For the original German review, see here.

We took a closer look at Microsoft’s first tablet around a year ago. The Surface RT was a good tablet, but the SoC (System-on-a-Chip) was not really up-to-date and the display only featured HD resolution (1366x768 pixels). The resolution did not really suit Microsoft's claim for a premium tablet, especially with the Apple iPad as its main rival. A very limited App Store and the operating system were other drawbacks. In the meantime, Microsoft is the only manufacturer (besides Nokia) that uses its own operating system for ARM processors and seems to have found some issues with its marketing strategies. According to Microsoft, the addition of ‘RT’ confused many potential buyers; the successor is therefore only called Surface. We already liked the good build quality and the optional Touch Cover, which is not only a protective display cover for the device, but also an additional keyboard and a touchpad.

Microsoft did not change the concept, and the device is definitely a Surface once again. The internal components however are completely new. The tablet is now powered by an Nvidia Tegra 4 SoC (T40) and the display resolution was bumped up to 1920x1080 pixels (Full HD). This is still inferior to the Retina iPads (2048x1536 pixels), but it is appropriate for this device. The ports have also been refreshed, the USB port finally supports the fast 3.0 standard and the so-called HD-Port is still available. Microsoft also listened to the criticism about Windows 8 and RT and equipped the Surface 2 with Windows RT 8.1 ex-works. You also get a full copy of the Office Suite, which now includes an Outlook client as well.

Apple’s iPad is certainly not the only rival for the tablet throne, there are also numerous Android based devices. Besides the somewhat aged Google Nexus 10 there is the Toshiba eXcite Pro, which is also powered by the Tegra 4, Sony's Xperia Tablet Z and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) that we did not review yet. However, the Surface 2 also faces a competitor from its own manufacturer: The Nokia Lumia 2520 uses the same OS from Redmond but a more powerful Snapdragon 800 processor. We will focus on the comparison with the reference tablet from Cupertino in this review, since it is, according to Microsoft, the main rival.