I'm MarK Brown for EditorsKeys.com and
in this video I want to give you my
real-life experience for the Surface Go.
I just don't want to read off a tech
specs sheet and kind of leave it there.
So many people have asked who is the
Surface Go aimed at, and I want to give
you my kind of personal use case and I
actually own a MacBook Pro as my main
device but as I run a business I'm often
traveling a lot so I do like to have a
second device as kind of like a travel
device and at the moment I use an iPad
Air 2 as it's lightweight I can do some
emails on it and some productivity work
but I say 'some productivity' work
because I have to find when I'm away
with the iPad Air or the iPad Pro that I
owned as well I'll often be asked to
edit a PSD file from Photoshop or deal
with a big excel sheet or I'll kind of need
to print a PDF off some website
it doesn't seem to format properly and
it often leaves me feeling really
frustrated I just can't get that that
last mile done that final piece of work
done. So while the iPad Air has been a
kind of good travel device I need
something that's much more productive
and that's why I was really excited
about the Surface Go. It's a really
lightweight device it's fairly low cost
and it can run all of the applications
that I use for my business and so just
to be clear I've purchased this out of
my own cash, Microsoft did not send a
send this to us for review so I want to
see exactly how well this stands up
against the iPad and all the other
competition. We've gone for the 128GB
model with the Intel Pentium
Gold processor and 8GB RAM at
a cost of £509. You can purchase
the 64GB model with 4GB of RAM
for £379. The Surface Go is the
lightest Surface device Microsoft has
ever made and at just 522g it's
closer to being the ideal tablet hybrid
that Microsoft originally dreamt of
compared to the slightly heavier Surface
Pro devices of the past. Microsoft claims
up to nine hours of battery life if you
leave Windows 10S enabled. Now for those
of you that are unaware
10S is the new version of Windows
which is locked down to the Windows
Store at first I thought this option was
a little crazy but after checking out
the store and seeing you can get Office 365
Spotify, Netflix, Instagram and some
other apps I think it could be a good
option for students and parents as it's
much harder to mess up the device or
slow it down. I mean don't get me wrong
the Windows Store is very lacking in
apps but I'm a 'Pro' so I had to turn it
off just to install Adobe Creative Cloud
and Chrome. You can also use a Surface
Pen on the device but as I'm not much of
an artist I opted out of purchasing that.
It has an 8MP rear facing camera
plus an amazing 5MP front facing
camera. Normally in small laptops you get
quite crappy front facing cameras, hell
the camera in my £3000 MacBook
Pro is worse! Check out these two shots...
This is a test with the Surface Go
camera it looks pretty impressive for a
built in webcam it's actually not that
bad qualituy but now lets switch over to
the MacBook Pro so this is a test shot
with the £3000 MacBook Pro and so
this is the latest and greatest MacBook
Pro - what do you think of the two
different shots we've got there? The
Surface Go or the MacBook Pro and bare
in mind the price is hugely different. Ok
so finally this is a test of the rear
camera of the Surface Go this is the 8MP
camera. How does this compare
to the front-facing camera of the
Surface Go and the MacBook Pro, let us
know what you think in the comments
below
the device features a USB-C port a MicroSD
card slot and a Surface connector. I
like that the Surface team has left the
MicroSD card slot in and it means you
can put any size SD card in to expand
your storage which is pretty cool. The
device is powered with the surface
connector and can also be charged with
that USB-C port. Now let's talk about the
type cover unfortunately this doesn't
come with the device and like the iPad
Pros keyboard this will need to be
purchased separately it costs £124
but there is a slightly cheaper model at
£99 available too. I must say as
someone who makes keyboards for a living
this is quite a fantastic little
keyboard. The typing experience is
actually really good, the keyboard is a
little smaller but they've done a great
job at spacing
the keys and it's actually pretty great
to use. The touchpad is also surprisingly
large as well.
so what are my final thoughts? What do I think about this
device. Well before it came I thought you
know what it may be a little bit too
small to use, the keyboard may be too
cramped and the screen may not be big
enough to do any photo editing for me...
but you know what I've been actually
pleasantly surprised. It's so lightweight
which makes it a joy to use the
keyboard is actually really nice it's
really well spaced even though it is
quite small but I actually prefer that
the typing experience to my MacBook Pro
because the Pros travel is so small this
actually has a nice amount of key travel
to it. Don't get me wrong, you know if
you're a photo editor or video editor
this is not going to be your main
computer okay, it's not what it's built
for. If you're student a business
person, or an entrepreneur that travels a
lot and you need a second device this
could be really worth considering I'm
definitely going to keep this and get
rid of my iPad because as I say, for me
just going the extra mile and then
needing that last bit of productivity
this does it for me. Battery life has
been overall pretty good I've been
getting about 6-7 hours battery
life on it
and bear in mind only get four to five
on my 2016 Touchbar MacBook Pro so that's pretty
good it could be better but you know you
can charge it quite fast with the
Surface connector or the USB C port
which is good and I think yeah as I say
I think I'm going to keep this device
what do you think of it how would you
use a surface go and are there any tests
or anything you'd like to see how to run
on this little surface go please let us
know in the comments below I hope you've
enjoyed this review and don't forget to
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