, enabling intuitive shading, and it feels responsive with hardly any lag. Palm rejection is excellent as well.
The Pro X’s 13in IPS PixelSense display is simply superb. Its resolution of 2,880 x 1,920 and pixel density of 267ppi ensures it’s tack sharp; it’s bright, too, reaching a peak of 452cd/m2 in our tests; and it’s very colour accurate.
With the sRGB setting enabled in the display settings, our tests showed it achieved
91.7% coverage of the sRGB colour space and a contrast ratio of 1,394:1. Colour accuracy results were even more impressive, with the display achieving numbers that were close to ideal across all colours. This is a sensational display by any standards.
Compatibility issues
The Microsoft Surface Pro X is a mighty fine piece of hardware; that much is abundantly
clear. But to make it this slim, Microsoft rejects the traditional combination of Intel Core processor and integrated graphics: the Surface Pro X features Microsoft’s SQ1 chip, which is based on Qualcomm’s Windows-on-Snapdragon chip, the Snapdragon 8CX.
In layman’s terms, then, the Surface Pro X is essentially a giant smartphone. As I mentioned above, it has integrated 4G connectivity, allowing you to stay connected without having to faff around with Wi-Fi passwords. The big drawback? Due to the processor in question, not all Windows apps will work on the Surface Pro X.
So, without an Intel chip under the glass, can you use it for day-to-day work? The answer is, largely, yes. I’ve been using the Surface Pro X for writing, editing and managing content on a website CMS – in doing so, I’ve had as many as 30 tabs open in Edge. It feels perfectly responsive and, as long as the tablet will run the app you want it to run, you shouldn’t have any problems.
But therein lies the rub, which is that the Microsoft SQ1 is an ARM chip and this means lots of apps simply won’t install in the first place. In particular, the Surface Pro X won’t run any application that hasn’t been ported to ARM64 – which includes pretty much the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite.
The Pro X will run 32-bit (x86) apps, which might help you get around this issue (not in the case of Adobe, which now doesn’t release 32-bit versions of its applications), although you can expect performance issues if you do because the code won’t be running natively.
And there are other drawbacks. Any hardware that needs a driver to work with Windows will only be able to talk to the Surface Pro X if the manufacturer has specifically written ARM64 drivers for them. Given the
Pro X is the only ARM64 Windows device around, I can’t see many manufacturers investing the time or money required. Games won’t work, either, if they use a version of OpenGL greater than 1.1.
Either way, if you’re thinking of buying a Surface Pro X, you should do some serious research to ensure all the software you want to run will work. It’s a mess, and my experience with it mirrors the above. Some apps worked fine, but many simply refused to install.
With such great hardware, that’s a shame, because there’s clearly plenty of potential here. I wasn’t able to get the PC Pro benchmarks to run (surprise, surprise) but as
Geekbench 4 and 5 have been ported for ARM64, they did work, and gave results that, while clearly slower than the Core i7 Surface Pro 7, didn’t lag all that far behind. For instance, in Geekbench 4 the Pro X scored
3,509 and 11,643, which compared to 3,776 and 12,376 for the Surface Pro X (in the single-core and multicore tests respectively).
Notably, the 12.9in Apple iPad Pro with its A12x Bionic ARM processor scored 4,979 and 12,921 in Geekbench 4.
The Pro X’s performance scores took a dip when I ran the AS SSD sequential storage test, with its 256GB SK Hynix disk lagging behind the Surface Pro 7’s by a bigger margin; a 364MB/sec write speed is poor and almost 200MB/sec slower than its sibling. However, you might be prepared to accept that when you look at the results of the battery-life test. In our videorundown benchmark, the Surface Pro X lasted almost two hours longer (9hrs 3mins versus 7hrs 20mins) than the Core i7 Surface Pro 7.
The price you pay
So how much do you have to pay for this machine? With only one processor in Microsoft’s lineup, the only differences between the various models centre on RAM and storage; prices start at £999 for the model with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. Other options include an 8GB/256GB model for £1,269, a 16GB/256GB model for £1,449 and a 16GB/512GB model for £1,819. We were sent the 16GB/256GB model for this review.
As with other Surface 2-in-1 devices, you need to budget extra for the keyboard and the stylus. Prices start at £130 for the keyboard alone and rise to £260 for the keyboard together with the new Slim Pen. That brings the total price of the most basic Surface Pro X to £1,259. Surprisingly, that’s more expensive than both the lowest-priced Surface Pro 7 (Intel Core i3, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD), which costs £1,024, and the next model up (Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD), which costs £1,124.
It could be that Microsoft took a sneaky glance at the 12.9in iPad Pro. That’s more
“No matter how good the hardware is, if you can’t run the software you need to run on it, it’s not going to work for you”
expensive than the Surface Pro X at £1,119 for the basic 4G-enabled iPad, and another £318 on top for the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard Folio for a total of £1,437.
Pro or con?
The Surface Pro X is a nice piece of hardware. It’s slim, it’s light and it has a big, beautiful display. Its keyboard, touchpad and stylus function superbly and the battery life is excellent. Add in upgradeable storage, built-in 4G capability and nippy performance and it looks like the perfect 2-in-1. It’s a little pricier than the equivalent Surface Pro 7, which is strange, but not by much and it’s more cost effective than the cellular 12.9in iPad Pro.
However, Microsoft’s decision to use an ARM-based processor at the heart of the Surface Pro X means it has big limitations when it comes to the software you can run on it. Ultimately, this puts the brakes on the Surface Pro X’s appeal.
No matter how good the hardware is or how attractive the Surface Pro X looks, if you can’t run the software you need, it’s not going to work for you. Make sure that you do your homework before you splash out.
SPECIFICATIONS
Hexa-core 3GHz Microsoft SQ1 processor Adreno 685 graphics 13in 2,880 x 1,920 touchscreen IPS display 256GB SSD
8GB LPDDR4x RAM 5MP webcam 10MP rear camera 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 2 x USB-C 3.1 Surface
Connect port nano SIM Windows 10 Home
287 x 208 x 7.3mm (WDH) 774kg 1yr limited warranty