- Hey, what's going on guys?
This is the Surface Pro X.
And I really want to like it,
but I don't.
At least for right now.
Now I've been really intrigued about this product
since I saw it a few weeks ago at the launch event
because it is a totally new Surface.
It has thinner bezels,
it has a slimmer form factor.
The keyboard actually has this really neat party trick
where it hides the pen and charges it at the same time,
which is a great improvement over the previous Surfaces.
But it also, again, has stuff that the Surface is known for,
so the really cool hinge.
And kickstand that's on the back.
You can play around with all different kinds of modes,
especially useful for, you know, say when you're drawing.
Again, things that Surface is known for.
But perhaps the biggest change of them all
is under the hood.
But first, a little bit of perspective.
So this is the Surface Pro 7
and I've been using it as my daily driver
over the past couple of weeks over my 13 inch MacBook Pro
with touch bar.
And that's because I don't really edit video much anymore.
I don't need Final Cut Pro.
All I do is web browse, I check email,
and most importantly I've been making our channel thumbnails
using Photoshop.
And honestly the killer feature of it all is the pen.
It just way more intuitive to use with Photoshop.
It's probably the reason why I've stuck with this Surface
for the past couple of weeks.
But of course using Photoshop
and the pen aren't really exclusive
to this generation of Surface.
But what is, is the fact that this year,
there's a USB-C port,
which is obviously great for hooking up peripherals
or even charging.
And on the topic of charging,
this thing will actually top off
at up to 80% within an hour which is great
because the battery life isn't particularly special.
In fact it's a little bit worse
than last year's Surface Pro 6.
And that's one of the biggest things
that Microsoft hopes to improve on with the Surface Pro X.
And it plays into that big change
that I was talking about earlier.
So inside this is the Microsoft SQ1,
which is an ARM-based processor
that they co-developed with Qualcomm,
that's based on their 8cx system on a chip.
I mean this stuff is all really cool
because we already see the benefits of ARM hardware
in stuff like smartphones and tablets.
Things like peak power efficiency, better battery life,
balancing all of that with really good performance.
And all that on top of the fact
that it's running full Windows,
at least with some caveats.
Now to be clear, this isn't the first time
that Microsoft has dabbled with ARM and PCs.
The first two generations of the Surface
were running Tegra hardware,
which is essentially the grandfather
of what's in the Nintendo Switch.
And a few years ago we took a look at this thing,
which has a Snapdragon 835 in it.
It kinda almost looks like a Surface.
And it was running full Windows,
but the performance wasn't really that great.
But nowadays, ARM hardware is really really good.
And the case in point of that is the iPad Pro.
And for all of the advantages that that device has,
it's not hard to see why Microsoft
would want to take advantage of that.
Truth be told, app compatibility is what's
on a lot of people's minds
when it comes to the Surface Pro X.
Unlike it's AMD and Intel counterparts,
you can't exactly run every single Windows app,
so there is a compatibility mode for 32-bit apps
and you can also find ARM compatible apps,
but for the latter,
those are a little few and far in between.
A lot of people might not even notice though,
I mean, running 32-bit Chrome,
not exactly that bad.
You, I personally didn't really notice much of a difference.
For apps like Photoshop,
I've actually had to go back I think a year
in terms of versions to find one that was compatible
with this.
And there's just straight up no optimization.
I mean it's kinda obvious it wasn't meant
for a device like this,
but I think that kinda speaks to where this is at right now.
It's definitely not perfect.
Adobe said, at the Microsoft press conference,
that they're fully committed to supporting Windows
on ARM.
And we have to kinda take their word for it.
There's no launch dates or anything like that.
They're just working on it.
And that's kinda the story with a lot of apps in general.
There's just not a lot of support out there,
but where the potential lies is in the future.
Microsoft of course wants many people to buy the Pro X
as much as possible,
so that there can be more incentive
for app devs to support Windows on ARM.
So as an early adopter,
you have to be willing to accept the compromises
that Windows on the Pro X has today,
in hopes that it will get better at some point
in the future.
Which is also understandably a tough sell,
even considering that there are more
Snapdragon ARM-based laptops coming in the next few months.
It's not to say that Windows on ARM
and the Surface Pro X are unusable.
In fact I think if you can, you know,
live inside of a web browser,
you know say you use Google Docs, Google Sheets,
if you're just web browsing,
if you're doing pretty much all that I was doing
sans Photoshop.
You know for lightweight tasks,
this thing is really usable,
and the benefits again of ARM are there to help that.
Take away the romantic aspects of the Pro X's future
and what you get is a really nice and well-designed product.
It feels really nice in hand,
the fit and finish is great.
I love the fact that Microsoft embraced the future,
and finally put two USB-C ports on it.
I don't love how it doesn't have a headphone jack on it,
but the engineers did say, to shrink the bezels,
they needed to give that up,
which I'll take their word for it
because I am definitely 100% not an engineer.
And on top of all of that,
they've thought this through and through.
You can actually swap out the SSD through a door on the back
that's really easy to access.
As well as put in a little SIM card over there.
Again, this design is really well thought out,
but if you start looking at the price of it,
it's not really that appealing.
So as configured with 16 gigs of RAM,
and 256 gigs of storage,
this unit costs $1,500.
And that does not include this signature keyboard cover,
and the pen as well.
Add on these two things,
you're looking at a package that costs little less
than $1,800.
Which I guess on paper is kinda similar to a...
Comparably spec-ed and packaged iPad Pro,
but you're getting way more with the iPad Pro
than you're getting with this,
at least in my opinion.
- [Austin] Ooh hot take!
- But it's kinda true.
Now that might seem a little harsh
but I think the better value of the Pro X
comes with the base model,
which comes with 8 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage
for $1,000.
Now all of the models of the Pro X come with LTE,
so on paper at least, this spec for spec is priced up better
than the 12.9 inch iPad Pro.
As I said earlier, I really want to love the Surface Pro X,
but the reality of it is that I don't.
I'm gonna be sticking with the Surface Pro 7
because it has the app compatibility
and the performance that I need right now.
And maybe for some people,
the Pro X will be good.
If you do lightweight tasks,
if you're willing to buy into this future and take a gamble,
maybe it could pay off.
But for me personally,
at least for right now, I don't think it's worth it.