My new Surface Pro

As some of you already have seen on Twitter, last week during the Microsoft MVP Global Summit I got my Microsoft Surface Pro from the Microsoft Store in Bellevue WA. First I have to say the shopping experience in a Microsoft is just great, very nice people and cool products you can try like the Xbox Kinect and all kind of PCs. Believe it or not it’s just much more fun than a Apple Store where you can stare at the same 12 products for hours ;).

I don’t want to do a full review because there are already so many out there. But I would love to share some impressions and thoughts.

• Hardware quality – The build quality of the hardware is just amazing. As the Surface RT the Surface Pro is just high quality hardware.
• Amazing display – The screen of the Surface Pro is great with a good contrast and great colors like the Surface RT but with a Full HD resolution.
• Digital Ink – The Surface Pro comes with a digitizer pen which is perfect to take notes with OneNote.
• Performance – The Surface Pro is equipped with a Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM which brings really good performance.
• Features – Well many people already know about features like the kickstand or the touch and the typecover which is by the way pretty good to write on and I am used to use a ThinkPad which has an amazing keyboard. Another cool and useful feature is the build in USB charging port in the power adapter, which lets you charge another phone even if the Surface USB port is already used by another device.
• Size and weight – The Surface Pro is not much thicker and heavier than the Surface RT but if you compare them site by site it’s a big difference.
• Battery life – Same as the size the it’s not like a normal tablet. I got in my tests 4-5 hours of battery life.

For me the Surface Pro is a amazing device which brings a totally new experience. For me the Surface Pro is not really a tablet and it is not really an ultrabook it’s something different. This is not a device for everyone but for me it could be the perfect device. The Surface is build with amazing hardware, has a perfect multi touch screen, it is fast and has a great keyboard. Size and weight is for me not a problem because it is more a notebook replacement than a tablet and the Surface Pro is still smaller than a notebook. The battery life is not really a problem for me, in this case I prefer performance over battery life. Sure it would be great to have more battery life but most of my notebooks didn’t really get more than 6 hours and for a normal work day I need 8-10 hours and so I need a power adapter any way.

So basically I will test the Surface Pro as my notebook replacement for the next few weeks.