- The Surface Duo, a dual screen review
by me, Joanna Stern.
Yep, this is the $1,399 Surface Duo.
Clearly, it's not your average Android tablet.
It's got not one, but two 5.6 inch screens
and a single 11 megapixel camera,
which I'm using to record all these little selfie videos.
So for this review,
I figured the best thing I could do was take
your video screen and split it right in half
to show you what the duo does best.
Oh, and yeah, you'll see random bugs just happen on here.
Opening and closing helps.
But before I explain the good and bad of having two screens,
let's take a look at this crazy thing.
The Duo has four positions or as Microsoft calls them...
- This is a book, posture, posture, posture.
Do you remember this posture?
I do.
- There's book mode, where the two
pop tart size screens give you a lot of real estate
and how I ended up using this thing most of the time.
There's single screen mode where you flip one screen back.
There's laptop mode, though typing like this is
just asking for carpal tunnel
and tent mode, which is great for watching videos.
I really like the hardware.
It's compact like a paperback or a moleskin notebook,
although many of us wouldn't really want
to put these in our pockets.
I'm calling it, there's never been a better time
for a good old fanny pack.
Anyway, great hardware.
And for $1,400, it should be,
but software, not so much.
Over the past two weeks of testing,
I encountered loads of performance issues and bugs.
No, not the crickets you hear outside my garage
where we've been shooting this,
the ones that shouldn't exist on a product this expensive.
A few days ago,
Microsoft released a software update that fixed some of the
issues, but certainly not all,
especially around the slow and laggy performance.
The company says it will continue to deliver monthly updates
to bring further refinements to the Surface Duo.
But when the software cooperated,
here's where two screens were very useful.
Scenario one, one app across two screens.
On the left screen here is my Gmail inbox,
on the right, whatever new email I'm composing.
It's been great whenever I needed to see the original email
I was responding to.
On the left here is my list of notes in One Note
and on the right a blank page for taking notes.
But you need to buy the surface pen separately.
PowerPoint, Google Calendar
and other apps also have this great two screen view.
Many of Microsoft and Google's own apps have been optimized
though oddly, not Skype,
which seems like a no brainer for this.
The companies are working with other app developers as well.
Scenario two, an app on each screen
Email on the left, web browser on the right,
calendar on the left, email on the right,
YouTube on the left, One Note on the right,
you get the point.
It's great to be able to see two apps at the same time
as if you were working on a computer with two monitors.
It's very easy to open one app on one screen and then
another on the other screen.
Scenario three, reading on both screens.
Yep, this one's pretty self explanatory and sweet.
It's like a real book except you know,
it runs out of battery after a day.
So if Microsoft fixed all the software bugs tomorrow,
this would be a dream device?
Not quite.
There are just as many scenarios,
if not more, where it doesn't make sense to have two screens
and definitely not two screens that fold
on top of each other.
Scenario, one, phone calls.
I don't think I really need to explain this any further.
If you want to test this out for yourself,
try using one of these things as a phone.
Microsoft does sell these $200 surface earbuds,
which sounds pretty good
but look like drink coasters in your ears.
Scenario two, one handed stuff.
This is awkward.
This is also awkward,
even though you can adjust the keyboard
to be in the bottom corner.
Scenario three, quick access to the phone.
You know what's not convenient every time
you want to look at your phone?
This.
And especially not when you want to take a quick photo.
Sure, you can keep the screens open like this, but again,
see scenario number two.
Oh yeah, the camera's not very good either.
So should you buy the Surface Duo?
Definitely not.
But that was not the point of this review.
The point of this review was to show you how Microsoft
and Google are thinking differently about the future
of the phone or tablet or whatever you call this thing.
Samsung's new Galaxy Fold 2 hints at a similar type of
future, where our devices transform when we need them
to do certain things.
For a while, I thought this whole thing was a gimmick
and unnecessary but Microsoft's first entry
has made me think differently about it all.
Next time, just make sure the software works.
Oh, and include a fanny pack.