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Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Review

Who has a tablet? That’s right, pretty much everybody. Now, who has a tablet that can run full Photoshop? Suddenly the show of hands goes way down, limited pretty much to only non-ARM-powered Windows slates.

And finally, who has a tablet that can run full Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, multiple web browsers and more all at the same time without slowing to a crawl. Then you’re down to just Intel Core-powered tablets like the Surface Pro 2.

See also: The Problem With Windows 8

The Surface Pro 2 is Microsoft’s second-generation flagship for the Windows 8 (now 8.1) platform. It’s a powerful PC inside a tablet form factor, meant to fulfill a power user’s computing and consumption needs — all of them.

It’s a great idea, and not just in theory. I used the original Surface Pro as my primary computing device for weeks when I researched my review earlier this year. The Surface Pro and its successor have the power to drive an entire workstation, complete with external monitor, hard drives, speakers and oodles of USB gear. Then, when it’s time to kick back, the tablet is ready to detach and run a little Netflix whenever you are.

Does the Surface Pro 2, which goes on sale Tuesday for the starting price of $899, take the experience further? In a sense, yes, but not really because of the hardware. The Surface Pro 2 ships with Windows 8.1, which includes a slew of important upgrades that augment the existing tools. But more than that, the world has fully embraced the cloud — one of the pillars of Windows 8. The Surface Pro was already a great piece of hardware, but now it has more software rooting for it.

More of the Same

Microsoft says the Surface Pro was one of the bestsellers in its category, whatever that is. It’s a tablet, a PC and probably technically an UItrabook, too. After you used one for a few minutes, however, there was no confusion about what you held in your hand: a great example of what mobile computing could be — powerful enough to get things done, but still light enough to toss in your bag.

With the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft isn’t messing with success. The design is nearly identical to the original: Weight and dimensions are exactly the same, and all the ports are in the same places. If Microsoft hadn’t switched out the Windows 8 logo on the back for one that simply says “Surface,” you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart without booting up and checking the Control Panel.

It’s actually too bad that Microsoft didn’t try to shave at least a little of the weight with a redesign. At 2 pounds, the Surface Pro 2 is still pretty beefy as tablets go. In fact, it’s starting to seem beefy as Ultrabooks go — the Sony Vaio Pro 11 is actually about an ounce lighter, and that machine has a real keyboard. Surface chief Panos Panay called the Surface Pro 2 a “beast” at its unveiling; he was referring to its processing power, but it’s an apt description for the physical footprint, too.

Instead of making the tablet sleeker, Microsoft focused on revamping the insides. The Surface Pro 2 packs an Intel fourth-generation “Haswell” processor, meaning it’s capable of greater feats of computing while using much less power than last year’s model. The latter point matters most to the Pro, since battery life in the original was pathetic — about four hours, and I clocked considerably less than that.

I’m happy to report the Pro delivers on its promise of greater battery life. Microsoft’s promise of 75% more juice translates into about 7 hours total, which I found to be about accurate. If you’re compiling video footage with the brightness turned all the way up while watching some YouTube at full HD — and you can — you’ll probably burn through the battery much faster, but at least now we’re talking hours, not minutes.

The display on the Surface Pro 2 is almost exactly the same as the one Pro 1: Both are 10.6-inch displays with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. Microsoft says it improved the color accuracy of the new tablet, but I couldn’t discern any difference in side-by-side comparisons with a few photos. But for pro illustrators, every little bit helps, I guess.

Extras

In addition to loaning Mashable an entry-level review unit (4GB of RAM, 64GB storage), Microsoft also sent along a couple of optional accessories. The Arc Mouse Surface Edition ($69.99) is a slate-gray slab that bends cleverly to become a curved Bluetooth mouse with excellent response and accuracy. However, I found its buttons to require a little more pressure to click than I’d prefer.

However, the new Type Cover -– the variant of the infamous keyboard Touch Cover with actual keys — is a superb upgrade. Type Cover 2 ($129.99) works just as well as the first version (apart from the poor choice to remove clickable buttons from the mouse button), but this one’s backlit, a very handy feature when typing in a dark room — say, when you’ve got the lights down to watch TV and you’re kicking back with Surface Pro 2 for a little second-screen action.

Which, by the way, Surface Pro 2 is very good at. Not necessarily the second-screen stuff (although it’s fine for that too), but the kicking-back stuff. The kickstand’s new lower position is tailor-made for lying around with the Surface with your feet up. There’s a reason that kickstand extends the entire width of the device, and it’s so you can use it as an actual laptop. It also looks like Microsoft cleared up any issues with the Type Cover not responding so well when in a lap — in all my usage, it didn’t miss a keystroke.

And then there’s the digitizing pen that comes with every Surface Pro and Pro 2. If pens (digital or otherwise) are part of your workflow, then you’ll find the pen and its 1,024 points of pressure essential. Anyone else will see it as a seldom-used perk.

While I was disappointed to see over half the Surface Pro 2’s 64GB of storage eaten up after I’d installed a few apps, I actually don’t see it as that big a weakness now that Microsoft is offering 200GB of free SkyDrive storage with every Surface purchase. SkyDrive works much more seamlessly in Windows 8.1, I found, with fast access to files and virtually no lag even when saving directly to the cloud. Who needs local storage? When deciding which model to get, I recommend saving a little money and get fewer gigabytes than you planned.

The Pro 2 Experience

The Surface Pro 2 runs Windows 8.1. As it should: For all the grief Microsoft has taken over its touch-first version of Windows, this is, at heart, a PC. You don’t buy a machine like the Pro 2 to spend all your time in the Travel app. You get it to run hardcore “computing” apps like Photoshop. Surface Pro 2 users will be spending most of their time in the desktop.

It’s too bad, then, that most of the upgrades to Windows 8.1 are about the modern UI. The new live tile sizes will tickle the power-user bones in Pro 2 buyers, but they won’t satisfy them. And a Health & Fitness app? Spare me.

However, improved multi-monitor support is a big deal. The Surface Pro 2 is very intelligent about detecting what kind of display you’re connecting to and scaling both the Desktop and the modern UI to the ideal size, depending on whether you’re mirroring displays or extending them. Beyond that, you can also manually change things to your liking. And it looks like app support is much better: In Windows 8, Google Chrome looked weirdly fuzzy on an external monitor, and in Windows 8.1 it’s razor-sharp.

I especially liked the subtle touches — like when the Charms menu shifts a bit up or down on my monitor depending on whether I pushed my mouse into the top or bottom corner.

However, I didn't like the actual touches in the Desktop on the Surface Pro 2 — that is, the way it responded to finger taps. In some apps, like Chrome, the tablet didn't even get the general area where I was touching right, instead assuming I was tapping about an inch higher than where my fingertip was. And the onscreen keyboard never automatically popped up when I tapped a text field — it looks like Microsoft has just given up with using touch in the Desktop environment with Windows 8.1.

The new software has other bugs, such as when I tried to change the scrolling direction of the trackpad on my Type Cover. After typing “direction” from the Start screen, the setting “Reverse the touchpad’s scrolling direction” came up. This looked like exactly what I was looking for, except when I clicked it, nothing of the sort came up. A search for the setting in the Control Panel proved fruitless.

It’s a quibble, but it’s an annoying one. The Surface Pro 2 is supposed to combine the power of a serious PC with the convenience of a tablet. But bugs like these undermine the latter persona. If changing a basic feature necessitates a visit to the Control Panel, I’ll probably just end up grabbing an iPad mini when it comes time to fire up Hulu Plus.

At least with the deeper app catalog for modern UI apps, the tablet side of Windows is stronger than ever. The new Facebook app, for one, works very well, although I prefer to run it in portrait mode since I find the default menus off to the sides a little “chromey” for my taste.

A Higher Surface

I’ve been writing this review of the Surface Pro 2 on the Surface Pro 2 in Word, while running Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Xbox Music, Outlook, Excel, Google Chrome, both versions of Internet Explorer (all with multiple tabs) and a bunch of modern UI apps for good measure. I’m also saving this Word file directly to SkyDrive — something that would often give me serious lag in Windows 8, but it's working like a dream in Windows 8.1 on the Surface Pro 2.

That’s one of the more exciting things about this machine and its Windows 8.1 software — it’s a powerful PC that’s fully cloud-connected in a cloud-powered world. Since Windows 8 debuted, other services (such as Adobe Creative Cloud) have followed Microsoft into cloud services, and the Surface Pro 2 is a machine that isn’t just fully equipped to handle this world — it’s designed for it.

So although I’m still skeptical whether Microsoft’s tablet experience has any value over competitors (and it's worthless in the Desktop), the Surface Pro 2 succeeds because that part is just gravy anyway. This is a tablet with the heart of a PC and its brain in the cloud. For a serious workhorse machine that you can really take anywhere, it's hard to beat.

Images: Mashable, Bianca Consunji