After a long wait of 2 years, the Surface Pro is here. It was announced yesterday an event in Shanghai. The Surface Pro succeeds the Surface Pro 4. Billed as ‘the most versatile’ and portable laptop, this year the Surface Pro sees upgrades in battery life, processor, design, and it will also be getting the very first LTE on a Surface device coming later this year.
The 2-in-1 detachable receives the same 12.3inch screen (2160×1440 pixels), and we have no complaints here. The 8 MP camera of the Surface Pro 4 also makes an appearance along with the 5 MP front-facing camera.
Now for the upgrades, the Surface Pro promises improved battery life of 13.5 hours. Handy for those on the go. Microsoft says the battery is 50% better than the Surface Pro 4 and 35% better than the Apple iPad Pro. The processor has also been stepped up to the latest 7th Gen Intel Kaby Lake processor with more than two times the firepower than the Surface Pro 3 and 1.7 times that of the iPad Pro.
The design has also been drastically improved. The most noticeable improvement is the back-stand which now allows sliding the Surface all the way back to 165-degrees. There are many use case scenarios for this ‘Studio Mode’ like sketching and drawing.
The Surface Pro has no competition from its successors when it comes to weight. It is just 768 grams. It is very thin too. The most important upgrade to the latest Surface Pro is like we said, the 4G LTE connectivity function. This will allow the Surface to be truly the ‘versatile’ device that Microsoft wants.
The Surface Pro pen has also improved drastically with its pressure sensing doubled to 4,096 pressure points and a couple of neat software improvements to go with it. It’s a bummer you will have to purchase the pen separately. Although you can use your old pens that came with the Surface Pro 4. Though Microsoft now also has the new Surface Type cover accessory with improved design to help the typing experience.
Now for the pricing, the Surface Pro with all its new perks will cost you $799.99 (Rs. 51,850 approx.), this is the base model of course. The top-end model with 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB HDD will cost $2,699 (Rs. 1,74,950 approx.). The Surface can be purchased separately for $99 (Rs. 6415 approx.), and the new Type Cover will set you by $129(Rs. 8350 approx.). Pre-orders are live now. The Surface Pro 2017 will be shipping in 26 countries starting from June 15th.
