This tablet / laptop works great for a lot of things. I was skeptical at first being that it is an arm based product and historically windows on arm has been a little hit and miss. However after using this table for a bit as my non-gaming daily for over a week or so I have to say I am pleasantly surprised by the performance and reliability for “most” things that I have tried to do with it.I do software development, and for the most part that experience has been fairly painless and performance has been great. However there are some caveats to that. Programs that are not specifically made for arm run in an emulation mode (so x64 apps) and those apps do have some slight performance hits due to this translation layer. But during normal use those issues are mostly not ... MoreThis tablet / laptop works great for a lot of things. I was skeptical at first being that it is an arm based product and historically windows on arm has been a little hit and miss. However after using this table for a bit as my non-gaming daily for over a week or so I have to say I am pleasantly surprised by the performance and reliability for “most” things that I have tried to do with it.I do software development, and for the most part that experience has been fairly painless and performance has been great. However there are some caveats to that. Programs that are not specifically made for arm run in an emulation mode (so x64 apps) and those apps do have some slight performance hits due to this translation layer. But during normal use those issues are mostly not noticeable at least for the applications I have been using. When it comes to down right application failures there have been a few applications that I was unable to install because they don’t offer an arm version and they would not install ( such as ARC browser which I use on Mac and my intel based windows machine) I also had an issue where an application would install fine but I could not activate it for some reason so I was unable to use it. For productivity software however those where the only two real examples of problems I had.I’ve also been really happy with battery life in normal use as I can get a full 12 hour day of work done and still have battery to spare without much of a worry at all. That’s nice compared to some other laptops I’ve tried to use for work in the past that left me scrambling for a place to plug in.Build quality and style wise, I really appreciate the simple clean design just the adjustable kickstand on the back and that blends in when you fold it down. That kickstand is amazing as well allowing me to use more angles than I ever thought I needed for different situations.The copilot+ stuff is cool if you have a use for it. I played around with the image co-creater features for a while and it really helped flesh out an idea I had been working on even though I am an awful artist. It’s nice to be able to prompt the system, start drawing and as you go it slowly improves the generated image. It’s a neat feature if you have a use for it and I’ll probably use it more in the future. The other really cool co-pilot plus feature I was not expecting to like so much was live captions. It was amazing to be able to watch a video in another language that did not have translations available and be able to understand what was going on. It’s surprisingly fast and super useful for some of the work I do. As for it’s accuracy I’m not totally sure on that front but it was close enough for me to get the information I needed without needing to refer to another source or person. As for all the other co-pilot+ features I’ve not had a lot of time to use or play with them so I don’t have much to say on those but overall I have been super happy with the experience and pleasantly surprised.Overall if you’re looking for a super portable and fairly quick computer to do work on this is shaping up to be a great choice overall. I’ve all but replaced my other travel electronics because this takes up less space and does the things I need it to without too much hassle. There is one note for all of this though, do not expect to be able to play games on this laptop/tablet. It’s not intended for that and the driver compatibility with games is very far from good. There are also several games that just won’t run at all because some kernel level anti-cheat systems don’t support ARM. I’m sure that will get better in the future but in reality that’s not what this computer is intended for anyway. I just wanted to make sure I included that in my review just in case someone was looking at it for that reason. The only real reason I was not able to give this a 5 star rating was the few issues I did have with software compatibility. I think after some time that issue will get better though.

This is my third Surface tablet, coming from a Surface 7, so I was anxious to see how much this latest model with the new processor architecture would do. My first impression just on unboxing it was very good, as the color they call “Dune” is a very attractive silvery-gold that really pops and looks quite classy. It uses the same charger as my previous device with its own dedicated port on one side, leaving the two USB-C ports on the other side free for connection to various types of devices. These ports are listed as having charging capability for doing things like topping up your smartphone, earbuds, etc. An external display can also be driven from these versatile connections. When first powering it on, I was also wowed by the OLED screen, which is the best I’ve ... MoreThis is my third Surface tablet, coming from a Surface 7, so I was anxious to see how much this latest model with the new processor architecture would do. My first impression just on unboxing it was very good, as the color they call “Dune” is a very attractive silvery-gold that really pops and looks quite classy. It uses the same charger as my previous device with its own dedicated port on one side, leaving the two USB-C ports on the other side free for connection to various types of devices. These ports are listed as having charging capability for doing things like topping up your smartphone, earbuds, etc. An external display can also be driven from these versatile connections. When first powering it on, I was also wowed by the OLED screen, which is the best I’ve had on a device this size.Similar to most smartphones, Microsoft eases the initial setup of a new device like this by letting you select from the latest configuration backup of one of your other Windows devices, then initializes things to match and installs any apps that you have previously installed from the store. Also, as usual, there is a big initial mandatory software update that delayed my first real hands-on use of the product. From day one, Windows has always run on processors using the Intel x86 architecture, which has undergone massive changes and improvements over the years, but keeps everything compatible from generation to generation. This new line of products, however, runs on the Snapdragon X processor family based on the ARM architecture that is completely different from Intel’s designs. This is what I really wanted to evaluate from the standpoint of speed and compatibility.My first impressions were very good indeed. The tablet boots up so quickly that I can hardly see it doing the logon validation. I use face recognition to sign onto Windows. On my older Surface I see messages such as “Looking for you” as it does its processing before signing me in; on the new one I’m signed in before I can read any intermediate messages. Even though Windows provides some sort of “emulation layer” that allows apps written for the Intel CPUs to work on ARM CPUs, it is also possible (and preferred) to modify and build an ARM-specific version to maximize performance. The Edge browser is one such app, and it really screams. The main thing I noticed is that it launches instantly the way that you expect smartphone apps to do.I haven’t been able to do any meaningful tests on battery life, which is supposed to be a big advantage of the Snapdragon CPU, but I can definitely say that this tablet stays much, much cooler than my older Surfaces did. Less heat has got to mean less battery being chewed up!There have been reports of some Intel-based apps not running correctly if at all on the new architecture, especially some of the more complex, technical apps. One such app that I really wanted to use is a cycling simulator that connects to my indoor biking setup and lets me “ride” roads all over the world while collecting data and providing a realistic video feed of the riding experience, sometimes shared with people around the world. I was therefore very pleased to see that this app is working on the new tablet, although I did send them a suggestion that they should produce a specific ARM version that would further improve its performance. In general, I have not yet tried an app that did not run fine or not perform well on the new Surface.So far I’ve had only limited need for the new CoPilot+ AI features on this device. The specs for the NPU are certainly impressive (40 trillion operations per second!!) and I wanted to give it a try. So I used the smart pen that came with the keyboard to draw a very rough sketch of a bicycle in the Paint app and then played around with CoCreator+ to see what I could do with it. For just a couple minutes of tweaking, the results were impressive, and someone with more artistic talent could undoubtedly refine it much further. I’ve included the beginning and ending graphics with this review.In summary, this is probably the biggest upgrade in the history of the Surface line of products and is well worth considering as a new or replacement tablet. The improved performance potential going forward is huge.

This is a beautiful, practical device and probably a no-brain upgrade for Surface Tablet lovers like me.The OLED screen is an absolute delight to behold. The Snapdragon processor running Windows 11 on ARM speeds through a typical day of office work, internet research, photo editing and media consumption. The 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD are more than enough to handle my needs. The front and rear facing cameras are excellent, and the built-in AI abilities enhance and expand your creative use of them.Every Copilot+PC has a powerful AI processor, also known as a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which can deliver up to 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS). You will begin to put this NPU to work the moment you boot up your computer. Of course, you can smash the Co-Pilot ... MoreThis is a beautiful, practical device and probably a no-brain upgrade for Surface Tablet lovers like me.The OLED screen is an absolute delight to behold. The Snapdragon processor running Windows 11 on ARM speeds through a typical day of office work, internet research, photo editing and media consumption. The 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD are more than enough to handle my needs. The front and rear facing cameras are excellent, and the built-in AI abilities enhance and expand your creative use of them.Every Copilot+PC has a powerful AI processor, also known as a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which can deliver up to 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS). You will begin to put this NPU to work the moment you boot up your computer. Of course, you can smash the Co-Pilot key and a screen will pop up asking you what you want to explore. You can type in your instructions, or speak them into your microphone, and you will get both a typed and spoken answer.If you are watching virtually any video that contains audio or communicating with a group through Teams or Zoom, your computer now can translate scores of foreign languages into English and present the generated subtitles to you in real time. This is immensely useful. I tuned into a CNN news channel being broadcast in Spanish, and this feature translated everything that was spoken into English subtitles in real time. Right now, this only seems to work in one direction: translating the other language into English. I am confident that translation in the other direction will work as well as the product matures.Another example: open the Paint application and use the co-creator feature. Draw a picture and use artificial intelligence to enhance it, and the amount of creativity is varied by adjusting a slider. I did not care for the result I got when I tried this with a drawing, so I took a picture of my living room using the rear camera and enhanced it with both impressionistic and surrealistic styles using various levels of creativity. I am attaching the rather interesting result.AI and Copilot PCs are in their infancy, so some of the promised features are not yet available to the public. I expect that my use of AI will broadly expand in the days and months ahead.Battery life has been exemplary. I easily get a full day of use with varied tasks, and when I close the keyboard cover to let the device sleep, I can open it back up hours later with almost no battery drain. Of course, to get the best battery life, I turn the brightness down some. My use scenario easily yields about 10 hours of battery life in real world use, and I am sure that by tweaking the settings I could squeeze out more.I felt little heat from this efficient computer. The fan, when it did turn on, was barely audible. I could shut the keyboard cover which puts the device to sleep and come back to it hours later with only a tiny amount of battery drain. This was a first for any Windows computer I have ever used, and it was greatly appreciated.As much as I love the OLED screen, the base model with the still- great LED screen also supports the same sharp 2880 x 1920 resolution and should squeeze out even more battery life, if you can live with the 256GB SSD. Remember, these Surface Pro Tablets have a user replaceable SSD, which differentiates them from most other Copilot+ PCs. You’ll need some technical acumen and patience to research how to image your original SSD containing the operating system and copy it to the new SSD, but it’s certainly doable without having to take the device apart.I personally have always loved the Surface tablet form factor. I owned a Surface RT, a fourth-generation Surface Pro, a Surface X, and still have a Surface Go 2. Windows on ARM has been frustratingly slow to evolve, but this Copilot+ PC is a giant step forward. Better emulation means many more applications designed for X86 chips can run under ARM.All my Microsoft 365 office products are running natively and work exactly as they do on my desktop and other Windows laptops. All my home and office printers (with one exception, which was also problematic on a recently acquired Core Ultra 7 Intel laptop) were easily found and proper drivers installed under Windows 11 through a network search. ARM 64 native versions of the Chrome browser, Zoom Workplace, VLC Media player, my VPN client, and a beta version of DaVinci Resolve were located and installed without incident. I have also installed the free version of Adobe Acrobat, which appears to be a 64-bit version of that App running under emulation. It runs without issue. Running Windows Task Manager in a detailed view will let you see which apps are running natively, and which apps are running under emulation.Various other apps including Netflix, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, HD Homerun, and Hulu were installed through the Microsoft Store. All work perfectly. Given the great impetus created by Microsoft’s development of Copilot+PCs and with so many manufacturers adopting the new architecture, many more native applications will be available soon.There are some limits to what emulation can run, especially with older programs. I tried installing a 32-bit application which I have used for many years to edit videos, VideoReDo. I hoped it might run under emulation but was not surprised it didn’t.The keyboard cover and pen, if you use one or both, each costs extra. I tested the Microsoft - Surface Slim Pen (2nd Edition) and Pro Keyboard for Pro (11th Edition) which BestBuy offers as a package for a reasonable but still significant $280. I would not consider buying the Surface device alone without a keyboard cover (which also has a trackpad). You need this tool to fully enjoy the benefits of having a compact device which runs the full Windows operating system on ARM.You should note that the keyboard in the package I mentioned is NOT the new Bluetooth Flex keyboard which can be totally detached from the tablet and still connect to the tablet through Bluetooth. You’ll have to pay even more for the convenience of the Flex, if that feature appeals to you. It is $350 and DOES NOT come with a pen, although it has a well to store one if you already have it.Good news if you already have one of the Signature keyboards originally designed for Surface 8, 9 and Surface X- they all have a well for holding a pen and will work on this Copilot device, minus only the Copilot key. Not having to invest in a new keyboard would put the buyer in a position to move up to the Snapdragon Elite processor for about a hundred dollars more than the cost of the device and a new keyboard or stepping down to the base model to save some dollars and get a little more battery life. Either of those choices are going to be tempting to a buyer who already has a Signature keyboard.As you may have gathered, I am excited about this product. This model is by far the best Surface tablet I have ever used, and I am enjoying it more every day. Highly recommended for Surface fans!