The Microsoft Surface Pro (2017) Review: Evolution
by Brett Howse on June 15, 2017 9:00 AM ESTDesign
The Surface Pro 3 brought about a revolution in the design of the Surface Pro family, bringing the 3:2 aspect ratio that is now the signature on all Surface devices, as well as a much thinner and lighter design. Surface Pro 4 evolved that design, bringing a slightly larger display into the same size chassis, while becoming a bit thinner and lighter again. The new Surface Pro continues that evolution-rather-than-revolution philosophy, and that’s arguably the right choice for a successful product.
The latest design has softened the exterior, moving away from the angular design that has been a part of Surface Pro since the beginning. The edges are now slightly rounded, but without radically changing the look. The new rounded sides provide an improved in-hand feel, without the uncomfortable sharpness of the older generations.
The design is familiar though, with the same silver color on the chassis, along with a thin plastic RF window at the top, where the power and volume controls are. The left-side features the 3.5 mm headset jack, the right-side features all of the ports, and the bottom has the keyboard connector.
Speaking of the ports, they are exactly the same as the Surface Pro 4. There’s a USB-A port, a mini DisplayPort, and the Surface Connect for power and expansion. For those that need to add a bit more storage, the new Surface Pro continues to offer a micro SD slot too.
The lack of USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 in a high-end 2017 device is definitely a knock against the new Surface Pro. Microsoft’s reasoning is that USB-C is a port with too many options, and no two ports are guaranteed to be the same, which will lead to customer confusion. There’s also the argument that most of our devices still use full-sized USB, so Microsoft has stuck to its guns and just kept the USB-A port. They aren’t wrong about USB-C being confusing, though. Other than USB data, which is the one thing that all USB-C should support – although not always at the same speed – ports can support displays, higher power levels, Thunderbolt 3, and more. The counterpoint to this argument is that Surface Pro could offer a USB-C that features everything, although it would cost not only in terms of actual cost, but also space for extra chips, and in a small device like the Surface Pro, space is at a premium.
Their other argument is that, at least currently, almost anything that connects to USB-C needs an adapter or dongle of some sort, and that’s also true. But the counter to that is that the Surface Pro features a mini DisplayPort, which arguably needs a dongle or special cable to connect to almost anything anyway. A USB-C could offer the same DisplayPort signal, but way more.
There’s no argument that keeping the USB-A port is the right idea for today, but it would have been nice to see Microsoft adopt the new standard for the future, since a device with this kind of price has to have the expectation that it will still be around in several years, when USB-C will be more widespread.
The Kickstand
The one area that Microsoft both pioneered – and continued to evolve – is the kickstand. Looking back at the original Surface devices, the kickstand really the key to the entire device, allowing Surface to quickly and easily be used as both a tablet, and a laptop. The latest kickstand improves everything, again.
The biggest change is that the kickstand now opens even wider. The opening arc increases from 150° to 165°, which gives the Surface Pro an even better platform for using the Surface Pen, and accessories like the Surface Dial, which works right on the display, just like the Surface Studio.
The new kickstand seems to be even smoother than the Pro 4, and still offers just the right amount of friction to not allow the Pro to change angles when using touch on the display.
The kickstand is still one of the signature features of the Surface Pro, and it’s great to see it continue to improve.
Cooling Upgrades
The Surface Pro 4’s cooling was a big improvement over the Surface Pro 3, greatly reducing CPU thermal throttling, but also being quieter. The new Surface Pro develops on this again. When the Surface Pro 4 launched, the engineers let us know that they felt that the cooling system could dissipate the full 15-Watts of heat from the CPU passively, but they still included the fan on both the Core i5 and Core i7 models for the Surface Pro 4.
The new Surface Pro ditches the fan completely on the (15W) Core i5 model now, leaving just the (15W) Core i7 model with active cooling. Microsoft hasn't yet sampled this model of the Surface Pro, but hopefully we’ll be able to test it out soon to see what ramifications that changes has for performance. For noise though, it’s all good news, since it should be practically silent.
The Core i7 model, that we do have for review, is even quieter than the outgoing Pro 4, especially when at its default settings. So despite the active fan, the cooling system is much quieter. The cooling vents have been changed as well, with a much more subtle look to them on the new Pro.
The cooling changes have all been positive, and we’ll check out the performance of them later in the review.
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beggerking@yahoo.com - Monday, July 10, 2017 - link
Liar! how much is Crapple paying you?they never even made a sp3 with w7... in fact... my surface pro 1 came with windows 8...
Laxaa - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Brett, do you think it's worth upgrading from the SP4 for heavy usage (Adobe, SolidWorks) or should I get the Surface Book instead? I have the i5 w/8GB RAM and it's getting kind of limiting. At least when it comes to memory (SolidWorks keeps bugging me with low RAM warnings all the time)Or perhaps the XPS 15 would be a better choice?
Brett Howse - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Upgrading from SP4 to SP isn't something I would recommend to everyone, but you're in a situation where you needed a faster SP4 anyway. There's a big jump (as I'm sure you saw) from the i5 SP4 to this i7 model. Obviously the XPS 15 is much bigger, and has way more GPU, but you lose the portability.As much as this is an incremental upgrade over the 4, it's a lot of very nice small changes.
I can't recommend the Surface Book right now only because it's really in need of a refresh - especially the GPU - but I do like the Book very much if you need more performance and battery life. I'd hold off though and see after it gets an update.
Laxaa - Sunday, June 18, 2017 - link
I'll probably wait for a Book-refresh before I make a decision. The dGPU would probably be nice to have, and hopefully they can cram a Pascal-series GPU into the base.jrs77 - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
If it wasn't for the spysoftware named Windows 10 I'd probably would get an i5-based Surface Pro.yhselp - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
1.4 GHz on the CPU and 750 MHz on the GPU for sustained loads - expected, normal, but still somehow disappointing. You're essentially getting a very low-clocked dual-core CPU paired with about 580 GFLOPS of GPU with up to 100 GB/s memory bandwidth, if my amateur calculations are not entirely idiotic. Of course, said CPU having hyper-threading, AVX, L4 cache, and the latest Intel microarchitecture, certainly helps.I wonder what the m3-7Y30 in the entry model is capable of under a sustain load. I'd suspect about 550 MHz on the CPU and about 240 GFLOPS for the GPU.
BrokenCrayons - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Wikipedia has some information regarding the performance of the GPUs in question here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_and_Iris_Gr...
To summarize quickly, the 615 is rated at 345.6 - 403.2 GFLOPS and the 640 is capable of 729.6 - 806.4 GFLOPS, but that excludes variables specific to the Surface Pro in question.
Eliadbu - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Those absurd prices and base specs are so bad and the lack of ports. Also the fact that the keyboard and pen are purchased separately, it feels like Microsoft are going with their heads against the wall. Better wait for Eve-V value and the thinking of what the user needs are so ahead.zeeBomb - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
Awesome write-up!ZipSpeed - Friday, June 16, 2017 - link
I bought a Surface Pro 4 last year thinking it could replace my iPad Gen 4 and 2010 Macbook Air in one fell swoop. Needless to say, I couldn't get use to the size of the device in tablet mode, and it wasn't very steady on my lap when I used the kickstand & type cover. I decided to return it, and even now, I'm still using my old (and slow) iPad and MBA as I continue my search.