Microsoft Surface Pro 8 review: A superior tablet with baffling quirks

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 pill arrives as Windows 11 goes out the door. Microsoft has already shipped one pill this yr, the Surface Pro 7+, which rose to the highest of our roundup of the best Windows tablets of 2021. Can the Surface Pro 8 enhance upon it?

Yes and no. The Surface Pro 8 boldly strides ahead with a bigger, greater decision, quicker display, a revamped inking expertise spearheaded by the non-obligatory Surface Slim Pen 2, and a pair of Thunderbolt ports that complement the legacy Surface Connect charger. It’s a dramatic remodeling of the long-lasting Surface Pro pill line, and that’s sufficient to seize your consideration.

If solely we may go away it right here. Put merely, we are able to’t be solely sure how effectively the Surface Pro 8 performs due to some wildly various leads to our efficiency checks. Battery life diversified wildly, too. We’re fairly positive that the Surface Pro 8 represents an improve to the Surface Pro 7+ and Surface Pro 7, however what we’ve seen doesn’t recommend that it’ll outperform the competitors. You’ll should look extra intently on the intangibles to make your choice.

Microsoft Surface Pro 8 specs

For now, there’s one necessary change in configuration between the Surface Pro 7+ for Business and the most recent Surface Pro 8: The Surface Pro 8 lacks a reasonable Core i3 possibility, and thus its base worth is $100 greater, at $1,099. The excellent news is that all the Surface Pro 8 choices Microsoft is promoting ought to provide sufficient computational energy and reminiscence for any purchaser. Our evaluate unit additionally lacked mobile capabilities, so we didn’t take a look at these.

Microsoft continues to promote the Surface’s companion keyboard and the pen individually, although there’s an specific keyboard/pen bundle that Microsoft will promote for an extra $279.99. The Surface Pro 8 has been designed with the brand new Surface Slim Pen 2 in thoughts, nevertheless, and Microsoft says you’ll expertise decreased e-ink latency/lag when you use it.

• Display: 13-inch PixelSense Flow (2880×1920, 267 PPI)
• Processor: Consumer: (Core i5-1135G7, Core i7-1185G7) Commercial: (Core i3-1115G4, Core i5-1145G7, Core i7-1185G7)
• Graphics: UHD (Core i3), Iris Xe (Core i5, i7)
• Memory: 8/16/32GB LPDDR4x RAM (16GB as examined)
• Storage: 128GB/256GB detachable SSD; 512GB/1TB SSD (256GB as examined)
• Ports: 2 USB-C (USB 4.0/Thunderbolt 4), 1 Surface Connect port, Surface Type Cover Port, 3.5mm jack
• Security: Camera (Windows Hello)
• Camera: 5MP/1080p (user-facing), 10MP (rear-facing)
• Battery: 50.2Wh (design), 51.3Wh (full cost)
• Wireless: WiFi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.1; non-obligatory LTE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 38, 39, 40, 41, 66
• Operating system: Consumer: Windows 11 Home; Business: Windows 10 Pro or Windows 11 Pro
• Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.2 x 0.37in.
• Weight: 1.96lb (as specified)
• Color: Platinum, Graphite
• Price: Starting at $1,099.99, $1,599.99 as reviewed
• Optional equipment: Surface Slim Pen 2: $129.99, Surface Slim Pen Charger: $34.99, Surface Pro Signature Keyboard w/ Slim Pen 2 Bundle: $279.99, Surface Pro Signature Keyboard: $179.99 (Alcantara Ice Blue, Poppy Red, Platinum, Black), Surface Pro Keyboard: $139.99

Microsoft Surface Pro 8 costs

• Core i5/8GB RAM/128 GB SSD: $1,099.99 (Platinum)
• Core i5/8/256: $1,199.99 (Platinum, Graphite)
• Core i5/8/512: $1,399.99 (Platinum, Graphite)
• Core i5/16/256 – $1,399.99 (Platinum, Graphite)
• Core i7/16/256 – $1,599.99 (Platinum, Graphite)
• Core i7/16/512 – $1,899.99 (Platinum, Graphite)
• Core i7/16/1TB – $2,199.99 (Platinum)
• Core i7/32/1TB – $2,599.99 (Platinum)

Two years in the past, the Surface Pro X showcased the way forward for Microsoft’s Surface Pro pill lineup. Today’s Surface Pro 8 has been redesigned in its picture, with a pair of Thunderbolt ports and an built-in charging cubby for the Surface Slim Pen 2. That could be a little disconcerting for long-term Surface house owners, as Microsoft has moved issues round. The energy button is now on the facet of the pill, for instance.

Though the Surface Pro 8 is now barely heavier and chunkier than its predecessors, you’ll want to check them facet by facet to note. Otherwise, the Surface Pro 8 seems to be the identical because it emerges from the field. Hopefully you’ve already bought the Surface Pro Signature Keyboard to take full benefit.

Like different Surface Pro gadgets relationship again to the Surface Pro 3, the pill reclines to just about horizontal. The Surface Pro’s Signature magnetic keyboard, although, clasps it firmly. If that issues to you, purchase a Surface Pro 8. Rival tablets don’t make investments sufficient within the magnetic connection, and a pill in your lap already dangers flipping backwards over your knees.

Microsoft ships the Surface Pro 8, because it ships most of its Surface gadgets, dialed all the way down to minimal efficiency ranges. Though you hand over a bit by way of efficiency, this additionally implies that the Surface Pro 8 hardly ever engages its cooling fan, and it solely does so very quietly when essential. (You can modify the efficiency throughout the Windows 11 Settings menu, particularly System > Power & battery.) Narrow grillwork runs alongside each side of the pill, offering cooling. Typically, Surface tablets get heat to sizzling alongside the higher rear panel, and the SP8 is not any exception.

Mark Hachman / IDG

With the Surface Pro 8, Microsoft is introducing a barely bigger 13-inch (2,880x 1,920) multitouch “PixelSense Flow” show that preserves the 3:2 display ratio, versus the 12.3-inch (2736×1824) shows we’ve historically acquired as a part of the Surface Pro lineup. Originally, Microsoft instructed us that the PixelSense Flow show would dynamically shift backwards and forwards between the usual 60Hz refresh fee and a brand new 120Hz refresh fee, a function often known as Dynamic Refresh Rate. Higher refresh charges are simpler on the eyes and would additionally enhance inking, because the pen’s ink would “flow” extra easily onto the display.

Microsoft’s Dynamic Refresh Rate function didn’t make it to the Surface Pro 8, sadly. Instead, Microsoft locked the refresh fee at 60Hz, although you possibly can manually modify it through the Settings menu (System > Display > Advanced Display) to the upper 120 Hz setting. Doing so would suggest that your battery life would lower, however we didn’t expertise that. We’ll discuss extra about this throughout our efficiency checks, particularly the battery life part.

Mark Hachman / IDG

With the Surface Pro 8, the Surface Pro line makes a significant transition to Thunderbolt, an enhanced I/O functionality that has existed on rival notebooks and tablets for a while. The Surface Pro 8 features a pair of Thunderbolt ports on one facet, and has carried out away with the older USB Type-A port solely. (Unlike the Surface Pro X, Microsoft has fortunately included a headphone jack, as effectively.) This permits the Surface Pro 8 to hook up with a small however rising ecosystem of Thunderbolt docks, and cost from them too—supplied that they’re powered. That provides SP8 consumers the choice to both cost instantly from the included 65W Surface charger, or faucet right into a Thunderbolt dock.

The sacrifice? Microsoft has carried out away with the microSD slot for this technology, a tacit push for folks to add their photographs on to the Microsoft OneDrive cloud. If you want a bodily microSD port, you will have a number of great USB-C dongles to select from.

Audio

We didn’t hear any substantive qualitative variations between the Surface Pro 8 and earlier Surface tablets, however the audio system are certainly louder: they’re now 2W audio system, versus the 1.6W audio system utilized by the Surface Pro 7+. Like the sooner mannequin, in addition they use Dolby Atmos, which is in-built and not likely adjustable by the consumer outdoors of the conventional audio settings. Our Surface Pro 7+ review famous that the audio system sounded considerably flatter and softer, and it seems that Microsoft has rectified this within the Surface Pro 8.

In normal, the audio is definitely among the many higher choices for tablets, and sounds nearly as good or higher than some laptops. You received’t want headphones to get pleasure from music on the Surface Pro 8.

Typing expertise and keyboard

Microsoft’s Surface Pro Signature Keyboard, bought individually, doesn’t appear to be something completely different than what Microsoft has provided at the side of previous Surface Pro tablets. As famous above, the magnetic hinge clasps the keyboard tightly to the pill, liberating you of the anxiousness of working in your lap. On a desktop, the Surface Pro 8’s keyboard feels comfy, put merely, with a passable quantity of key journey and resilience. You ought to be capable of the use the keyboard comfortably for a complete day with none extra pressure in your wrists or fingers.

Mark Hachman / IDG

The touchpad additionally seems to have remained unchanged. It’s truly clickable for nearly the whole lot of the trackpad, although you’ll should exert an unreasonable quantity for pressure on the high of the trackpad for the clicks to register. Though a bit plasticky, the trackpad is comfy to make use of.

What’s new for the Surface pill line is that the Surface Pro 8’s new Signature Keyboard features a pen cubby for the Slim Pen 2, which seems to be the way forward for Microsoft’s pens. As we famous in our best tablet roundup, not each pill keyboard that includes these new pens has a robust magnetic connection. The keyboard folds up, too, holding the pen securely whereas charging it. It’s a terrific design and utterly eliminates the chance of dropping a pen whereas the Surface Pro 8 is saved inside your bag or backpack.

Inking

Like the Surface Laptop Studio, inking is a precedence on the Surface Pro 8. The Surface Pro 8 makes use of the Microsoft Pen Protocol at the side of the Surface Slim Pen 2. While I’m not knowledgeable illustrator, my impression is that utilizing Microsoft’s two-button Surface Slim Pen 2 is extra correct on the Surface Pro 8, maybe partly as a result of the display gives extra pixel density than the Surface Laptop Studio. Pairing the Slim Pen 2 is a breeze, a lot that it appeared just like the pen paired as quickly as I related the keyboard. You can launch apps by urgent a button, and “erase” simply by rubbing the highest of the pen towards the display.

The Slim Pen 2 additionally contains haptic suggestions, so that you just’ll “feel” interactions with shapes on Microsoft Whiteboard, for instance. This might in reality be an assistive know-how dressed up as a brand new shopper function, however I wouldn’t purchase a Slim Pen 2 for this.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Don’t low cost the rechargeable pen, both, or its cubby! The days of attempting to seek out a AAAA battery in your Surface Pen are over. (Microsoft says that earlier Surface Pens will nonetheless work, however that you just received’t see the identical decreased latency as you’ll whereas utilizing the Surface Slim Pen 2.

I manually adjusted the show refresh fee to 120 Hz to see the improved inking advantages, one thing that Microsoft had initially pledged that it will do dynamically. In any case, I didn’t see any line offsets, the place ink flows from a special location from the place the pen touches, even with the pen at an angle. There remains to be a tiny little bit of ink latency as you progress concerning the web page, however, to me, it wasn’t vital. It additionally seems that the the pen jitter—the place the pen’s strains ripple backwards and forwards—is lower than the Surface Laptop Studio or earlier Surface Pro tablets. While we didn’t evaluate the inking potential to a devoted Wacom pill, it’s honest to say that the Slim Pen 2 gives a powerful inking expertise.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Camera

As the corporate behind the Teams videoconferencing software program, Microsoft intrinsically understands that folks must look good on digicam throughout conferences or simply chatting with associates. Though the Surface Pro 8’s user-facing digicam nonetheless shoots simply 1080p video, Microsoft has added ambient colour and lighting sensors, too. The latter sensor does a greater job of highlighting your picture utilizing the correct publicity, whereas the colour sensor will routinely modify the colour of your display to compensate for the ambient mild.

Unfortunately, if the colour sensor’s job is to indicate the webcam’s topic in one of the best mild, it wants some work because the picture beneath signifies.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Microsoft additionally enhanced its rear-facing digicam, too, including a 10Mpixel digicam sensor, up from 8MP. We’re not the kind that takes photographs with a pill, however the added decision definitely can’t damage.

We had been hoping that the Windows Hello 2.0 function that Microsoft disclosed to us could be enabled on these machines. Windows Hello 2.0 supposedly can interpret your face even with a beard, glasses, or an N95 masks on. We examined the latter and…no cube. Windows couldn’t arrange a brand new face profile with a masks on, and couldn’t acknowledge me with one on, both.

Performance

From a efficiency standpoint, the Surface Pro 8 is considerably baffling. In locations, our benchmarks present it to be quicker than the Surface Pro 7+, however in others efficiency is drastically decreased. Under sure circumstances, our outcomes aren’t constant; in others, they’re. Right now, our working concept is that the Surface Pro 8’s cooling isn’t fairly as much as snuff, provided that the fan sounds prefer it hardly activates. Otherwise, this will likely show some early bugs that Microsoft has but to work out.

From a usability standpoint, nevertheless, the Surface Pro 8 performs effectively. Our 4K streaming take a look at video rendered dropped simply 8 frames out of 10,000 or so, which implies that video will stream jitter free even at excessive resolutions. With the identical GPU because the Surface Pro 7+, you must anticipate comparable gameplay when you select to go that route—plan on enjoying video games at 1080p settings on High. This is a enterprise and inking pill, although, before everything.

We’ve in contrast the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 to the Surface Pro 7+ and Surface Pro 7, after all, in addition to a few of the different tablets in our current pill roundup. The key factors of comparability are the Dell Latitude 7320 Detachable and the Lenovo ThinkPad Detachable Gen 1, which instantly compete towards the Surface Pro 8. We’ve highlighted these tablets with a lighter shade of blue within the charts on this part. Technically, the Surface Go 2 can also be a smaller pill competitor. We’ve additionally added notebooks just like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Laptop 4 as extra factors of comparability

We use the PCMark take a look at to measure how the pill will fare underneath normal computing workloads. The take a look at measures videoconferencing, phrase processing, some mild gaming, CAD work, software startup, and extra. Here, the Suface Pro 8 performs as much as expectations, with elevated gen-over-gen efficiency.

Mark Hachman / IDG

It’s the Cinebench R15 take a look at, nevertheless, the place issues began to go off the rails. The Cinebench R15 take a look at measures the CPU’s efficiency, both operating only a single processing thread or all the cores/threads without delay. You may virtually name the benchmark iconic at this level, because it’s been used to check desktop PCs, gaming PCs, workstations, and extra.

In the multicore checks, the Surface Pro 8 started by recording a rating of 867, properly above the 776 rating that the Surface Pro 7+ recorded. But then the scores saved lowering: 732, 723, 453, 449, and so forth. The final 5 benchmarks we ran had been about half the efficiency of the Surface Pro 7+. I by no means run the checks in succession, both: I interject “cooling down” intervals of normally 12 minutes or extra, and I ran the checks at completely different instances of the day, in an air-conditioned setting. I reported my outcomes to Microsoft and requested for remark, however didn’t hear again by press time. In all, our scores ranged from a low of 453 to a excessive of 867, which is loopy. Single-core scores diversified from 149 to 185, for a mean of 163, which can also be decrease than the Surface Pro 7+.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Cinebench R23, a extra superior model of the benchmark, gives a option to examine whether or not thermal points are at fault: run a single take a look at, then loop the take a look at again and again for ten minutes and evaluate the outcomes. But the scores had been comparable—2,895 versus 2,867—which led me to doubt whether or not that was the case.

We noticed extra anomalies within the Handbrake take a look at, which makes use of a free software to transcode video right into a format formatted for an Android pill. It’s a real-world software, although much less so in a world the place Netflix motion pictures may be saved to a laptop computer. We measure the time Handbrake takes to finish the duty as a option to decide each the efficiency of the pill in addition to its potential to maintain cool over a protracted time period. As earlier than, I ran a number of checks, cooling the pill down and never operating them again to again. Performance started at 2,773 seconds, then to 3,191 seconds, after which a number of runs of 4,300 seconds or so. As with the Cinebench take a look at, it’s tough to say what the “true” efficiency of the pill is, together with whether or not some software program or firmware glitch is limiting the Surface Pro 8’s true potential.

Mark Hachman / IDG

In graphics, although, the Surface Pro 8 delivered constant outcomes. Here, we used the 3DMark Time Spy take a look at, and the Iris Xe GPU carried out excellently.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Finally, we examined battery life. Battery life is changing into more and more more difficult to check, as extra laptop computer producers add sensors that detect the ambient brightness of the display and modify the output accordingly. (Smartphones do that recurrently.) The wrinkles that the Surface Pro 8 provides to this are threefold. Microsoft and Windows will modify the “content” of video being performed again, to protect battery life; adjusting the show refresh fee will have an effect on battery life, too. Finally, our Surface Pro 8 evaluate unit determined after a number of days to implement “smart charging,” a brand new function that stops the battery from being charged previous 80 %. That’s nice—if there was a management to show it off. We couldn’t discover one.

All this implies that there have been just too many variables to current you with a complete image of how lengthy the Surface Pro 8’s battery will final. We usually run down a laptop computer battery by looping a 4K video again and again till it expires, and we did that right here. What we’ve got are a pair of rundown checks the place we disabled the lighting sensor (although not the content material adjustment) to offer a repeatable although worst-case situation. It’s not improbable, however at 8 hours 49 minutes you must get a full workday’s use out of it. We recorded scores of 610 minutes and 447 minutes on a full cost, which we’ve averaged to generate a rating. Dialing up the refresh fee to 120Hz didn’t appear to really decrease the battery life in any respect, because the pill expired after 628 minutes.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Turning off each the lighting and content material adjustment capabilities on the Surface Pro 8 delivered an terrible battery lifetime of 375 minutes, or 6 hours 15 minutes. That’s at a 60Hz refresh fee, too. That’s not the default configuration, nevertheless, and also you would want to regulate the pill’s settings throughout the Settings menu to realize that rating.

All of the variables current an issue. The wonky numbers Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 generated makes us suspicious that there’s one thing else occurring: some interplay with Windows 11, early firmware/drivers going haywire, one thing. If it’s not a deeper concern, Microsoft ought to finally ship drivers that enable us to current a extra assured evaluation of the Surface Pro 8’s capabilities. But proper now, its efficiency and battery life nonetheless stays considerably of an open query.

Conclusion

All of this presents a query: how effectively do we all know the Surface Pro 8? From a {hardware} perspective, fairly effectively: we are able to definitely see the worth of the bigger, superior show, and the pill’s audio sounds nice, too. Sure, the webcam seems to want a bit work, however that’s a tweak it ought to be capable of implement shortly.

The query that we are able to’t reply is whether or not or not we’re seeing a discrepancy in our explicit benchmark software program, or a driver concern, or Windows 11. Is the efficiency and battery life actually this unhealthy? We suspect not, however we are able to’t say that for sure, both. We love what Microsoft has got down to do with the Surface Pro 8, however we’d be remiss if we beneficial the pill based mostly on our findings proper now.