Ever wish you could use your Surface Pro or other Windows tablet as a pen display for a desktop PC?

Wacom’s Companion PCs offer a “Cintiq” mode but require a wired connection. The company’s upcoming MobileStudio Pro will require the use of an external device called the Wacom Link.

Over on the iPad Pro, you must purchase an app called Astro Pad to enable a USB connection to a Mac.

But on Windows 10 PCs, the capability known as “pen remoting” is built into the operating system and works over a Wi-Fi connection.

Since Windows tablets run full desktop software, the utility of pen remoting is limited. After all, why bother to run Photoshop over a network when you can run it directly on your tablet? And while you can take advantage of the desktop system’s resources, such as RAM, CPU and storage, my testing indicates that GPU features are limited to what’s available on your tablet.

Nevertheless, I envision using pen remoting when a specific application resides only on a desktop or as a way to continue a project that was started in the office while you sit in the living room or den. Or perhaps you can use the feature to amaze your incredulous friends and family.

Performance is dependent on a lot of factors such as the speed of the host machine, the quality of the network connection, etc. but I was pleasantly surprised by the experience using my m3 Surface Pro 4 to remote in to an i7 Dell XPS 8700 and an i5 Surface Pro 3.