Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Review: Nearly perfect

Should you buy a laptop or a tablet? That question still remains to be answered. Apple in particular is betting that tablets (iPad Pro) is the solution for the future. But in the Windows camp, Microsoft and it's partners are going multiple ways. The most popular and versatile option being the 2-in-1 form factor which is able to be both a tablet and a regular laptop. Microsoft's Surface Pro lineup has come a long way. Being refined each and every part of the way, the Surface Pro 4 is nearly a perfect machine for being a tablet and also a laptop for day to day use.

In terms of the hardware, Microsoft has got it spot on but the software in the other hand is not as perfect as the Surface Pro 3 when it first came out to the market. I will be taking this review from a basis of a computer rather than a tablet, because honestly, I rarely used it as a tablet because Windows 10 just isn't made for touch.

My experience in buying the Surface Pro 4 in Malaysia — "I waited for a few days and out of the blue, an email from Lazada came up saying that my order has been cancelled and that a refund towards my payment will be made in the next two days. This made me very even furious compared to what I was facing when they told me to wait for two weeks" Continue reading.

Before jumping into the nitty gritty stuff, I have to talk about buying this Surface Pro 4 itself. It's no secret that Microsoft was having some serious yield issues in the start mainly due to Intel not having enough Skylake processors for production. But that was Microsoft's side of the problem, my side of the problem has to do with a combination of hardware and logistical issues.

Long story short, the unit that I am using right now is the second Surface Pro 4 model because the first one I got had a dead left speaker and the online store I ordered mine took 3 weeks to tell me they were out of stock. You can read more about that story here.

My first week with the Microsoft Surface Pro 4

Not a review

Third times' the charm and the Surface Pro 3 announced last year was probably the best representation of a tablet which can replace a laptop. But the question is, how do you succeed a pretty solid device. Well, Microsoft's new Surface Pro 4 tablet builds upon the existing form factor of the outgoing Surface Pro 3 and improves on it with some new hardware configurations all while boasting a thinner and lighter design. The star of the show is the new 12.3" PixelSense display which has 5 million pixels and also Intel's new Skylake CPUs which are more efficient compared to the Haswell processors on the Surface Pro 3.

New Surface and Lumia, thoughts on the Microsoft event — "While Apple happily called Microsoft the productivity masters during their iPad Pro announcement, Microsoft was not shy to compare Apple's products with their new hybrid tablet offerings. Panos Panay did not directly compare the new Surface devices to Apple's iPad Pro but instead did a more subjective comparison between similar products." Continue reading.

But despite the somewhat incremental update, there has been a fair share of the problems that Microsoft is facing with the Surface Pro 4 (and Surface Book). The Surface Pro 4 has been plagued with some hardware defects and software issues from screen bleeding to speaker pops and issues with battery life, this is by no means a small problem since there has been a lot of complaints and Microsoft even issued an official note to acknowledge the problems being faced by early adopters. Even I had problems buying the Surface Pro 4 and had to outright replace the first unit that I received due to a hardware defect.

So, yeah I bought the Surface Pro 4 last week and I have been using it to do some daily tasks for the past week. After an adventurous week of dealing with some software and hardware issues of the Surface Pro 4, here's what I think about the device.

New Surface and Lumia, thoughts on the Microsoft event

The WOW factor

It is like the domino effect you know, one comes after the other and Microsoft just concluded the final chunk of hardware offerings for the year. This special October event comes after Google's keynote last week and Apple's iPhone event from several weeks back. These keynotes from tech's biggest giants has shown that the hardware/device strategy is now preceding the importance of software. Sure, software is still an important part of the experience but today, software offerings from Apple, Google and Microsoft are becoming increasingly similar and the hardware is where these tech giants can differentiate themselves from the crowd.

The thing about the Microsoft event today was that it was quite a show because it’s a long time sinc I have tuned into a keynote live about a un-leaked product. I'm talking about the pair of new Surface laptops Microsoft just announced, the Lumia 950 family and also the Microsoft Band 2 has been extensively leaked over the course of the year making it not that surprising and Microsoft didn't spend too much time talking about it. There were reports regarding the Surface tablets but those were just specifications and a sly description of the products themselves. In reality, the actual hardware part was pretty impressive.