According to tech pundits, Microsoft telemetry reports that only about one third of Surface owners ever use their pens. That’s a real shame. But how is that number going to grow if new owners aren’t given a frictionless opportunity to experience just how far Windows 10’s pen integration has come?

Since the release of the Surface Book, Microsoft's hardware prices have been creeping steadily higher. Worried about falling tablet market share, the company's marketing team has apparently decided that the Surface Pro should be called the “ultimate laptop.” The Surface Pro is not a laptop. It's an expensive tablet without a bundled type cover, prices of which have now soared up to $160.

With “optional” keyboard and pen, the highest end 2017 Surface Pro will set you back just under $3000. And despite the premium price tag, a convertible laptop like the Yoga 720 15 will run circles around the Surface Pro’s dual core i7 for half the price.

Last quarter’s earnings report showed a significant dip in Surface revenue that was blamed on lack of new product in the sales channel. But I’m afraid without more competitive pricing and bundling, the Surface brand will continue to slide and soon be eclipsed by lookalike products from HP, Dell and Lenovo.

And that would be a terrible shame, because the new Surface Pro and Surface Pen are truly a killer combo: the absolute best Surface Pro for artists released to date.

I had hoped to test the i7 model with Iris Plus graphics, but I just couldn’t justify the price: $1599 for 8 GB/256 GB before pen and type cover. The entry level m3 model at $799 before add-ons was just too similar to the specs of my Surface Pro 4, so I opted instead for the $1299 i5 with 8/256 GB.

For its Kaby Lake generation of processors, Intel has rebranded the m5 and m7 processors as Core i5 and i7 respectively. I assumed that the Surface Pro’s fanless i5 models contained these 4.5W processors, so I didn’t expect to see much of a performance boost over my two-year old SP4.

Fortunately, I was dead wrong. The fanless i5 is a 15W Core i5-7300U that smokes every other U-series i5 that I’ve benchmarked.