Partner is looking for a more portable device than her 15″ laptop, and likes the idea of replacing her old ipad at the same time. We were looking at 2 in 1’s but she’s not keen on there bulk, when we looked at them in person. I have a horror of under powered devices (ei anything that said Celeron/Atom, nowadays Pentium or ‘gold’) but the Surface “Pro” does seems actually more powerful than she needs or would just replace her current admittedly old laptop. The “Go” seems to have mediocre tech reviews (power wise) but a solid user base defending it. Just looking at the passamark power of the Go’s processor it equates to a 10 year old CPU.
Any user out there with an honest opinion? Cause yes even a 10 year old dual pentium will work nowadays but is painfully slow.. I know as I support sites who still use them

I have a Surface 3 with an M processor.
It gets bogged down pretty easily, kind of annoying if using for work.

I’d aim for an i3 at least

When I was looking at changing my laptop I looked at the Go as it had just come out. Nearly all the reviews I read or watched advised to go for the dearer Go as it uses an SSD whereas the cheaper version uses MMC for storage also the dear one has 8gb of RAM instead of 4gb.

In the end, I decided to keep my old laptop until it gives up.

Cheers Kuco, I’ve read that elsewhere, but always good to have advise like that mentioned. So had a blunder down to the other local Curries, to check they had a demo out & they do.. Both were far from the basic spec but were quite impressive. I’ve ‘seen’ Pro before and know they should be capable machine, just expensive after all the accessories. The ‘Go’ seemed quite interesting and maybe all she needs, though I’d really like to get my hands on one to test properly.. hmmm

I bought a surface pro 6 in the Black Friday sale, don’t use a laptop very often but thought I’d treat myself, only used it for spreadsheets and photograph editing. Switched it on last week and the graphics had gone to pot. Hopefully I get the replacement tomorrow but I’m a little concerned as I hate getting supposedly “repaired” exchange machines back!

that not exactly encouraging, for a device that you can do very little if any DIY repairs on..

pS: were edging towards the GO, if anyone has any experience of one?

that not exactly encouraging, for a device that you can do very little if any DIY repairs on..

Unfortunately it’s the nature of nearly all modern laptops, especially thin and light ones. I can’t decide if it’s a terrible thing or maybe a benefit – there are no loose connections, after all. I trust my iPad not to need fixing, maybe I should apply the same logic to my new MacBook Pro. Whatever, it’s half the size and weight of my old one so there is at least a pretty good trade off.

Our shop floor have some Surface Pro 5s from a couple of years ago. They’re i5s and are wildly underwhelming, a typcial form-over-function exercise.

We also have a Spectre 360 which again is apocalyptically slow at everything compared to a desktop

Disappointing really because I was all set to get one myself but no

They’re i5s and are wildly underwhelming, a typcial form-over-function exercise.

That is exactly what they were designed to be. They are bound to be slow compared to a desktop.

I have a Pro 4, it’s fine in normal use. Had some trouble editing a video on it the other day on battery power, the governor was a little Draconian and slowed it down a lot. But then there was a firmware update and it’s much better.

Happy with mine for general use. It’s not a desktop replacement but I’m sure that doesn’t need pointing out. I use mine for Lightroom editing plugged into a monitor, keyboard and mouse without issue.

Better half bought herself a Pro 4 ~2 years ago for portable web browsing, for which it’s more than capable… It almost certainly is put through its paces far more by me, while I try to put myself through my paces on Zwift; RoadGrandTours; Virtugo; OneLap (for which it is ok on lower graphics settings).

I keep meaning to try using it to watch an Amazon Video stream over the wi-fi, but keep forgetting!

The Pro 4’s biggest weakest for me is connection ports, it only has a single USB. However, if I hook up my M$/Razer Reclusa keyboard directly, I can then use the keyboard’s two USB ports to hook up a basic mouse and my ANT+ dongle with its 3m USB extension.

Unfortunately it’s the nature of nearly all modern laptops, especially thin and light ones.

No so with the Dell XPS range which have a proper service manual and are an actual doddle to strip down!

Recently bought a Pro5 in the ‘sales’ at Microsoft, with pen and keyboard. Got to say, I think it’s an impressive piece of kit.

The fact that it’s probably Zwiftable is interesting too, I hadn’t considered that. Although that means I also need to buy a Zwiftable turbo 🙁

I’ve got a top end Go with SSD

Mildly disappointed with it tbh. Form factor and portability is spot on but performance let’s it down.

Will be selling it soon and going back to Macbook Air

I’ve got a surface pro 4 with core i7 cpu, and a surface pro 3 with core i5 cpu.

They’re decent enough at being a laptop and a tablet, but they’re not cheap.

They will both run zwift perfectly well.

The ssd in them feels a little sluggish though.

I keep meaning to try using it to watch an Amazon Video stream over the wi-fi, but keep forgetting!

Pretty much anything will stream video these days, the video card and the network card do the work easily.

As an update, I got my replacement yesterday, the omens aren’t good when upon setting up, it won’t start the camera app to enable the Face ID… then sits there telling you when you do finally get it set up, that when you turn it on it can’t open the camera again and your password has changed! Not happy!

Typing this on a ‘Go’ – the 8GB RAM/128GB SSD version. If you want to simply browse the web and watch films/Netflix etc then its great. Don’t think about anything more demanding. I can just about run South Park: The Stick of Truth, but that’s as demanding as it can cope with. I run Open Office and that’s OK..ish. Battery life is disappointing though 4hrs tops when watching movies on the plane. Id avoid the 4GB/64GB version like the plague.

Hmm, I was really edging towards the Go, it has a size she likes over the pro but that sort of feedback is not promising. Could really do with the “Surface go 2” appearing with the option for an i3, as I say I don’t like under powered devices.