Reviews of Surface Pro Tablet Are coming in (incl. battery life reports)

Feb 7, 2013

Major magazines and computer web sites are starting to issue reviews of the Surface Pro tablet—the new Windows 8 tablet that Microsoft will release to the public in two days. (We’re tracking this tablet closely because it will be one of the first tablets that runs Outlook at full power. Given our Outlook book, and the large percent of our clients that are Outlook users, this is an important topic to me.)

So how did it do? The reviews are mixed. As anticipated, all of the reviewers  were unhappy with the battery life, which in the variety of tests ranged from 4 to 5 hours. But most give it a lot of credit for putting a full Windows PC into a tablet form factor.

Here are some links and some notes on what the reviewers said:

PC-World likes the improvements beyond the RT tablet, but seems to feel this new Pro tablet is lost in between a tablet and a laptop, fulfilling neither completely. Here’s that link:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2027171/review-surface-pro-is-the-worlds-best-windows-tablet-but-still-cant-close-the-deal.html

PC Magazine loves it, especially how it merges a tablet form factor with an Ultrabook:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415089,00.asp   And more here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415147,00.asp

CNET is reasonably happy with it, with minor reservations:

http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/microsoft-surface-with-windows/4505-3126_7-35332542-2.html

Here’s Time Magazine’s review, decidedly mixed:

http://techland.time.com/2013/02/05/review-microsoft-surface-pro-the-surface-thats-more-pc-than-tablet/

And Wired Magazine generally likes it:

http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/02/microsoft-surface-pro/

So that’s it for some of the reviews. We’ll be getting one here soon too, and I’ll let you know what we think.

Michael Linenberger