Microsoft's shipping it's smaller cheaper surface go tablet today here are
the three best things about it it's hard to believe that Microsoft's on its ninth
generation of surface tablets and historically they've gone bigger better
faster this time around they've aimed for something a little bit more
mainstream this is a surface go a 10-inch tablet and the three things that
I like most about it may not seem especially revelatory only because
Microsoft's really changed its basic approach here the first thing I talk
about though is the price and this is what everyone's gonna be focusing upon
first the surface go is a tablet that costs $399 for four gigabytes of memory
and 64 gigabytes of storage there's also a more powerful option 8 gigabytes of
memory and 128 gigabytes of storage for 549 dollars there's a few adders as well
I'm gonna argue that you don't actually need this the Microsoft type cover which
cost an additional $99 and there is the traditional Microsoft Surface pen which
is also $99 plus this the new Microsoft Surface mobile Mouse which is actually
rather cheap at $39 now historically Microsoft's gone in the direction like I
said if bigger faster more powerful this is the Microsoft Surface pro 2017 inside
here is core i7 16 gigs of ram and 512 gigs of SSD storage but for all this
you're paying $1,800 so you can see while Microsoft chose this approach now
obviously this is a little bit smaller than that surface pro 2017 as well and
let's talk a little bit about the second thing that I like about it which is this
size with a surface pro its 2017 and other tablets of it sorry you couldn't
necessarily put them on an airplane train table I came here on Amtrak and
was able to work on a train Treville that folded out from the seat in front
of it quite comfortably no problems at all I would also say though is like it's
argued earlier that you don't even necessarily need the type cover that
goes along with it what Microsoft does and it's always done is the fact that it
allows you to go ahead and use this as a tablet but you can see
that now when you get into the 10 inch flora factor somebody with average-sized
hands like myself can kind of hold it more comfortably like here or you can
even hold it more like a traditionally traditional phone when you're typing
there's a keyboard that pops out a software keyboard that pops out from the
bottom or you can go ahead and use a pen as well the other thing you can do is
actually order Cortana to bring up a website like PC world comm or a Netflix
show or a Spotify playlist again you could do these with previous iterations
of the surface pro but it feels a little bit more comfortable and a little bit
more natural here I think the final thing that you that I want to talk about
though is the performance now historically again Microsoft's aimed
more at the high end of the core series core i5 core i7 there's been a couple of
core m3 parts as well but for this this actually has a penny Emmons chip inside
of it Pentium can go armed I can go in two
directions with an Atom processor inside of it or with the low end of a courtship
this is the low end of the cable a processor family and what's interesting
about this particular processor is that the numbers say it's rather slow our
benchmarks showed that from a performance standpoint it actually is in
the neighborhood of the Apple iPad Chromebook flip and the asou snowgo
which uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip inside of it
my experience though has been sort of contradictory to that this feels if not
fast then relatively responsive and quick and part of that has to do with
the fact that I think that with this Microsoft edge which is the default
browser feels quick and responsive I have other machines much more powerful
machines where it's not the case it feels choppy I'm not sure if it's an
optimized build or something that Microsoft's done here but it does feel
actually a lot quicker than in machines the other thing to talk about here
though is the fact that it uses Windows 10s and the default in Windows 10 s
makes edge the default browser now some people see Windows 10 S or Windows 10
and S Motors we're calling it now and they run away in fear just because
Microsoft's Windows 10 S doesn't allow you
anything else but the Microsoft App Store there's no Chrome browser
available no opera there's nothing that's not in the store and that leads
to a lack of flexibility and choice that turns some people off but Microsoft says
that what it gives you is optimized and streamlined for performance and it's
kind of hard to argue with that so price size and performance those are
the three best things that I like about the surface go that really paints this
issue in some broad strokes for the nuance for the details please see my
review on PC WorldCom