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.

The Surface Pro 13 OLED 2-in-1 is a best of both worlds beast. Deftly switching from tablet to laptop with an optional keyboard and powered by a 12-core Snapdragon processor mated with a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and a new OLED screen, the tablet feels like a strong laptop in both performance and features.Design/Body:The 13-inch tablet isn’t as large and bulky as it sounds. Much like early smartphones, I’ve come to realize that 13-inch tablets aren’t as huge as I originally thought they were. At first glance the Surface Pro doesn’t look much larger than my 11-inch tablet. It’s only when placed side by side does the slightly larger size of the Surface Pro become evident. The Surface has some weight to it but isn’t uncomfortably heavy. I find it easy to use and handle. ... MoreThe Surface Pro 13 OLED 2-in-1 is a best of both worlds beast. Deftly switching from tablet to laptop with an optional keyboard and powered by a 12-core Snapdragon processor mated with a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and a new OLED screen, the tablet feels like a strong laptop in both performance and features.Design/Body:The 13-inch tablet isn’t as large and bulky as it sounds. Much like early smartphones, I’ve come to realize that 13-inch tablets aren’t as huge as I originally thought they were. At first glance the Surface Pro doesn’t look much larger than my 11-inch tablet. It’s only when placed side by side does the slightly larger size of the Surface Pro become evident. The Surface has some weight to it but isn’t uncomfortably heavy. I find it easy to use and handle. The body is crafted from aluminum with a kickstand that allows the Surface Pro to be used upright in landscape mode with a keyboard. The kickstand folds flat against the back of tablet when not in use. I don’t find the aluminum body slippery or fragile feeling. The Surface has two USB-C ports on the left side, two ports on the bottom that integrate with the Surface Pro Keyboard, and three buttons on the top for power and volume controls. All ports and buttons are described with the Surface in the landscape position using the kickstand.Screen:The 13-inch OLED screen looks fantastic. I admittedly wasn’t quite as blown away as I’d hoped but it still looks good. It’s just not the quantum leap I thought it would be over previous Surface tablets. It has the deeper blacks and more richly saturated colors common with OLED. Text and graphics are also clean and razor sharp thanks to the 2880X1920 resolution. The screen has good brightness and fast response.Performance:The 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processor does not feel like an ARM processor. It feels more on par with a full-fledged X64 laptop. This is good because the Surface Pro is essentially a Windows 11 laptop in a tablet body. Despite the demands of running Windows 11, there is no noticeable lag. Windows open quickly and fluidly. Apps launch swiftly and run with no latency or hiccups. The NPU works splendidly and provides the processing punch required to make Copilot and other AI features actually useful rather than merely window decorations. The Surface isn’t the best equipped for PC gaming, but can handle most other tasks efficiently. The only downside are compatibility issues with some software due to the ARM processor. For example, I cannot install the exact same antivirus as my Windows laptops. I get booted to the Microsoft store for a less capable app version of the program. But as far as productivity apps, media editors, and content creation, the Surface Pro handles it all with ease. It doesn’t run hot in most instances and I haven’t encountered a freeze or blue screen yet.The two cameras and speakers are both decent quality. The QHD front facing camera has face tracking and is utilized for Windows Hello facial recognition. The camera takes good quality photos and video and works great for video conferencing. The 10mp rear camera performs well also. Neither camera can best high-end smartphone cameras but both are more than sufficient for a tablet or even a laptop. They’re also better than the cameras on my other tablets. Same with the speakers. They sound loud, clear, and better than anticipated for a tablet. Music sounds rich and is actually enjoyable. The speakers easily outperform my other tablets and even the quite capable laptop I’m currently typing on now.Battery life is fantastic. I only have to charge every couple days with moderate usage.Extras:Windows 11 recently introduced several AI powered new features. The most anticipated being Copilot. Co-pilot is an AI chatbot that provides a wealth of useful information at your fingertips. It can be helpful for research or automating certain creative processes. It can also utilize plug-ins for recipes, shopping, travel, home and more. Another interesting Windows AI feature is the DALL-E powered co-designer. Integrated with later versions of Paint, it allows you to create dazzling works of art using descriptive phrases and rough sketches. For example, I described an anime turtle on the beach, used some brush strokes to indicate the sand, water, sun and clouds and co-creator did the rest. I included the before and after photos with this review. The more descriptive the phrase, the more accurate the AI rendering. Features in Copilot also provide AI enabled searches and information requests, real-time translation with live captions, creative studio filters and effects for the camera and more. The camera filters were somewhat disappointing. There are only three filters and they only work in the video mode, not with still photos. There are also two blur modes: background and portrait. The AI camera effects are an okay start but I hope Microsoft plans on expanding the filters to not only include a larger selection but work for still photos as well.Cons:As we all know, few things in life are perfect and I’d be doing a disservice by gushing over what impressed me and omitting what didn’t. In the not-so-great department, I already mentioned the compatibility issues I encountered trying to install X64 apps on an ARM device. The Surface Pro runs so well, it’s easy to forget it’s an ARM device until running into an issue like that. Another not so great is the requirement for a complex PIN. I wanted to use a simple four-digit PIN that was easy for me to remember but Windows wasn’t having it because it didn’t meet complexity requirements. Now I have to look up my PIN if facial recognition fails for whatever reason. Lastly, it’s a Windows device, so that means frequent updates. It updated on first boot right out of the box. Lastly, I also had a bunch of unwanted files from another PC dropped onto the Surface thanks to OneDrive being infuriatingly active by default.Despite the above minor cons, I am still blown away by the power and capability of the Surface Pro OLED. It’s blazing fast, has great battery life, and offers the power of a laptop with the convenience and travel friendly size of a tablet. I do strongly recommend using it with a keyboard for the full experience. Case style is best and the Surface works seamless and marvelously with the Surface Pro Keyboard. However, any keyboard is better than no keyboard for those times you need a laptop, not a tablet. One thing I can say is as far as reliability, the Surface has already proven to be a long-lasting well-built piece of tech. I'm still using a Surface Pro X 1876 that is at least 4-5 years old and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

It took over a decade but this is the first Microsoft Surface product (which means the entire family: tablet, laptop, hybrid [Surface Book], Windows on ARM) I've ever had an initial overwhelming positive reaction to. The Surface Pro 11 feels like what the Surface Pro *SHOULD HAVE BEEN* when it was first released all those years ago to compete in the tablet market. Its Android and iOS competitors were always more responsive and the battery life longer lasting. It seemed like all the Surface had going for itself was that it was a full-fledged Windows PC in a tablet form-factor. The problem with that was there was always significant compromises. They were too slow compared to real laptop, which was intentional to extend its battery life. When it was fast, the battery ... MoreIt took over a decade but this is the first Microsoft Surface product (which means the entire family: tablet, laptop, hybrid [Surface Book], Windows on ARM) I've ever had an initial overwhelming positive reaction to. The Surface Pro 11 feels like what the Surface Pro *SHOULD HAVE BEEN* when it was first released all those years ago to compete in the tablet market. Its Android and iOS competitors were always more responsive and the battery life longer lasting. It seemed like all the Surface had going for itself was that it was a full-fledged Windows PC in a tablet form-factor. The problem with that was there was always significant compromises. They were too slow compared to real laptop, which was intentional to extend its battery life. When it was fast, the battery life suffered, and it either generated more heat, you got more fan noise, or both. With the Surface Pro 11, the Surface is finally fast and responsive without compromising battery life, heat, or fan noise.The design has changed slightly compared to its predecessors in that the edges are more rounded now. It's more gentle on the hands when you're holding it, although there's a gap in the edges there for ventilation on the top and sides, and the kickstand on the bottom. Because of that gap, it creates a thin aluminum sheet that can dig into your skin when you're holding it. The rounded edges protrude more to prevent you from feeling that "sheet" but if you hold it a certain way, it can be felt.It feels absolutely solid, with no flexing, not even around the kickstand area.The bezels are thin on 2 sides only: the left and right when viewed in landscape. The top has a thick bezel to house the front-facing camera. The bottom has a thick bezel to attach the Surface Pro keyboard and give it its angle. So when used with the keyboard, the only thick bezel seen is the top bezel. The thick bezels do actually help when viewing the tablet in portrait mode since that's where you're gripping. Your hands won't be in the way of content on the screen.The display is behind hard glass and is OLED. Its display resolution is 1920x2880 120Hz display with dynamic refresh rate, so you're capable of setting the display to 60Hz, 120Hz, or a variable refresh rate that will display up to 120Hz when it needs to. The OLED display looks beautiful, with the trademark inky blacks for excellent contrast, with a caveat. When viewing bright-colored content, white being the easily susceptible, you can see a textured looking layer under the glass. It looks like a bunch of oily dots. It's most evident when you look close but if you're the type that's sensitive to visual imperfections you're unfortunately going to notice it. Personally, it doesn't bother me but your mileage is going to vary. If you think this will bother you, I suggest taking a look at a sample display at a local Best Buy to see if it will actually bother you.The maximum brightness in HDR is 900 nits. The device is Dolby Vision certified, and you can find its certification labeled in the Windows settings, but I wasn't able to get Dolby Vision content to work. Just HDR10. When I open the Microsoft Store app, "Dolby Vision Extensions" is in my Library, but if you go to the app's listing you'll see a warning that reads, "This app will not work on your device." You can't even search for it in the store because it doesn't see the Surface Pro 11 as a compatible device. Without "Dolby Vision Extensions" working properly on Windows, you cannot view Dolby Vision content, which is the case with my Surface Pro 11.The star of the show here is the Snapdragon X Elite processor. The Surface feels snappy, like a desktop PC or a powered laptop. There isn't throttling while it's on battery. At least not until the battery hits 6%. And this is all while the tablet remains cool and silent. The caveat with this is that this is only with native ARM apps. When running x86/x64 apps, the Surface becomes a similar experience to what you've come to know and will grow to hate if you haven't already with Intel-based Surface tablets. Battery life takes a hit, the tablet becomes noisier from the fan, and it's hotter.While only streaming video with the brightness at 75% and volume at 18%, I got 8 hours and 20 minutes of battery life. This appears to fall in line with Microsoft's test used in their marketing claiming up to 10 hours of active web usage which doesn't even explicitly mention streaming, and had its brightness at a measly 150 nits.While gaming with an ARM64 app, I was able to get 4 hours and 55 minutes of battery life. The Surface never got hot; just warm. The fan went off but it was whisper quiet, drowned out by the audio from the game I was playing.While gaming with a x64 app under Microsoft's x86/x64 emulation, I got 3 hours and 5 minutes of battery life. This is about on par with Intel-based PCs. The tablet got hot, and the fan was getting pushed hard.When in sleep mode, I experience no battery drain after 13 hours. Compare that to an Intel tablet, where I lost 6% of battery in sleep mode during those same 13 hours.Windows on ARM has come a long way in that now most casual users can get by on it, especially if you do most of your work from a web browser. But if you're using it for work, you'll have to seriously assess your usage because if you rely in x86/x84 apps not everything works perfectly. When it does, it's fast and feels like you're working on a normal Intel PC. But most VPN software do not work under emulation, including enterprise ones like Citrix, and SonicWall NetExtender, or consumer ones like NordVPN. Adobe hasn't released its entire library with ARM64 versions.But for casual use, the Surface Pro 11 is absolutely fantastic, and a positive sign that Windows on ARM is the future of Windows PCs.The speakers sound great and present a wide and engaging sound stage BUT there are only 2 speakers. Furthermore, their placement is on the top left and right of the tablet when viewed in landscape mode. This presents an awkward listening experience when used in portrait mode. Audio effectively becomes mono since there's nothing to discern the left and right sides. On top of that, the audio is off-center.The Surface Pro has WiFi 7 with a max bandwidth of 5Gbps, which is overkill for internet connections since for many users, your internet won't reach those speeds. But for your local network, provided you have a WiFi 7 wireless router, the speed is spectacular. If you have a 10GbE port on your desktop PC, you can finally put it to good use and transfer large files like 20GB 4K video wirelessly in seconds. And with more WiFi 7 devices on the way, it's set for the future of WiFi instead of holding itself back with the older and slower WiFi 6e protocol.Storage comes by way of a 512GB m.2 2230 SSD, which is the shorter sized m.2 SSD. It's replaceable and easily accessible, hidden behind the kickstand, where you'd normally find the SD card slot in older models. The Surface Pro 11 has no SD card expansion this time around.The biggest disappointment of the Surface Pro 11 is Copilot+. Nothing it offers is reliable or practical enough for real world usage. The feature I was most looking forward to was Live Captions, which has the ability to auto-translate any audio you play, including internal audio. The problem is the captions are displayed in a very awkward way where it spits out several words at a time. With TV's closed captioning, and other captioning services like on YouTube, they're displayed one word at a time. Microsoft's Live Captions makes it hard to read for me. Translations are also iffy but that's par for the course with these sort of live translation for now. It is nice how you can place the captions wherever you want on the screen though, since it's floating. So if you're looking to watch that TV series or movie that was never translated to your language, you can do it with Live Captions. You'll just have to stomach its horrendous way of displaying the real time captions.The AI camera filters felt more like a novelty than something that's actually useful. If you're using apps like Zoom, they already have features like this natively in the app. I couldn't find any practical use for Windows' Studio effects.Copilot itself is wildly inaccurate for information. Its database it pulls from is often not up to date.The future is bright for Windows on ARM, and I can't wait for more developers to finally release their software for it.Previous attempts for Windows on ARM were downright awful to the point that it seemed like Windows was never going to work with ARM. The Snapdragon X Elite is finally proof that ARM is not only capable of Windows, it makes Windows better. Easily the best Surface tablet I've ever used.It's Microsoft themselves that is actually holding back Windows, with their massive oversell of Copilot+ and not delivering. Quite frankly, I'm not even sure if the NPU is being used.