Hardware REVIEWS
REVIEWS Hardware Real World analysis More Surface reaction on p70 and p84
Microsoft Surface with Windows RT A unique, superbly designed tablet that’s ideal for mobile professionals, but it has too many compromises to make it a must-have
Photography: intro, Danny Bird; cutouts, Julian Velasquez; repro, Jan Cihak
❱❱ P RICE 32GB, £332 (£399 inc VAT); 32GB with Touch Cover, £399 (£479 inc VAT); 64GB with Touch Cover, £466 (£559 inc VAT) ❱❱ S UPPLIER www.microsoft.com
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hen Microsoft dropped the bombshell that it was launching its own tablet, the company not only risked alienating its PC partners, but detonating its credibility if it failed to show them how to do so properly. There’s no doubt that the Microsoft Surface is a serious tablet, but is it good enough to tempt people away from their iPads, their Android tablets, or even their laptops? Or is it a stopgap until the fully fledged Windows 8 versions of the Surface tablet arrive to complement this ARM-based version?
The Surface hardware Microsoft made it clear right from the outset that the Surface was intended to set an example to PC manufacturers, and it’s immediately apparent that this tablet isn’t just a piece of boilerplate hardware. Two features make the Surface stand out from the uniform slabs of glass we’ve witnessed over the past couple of years: the kickstand and the detachable keyboards (see Touch and Type Covers, p99, for more on the latter). The mechanics of the kickstand are beautifully simple. The bottom half of the back of the tablet casing flicks out to create a stand for the tablet, turning the device into a pseudo-laptop when used with one of the keyboards. When you’re finished with the stand, it flips back into place, perfectly flush with the back of the tablet,
and with the satisfying clunk of an expensive car door. However, the stand is set at a fixed position, leaving no means of adjusting the angle of the screen as is possible with a conventional laptop. That left the taller members of the PC Pro team awkwardly hunched over the Surface as they attempted to work with the device at a desk; although our more modestly sized colleagues had no complaint. That slightly too upright angle would be a much bigger problem if the 10.6in screen wasn’t so sparkling. Viewing angles
are excellent – although perhaps a little too good for snoopers in an adjacent train seat. A maximum screen brightness of 400cd/m2 is comparable to that of the iPad, and while the Surface has a measured contrast ratio of 3,333:1, it’s due to the presence of dynamic contrast. Flick between dark and bright pages, and it’s possible to detect the backlight
raising and lowering brightness to compensate. Still, the IPS panel guarantees the palette of bright colours that make up the Windows 8 Start screen zing off the display, and photos and video deliver sumptuous levels of saturation. The 1,366 x 768 resolution isn’t going to give Apple’s engineering department cause to shamefacedly return to the drawing board, but when you’re sitting a foot or so away from the Surface screen it doesn’t lack detail or sharpness. The tablet feels delightful to hold in the hand too. There’s much marketing waffle around the so-called VaporMg material that forms the casing, but it feels robust and smooth to the touch. The charcoal-black design is commendably understated, with only a subtle Windows logo adorning the rear. At 682g (without a keyboard), it’s only a shade heavier than the third-generation iPad, and even with a keyboard case attached, it’s much lighter than most ultraportable laptops. At no point does the Surface become uncomfortably warm, either.
Connectivity and ports Connectivity and expandability are other strong suits for the Surface. On the right-hand side of the tablet, you’ll find a micro-HDMI port, for which Microsoft has created a pair of optional adapters (£35 each) for
KEY SPECS 1.4GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 T30 CPU • 2GB RAM • 32/64GB storage • microSDXC slot • 10.6in 1,366 x 768 IPS display • dual-band 802.11abgn Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4 • 2 x 0.9mp webcams • Windows RT • 1yr C&R warranty • 275 x 9.5 x 172mm (WDH) • 682g
Resolution isn’t high, but the quality of the IPS display more than compensates for this, with rich colours that really pop off the screen
running external displays via HDMI or VGA. Unlike iPads or Android tablets, Windows RT allows you to extend your desktop to a secondary display rather than merely mirroring the tablet screen, which is a huge bonus when it comes to getting down to work. Beneath the micro-HDMI there’s a USB 2 port, which can be used to plug in all manner of peripherals, including external hard disks, mice, digital cameras and even printers – a full list of compatible devices can be found at www.pcpro.co.uk/ links/220surfacelist. We plugged in all manner of devices, both new and old, and the only one we struggled to get working was an ageing Fujitsu scanner, and that has driver issues with Windows 7 too. If you don’t want to waste a USB port on an external mouse or keyboard, the Bluetooth 4 support allows you to use wireless versions at your desktop. Elsewhere on the wireless front, there’s dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. One curious omission, however, is a SIM card slot. For a device that’s so geared towards working on the move, it’s bizarre that Microsoft didn’t see fit to at least offer a 3G/4G option.
Secreted beneath that flip-out stand is also a microSDXC slot, which is capable of adding another 64GB of removable storage to the Surface. That might well be a necessity if you opt for the 32GB version, which has only 16GB of free space, with almost half the stated storage consumed by Windows, the Office apps and the recovery partition. The 64GB version of the Surface offers 46GB of free space.
Working with Windows RT So there’s little to complain about on the hardware side, but what about the software? Surface runs Windows RT, the ARM-optimised version of Windows 8, and that necessarily involves a few awkward compromises. The most obvious of these is that almost all desktop software is prohibited. Even though the traditional Windows desktop remains a part of the build – it’s available through a Start menu tile just as it is in the x86 versions of Windows 8 – the only software
permitted to run here is the preinstalled Office suite and Internet Explorer. Even if traditional software vendors were prepared to recompile their software for ARM, it would make no difference; Microsoft has pulled up the drawbridge. While Internet Explorer is perfectly happy to let you download installers for desktop applications such as Google Chrome, attempts to click on the EXE file are met with a warning that “this app can’t run on your PC” and an invitation to visit the Windows Store. The very presence of the desktop in Windows RT almost feels like you’re being taunted with what you’re missing out on. Why Microsoft didn’t remove the desktop altogether and simply allow users to run full-screen instances of the Office apps from the Start screen is bewildering. It has all the hallmarks of a bodge: a compromise to resolve the conflicting priorities of the Windows and Office teams. It’s also worth noting that the version of Office bundled with
You can’t complain about the slenderness of the Surface. It’s 9.5mm thick and reasonably light considering the screen size
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Hardware REVIEWS
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The Store is in its infancy, and not a match for Android or iOS
RT allows installers to be downloaded, but blocks installation
The Surface’s VaporMG chassis feels smooth and robust
Under the kickstand is a microSDXC slot
Windows RT is Home & Student – which means it isn’t licensed for business use (Jon Honeyball and Simon Jones cover these limitations in greater depth on p70 and p84), and that there’s no Outlook included in the deal. Try to share a document from Word via email and you’re presented with an abrupt warning message informing you that there’s no email program installed, despite the presence of the Mail app in Windows 8. The Share charm provides no relief either, as nothing can be shared from the desktop. That said, the presence of almost fully featured Office apps is a considerable bonus – no other tablet has a complement of apps that can compete with Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. We say almost fully featured because a few notable features such as macros and, bizarrely, full SkyDrive integration are absent. Plus, when you try to push Office hard – fiddling with complex spreadsheets or adding highresolution photos to heavily formatted Word documents –
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performance plummets, sometimes causing Office to dither like a contestant answering the final question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? It’s also worth noting that Windows RT also offers separate user accounts, meaning that you don’t have to risk giving the kids the opportunity to wipe your data when they want to play a game in the back seat of the car.
Performance This brings us to the overall performance of the Surface RT. On paper, the figures are mightily impressive: the score of 1,042ms recorded in the SunSpider browser benchmark is as fast as any tablet that’s ever passed through our lab. Unfortunately, our Real World Benchmarks won’t run on Windows RT. However, other performance indicators suggest the Tegra 3 processor inside the Surface doesn’t cope as well with Windows as even previousgeneration Intel processors. Our Samsung 700T tablet, equipped
with a Sandy Bridge 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M and 4GB of RAM, rebooted and returned to the password screen in 31 seconds; the 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 with 2GB of RAM here took 47 seconds. When our Samsung tablet lands on the Start screen, it’s ready to get going without delay; the Surface RT stumbles through the first 30 seconds or so, like an ageing Windows XP installation in need of a refresh. App performance is patchy too. Running two Windows 8 apps side by side often causes performance to stutter, while moderately demanding 3D games such as Pinball FX2 are occasionally juddery. Even streaming tunes over Xbox Music can cause the Surface RT to wobble. These performance hiccups might not be so apparent to users who haven’t experienced Windows 8 on an x86 device, and they certainly aren’t showstoppers, but we wonder if the performance trade-offs are too great, especially when you bring battery life into the equation. The Surface RT lasted a shade over nine hours in our looping video test – a respectable, if not stellar, score for a tablet. The third-generation iPad lasted 12hrs 32mins, although a fairer comparison can perhaps be drawn with the Tegra 3-equipped Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, which lasted 10hrs 8mins on its own, and 18hrs 5mins with the extra battery slice in its detachable keyboard. Alas, the Surface keyboards aren’t equipped with an extra battery.
Windows Store Without access to desktop software, Surface RT owners are dependent on the apps available from the Windows Store. We’re a little nervous about drawing any firm conclusions concerning the quality of the Windows Store, as it’s an immature, evolving beast with new apps appearing on a daily basis. However, at the time of writing, there’s no doubt that the Windows Store falls a long way short of its iOS and Android rivals in terms of both quantity and quality of applications. The kickstand and Touch Cover enable you to get serious work done using the Surface
Big names are conspicuous by their absence: Twitter, Facebook, (no, the People app isn’t an outright replacement for dedicated clients), the BBC iPlayer, most national newspapers, Lovefilm, Spotify, Photoshop Touch… the list goes on. At the time of writing, we were struggling to even find a decent photo-editing app, which are (almost literally) ten a penny in the rival stores. The presence of the full-blown version of Internet Explorer partly compensates for this lack of apps. Services such as iPlayer, Twitter and YouTube can be accessed, sometimes offering more features than are available via apps on rival
platforms (the “rewind from start” feature in iPlayer, for example). A smattering of decent apps are available for Windows RT, such as the art package Fresh Paint and cloud photo effects studio PhotoFunia. Familiar favourites such as Skype, Kindle and TuneIn Radio also add to the package, but there’s no doubt the Windows Store is in urgent need of high-quality reinforcements.
Sign of things to come? The Surface RT is an incredibly hard device to define. Microsoft’s first tablet is bold, unique and the most fully featured device of its
Windows desktop software means that it can’t be considered as a genuine laptop replacement. It remains an attractive device in its own right, but more than anything, it whets our appetite for the full Windows 8 version of the Surface; this is due to arrive early in 2013, and will have a fully unlocked desktop and all the benefits of a regular laptop. If you can hold out until the new year, we think it’s going to be worth the wait. BARRY COLLINS
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PERFORMANCE FEATURES & DESIGN VALUE FOR MONEY
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Touch and Type Covers There are two types of keyboard for the Microsoft Surface. The Touch Cover is a halfway house between a software keyboard and the rubber-keyed wonder of the old 48K Spectrum. There’s no tactile feedback when you touch the keys – instead you’re forced to keep your eyes glued to the screen, or turn up the volume and listen for the clicky key sound.
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type. No other tablet makes it as easy to get to work straight out of the box; no other tablet has its broad compatibility with a range of peripherals; and no other tablet has such over-arching ambition. Yet it falls short in several respects. The ARM processor seems to struggle under the weight of Windows, the Windows Store is weaker than either of its two main rivals, and the boarded-up desktop is frustrating. The Surface RT falls between two stools. On the one hand, it isn’t as good a tablet as the iPad or the cream of the Android crop, and the lack of backwards compatibility with traditional
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Our first instinct was that typing on the Touch Cover would be a terrible experience, but we were pleasantly surprised. While we didn’t quite get up to full lick, we found our regular typing speed wasn’t massively hampered, and even the small trackpad surface beneath the spacebar proved responsive and accurate. The Type Cover is our favourite of the two, though. This has proper, well-spaced keys that deliver a decent amount of travel. Within minutes we were back up to full laptop typing speed, and creating plenty of noise – the keyboard is a touch rattly. It also has a set of dedicated function keys (F1, F2 and so on). These are accessible only on the Touch Cover as a secondary option, behind the top row of Windows 8-specific
control buttons (volume controls, Charm shortcuts and so on). The trackpad is functional and responsive, but as with the Touch Cover’s trackpad, there’s no support for gestures, which is disappointing. The Type Cover is a bigger letdown when you attempt to use the Surface on your lap. Its base is too flexible, often causing the keys on the edges of the keyboard to stop responding. We found the Touch Cover more reliable with the Surface resting on your lap, which is worth considering if you spend much of your time tapping away in airport lounges or crowded commuter trains. The price of both keyboards is a little steep for our liking. The Touch Cover is a £79 addon for the 32GB Surface, while the Type Cover is £110. The 64GB model (£559 inc VAT) has a Touch Cover, with the Type Cover again adding £110 to the price. Why Microsoft is forcing 64GB owners to pay the full amount for the Type Cover instead of a small premium is baffling. A total price of £669 for the 64GB Surface RT and Type Cover – our preferred specification – is far too high.
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