- Hey everybody, I'm back, and this is Processor,
and I have discovered the best Chrome tablet
that I have ever used.
It has amazing hardware.
It runs on an ARM processor,
so it has pretty good battery life.
It supports LTE, natively, on the device.
It actually works in tablet mode instead of the janky fiasco
that you usually get on Chrome OS.
If web apps don't cover all of your needs,
you can also use an,
you could also Windows Apps because, yeah,
the best Chromebook I've ever used
actually isn't a Chromebook,
and I'm not actually using Chrome.
It's this thing,
the Surface Pro X using the new Edge browser.
So here's a question.
Dieter, are you feeling okay?
(funky music)
Look, let's get this out of the way right at the top.
It's super important that you understand
that I am not telling you to buy this computer.
I am definitely not doing that because as specced,
this costs more than seventeen hundred dollars,
and even though there are some discounts on it right now,
whatever.
It's too expensive.
Plus, you know, I've already reviewed this computer
and I decided that the app problem is really serious.
It uses an ARM chip,
which means that there some app compatibility hassles.
So, why I am I looking at this again?
Well, there's now an official version of the Edge browser,
and more specifically, there's an official beta
of the Edge browser that uses ARM code directly
and of course it has the Chromium engine.
See, the ARM chip on this hardware
means that a lot of Windows apps run in emulation,
which kind of kills the battery life
and it slows down the apps,
and some apps don't even work at all, like Lightroom.
But, now there's a good Chromium-based web browser
that runs native ARM code,
and so what if I just used this thing to run web apps,
and what if instead of struggling with all of the hassles
that come from all that Windows emulation stuff,
I just treated this thing like a Chromebook
and only ran Windows apps when I really needed them?
Well, I'll tell you what if.
I did it and I think I learned some stuff along the way.
So the main thing is that this thing runs Chrome,
I mean, sorry, it runs the Edge beta browser
really, really well.
I regularly have 20 plus tabs open,
and it's really not breaking a sweat.
I especially love how easy the Edge browser makes it
to create apps out of webpages.
If you have a PWA like Twitter,
there's just a little button right in the URL bar
that you can click,
and other pages you wanna make an app,
there's no weird thing to find.
There's literally an option in the menu
that says, make this an app,
and you just click it and bang,
it shows up in your taskbar.
Also, the Edge browser supports Chrome extensions,
so all of the stuff that I'm used to using on Chrome
works before,
and you can grab those Chrome extensions
directly from the Chrome store.
So I went and I grabbed this extension called Chrometana,
which automatically redirects all Bing searches
to Google searches,
which means that you can actually use the Windows key
to search Google without having to deal
with installing a bunch of extra crap
on your Windows computer like you did before.
Last and maybe most importantly,
because this Edge beta is running on ARM code,
it just natively works, it feels faster
and I think I'm getting way better battery life.
Like, on the average, it was, like, two hours more
than I was before,
which is about where I expected battery life
for this computer to be in the first place.
Okay, so how does all that compare to a Chromebook?
In fact, let's compare it to
a really high end Chromebook, like my Pixelbook here.
Well, instead of the kinda janky Android apps
that you use in a pinch,
you just get really good Windows apps.
Like the Spotify app here actually works,
and like the play pause/button actually works.
It unlocks with my face,
so I don't have to punch in a passcode
or use a fingerprint sensor or whatever.
And it doesn't suck as a tablet.
Microsoft is really good at managing Windows.
You can put stuff in split screen,
you can move stuff around.
When you go to the overview screen,
everything flies around exactly where you expect it to be.
It also, unlike the upcoming Galaxy Chromebook,
has a three by two screen.
Stylus input is way better
'cause Microsoft has been doing stylus input for way longer
than Chrome OS has.
And, it also has better privacy defaults than Chrome does.
It's got a pretty good reader mode
that hasn't come to Chrome yet,
and Windows also has this Your Phone app,
which means that this computer works better
with Android phones than a Chrome OS computer does.
If there's one major downside to using
a Windows computer basically as a Chrome OS computer,
it's that getting setup on a Windows computer
still takes forever.
And you gotta wait for Chrometana to tell you
that she's setting things up, and blah blah blah blah blah,
whereas on a Chrome OS computer,
you basically can get logged in and doing your stuff
within a couple of minutes.
Okay, so this is a lot of praise for this computer
as a Chromebook,
so once again, I really feel like I need to emphasize
that you should not buy this computer.
It is too expensive and too limited for what it does.
But, I do think we can learn from this experience
of using it as a Chromebook, together.
Microsoft is no longer trying to take over the world
with Windows anymore.
They're making their software for Android
and they're making the Edge browser for Mac, and whatever.
Basically, Windows now is a platform
that wants to run as many apps,
as many kind of apps, as it possibly can,
and the benefit for Microsoft is that
while you're doing that it might convince you
to sign up for some Microsoft stuff,
like OneDrive or whatever.
So, you know, touchscreen apps?
Cool.
Web apps?
You bet.
Legacy Windows apps?
Sure, they'll run on ARM.
It might be a little bit messy sometimes,
but it basically works.
And if ARM processors really do start taking over
Windows laptops and Windows tablets,
it could show that there is a middle ground
between the slow, frustrating ARM Windows computers
that we've tried before,
and the very fast, very elegant
but very, very locked down iPad Pro.
This is not that.
Not yet.
I mean, it still doesn't run Lightroom.
But it proves that it's possible
and that honestly, it might not be as hard as we thought.
Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching.
Now, there is one Chromebook that I'm really interested in
coming up.
It's the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook,
and even though it doesn't have a three by two screen,
which is the best aspect ratio, yes it is,
it's worth checking out.
We've got a hands on of it.