



There's a lot of horsepower in this chunky package. The Surface Pro is equipped like a laptop, and a pretty good one at that: it has a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317u processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4GB of RAM, and either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. (If you can, buy the 128GB model — Microsoft's OS and pre-created recovery partition mean there's only 23GB of usable storage on the 64GB Surface Pro.) There's Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, of course, along with a light sensor, accelerometer, compass, and gyroscope. As with the Surface RT, there's no way to get 3G or 4G radios built into the device, without which the Surface Pro doesn't feel quite as portable as it could. A cheap Mi-Fi solves that problem neatly, though, so I'm not terribly worried about it.

Update: Microsoft has updated its measurements for exactly how much storage you'll get on the Surface Pro, and says that the usable storage on the 64GB Pro numbers 29GB instead of 23. You'll be able to use 89GB on the 128GB model. The story's a little better than we thought, but not much.

There are two cameras on the Surface Pro, both capable of recording 720p video. In my entire time using the device, I only ever used the rear camera explicitly for testing, because taking pictures with a two-pound, 11-inch slab of metal is ridiculous. On the other hand, the super-wide-angle front-facing camera does really well for video chat. The speakers tell a similar story: you get decent performance, with relatively clear (but not particularly loud) sound.

When I went to Redmond for a behind-the-scenes tour of how the Surface came to exist, Microsoft reps made a big deal about the device's screen. On the Surface RT, I didn't quite see why – it's just a 10.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display that had great colors but not enough pixel density — but the Surface Pro makes it clear that Microsoft knows what it's doing. The 10.6-inch, 1920 x 1080 panel on the Pro is gorgeous, maybe the best laptop screen I've ever seen. Blacks are deep and whites are bright (my MacBook Air's display looks comparatively yellowish now), and colors are both accurate and vibrant. Since it's 1080p, it also holds up to closer pixel-level scrutiny when you're holding the device nearer to your face in tablet mode.

Having such a pixel-rich display does cause a slight problem with scaling in Windows. A lot of things are made too small by having pixels so close together, so Windows scales things up to 150 percent by default — that makes a lot of things big, and a lot of things blurry. Scaling back down to 100 percent makes everything look good again, but also makes some elements, particularly in the Desktop, too small to be really touch-friendly. I went with smaller and harder to touch, but you have to pick your poison to some extent.

There are two small things about the Surface Pro that struck me as remarkably smart moves by Microsoft. One is small: there's a USB port on the charging brick, so you can charge your phone and your Surface through the same outlet.

The other is much bigger: the Surface Pro comes with a Wacom-made, pressure-sensitive stylus that is an awesomely useful companion to the device. It's fantastic for drawing apps or Fruit Ninja — the pixel-dense display gives you accurate control anyway, and the pen makes it even better — but not especially useful for tapping around the operating system, since it just ends up moving apps on the Start screen instead of scrolling. You can even right-click or erase, with the click of a button on the pen itself. The device itself even knows when your pen is nearby, showing a dot on the screen before you even tap; that's huge for using Photoshop, or anything else that requires a deft touch. The pen's not something you'll use all the time, but it's a great addition to a touch-friendly device. It attaches to the power connector, which handily holds it in place on the side of the device when not in use, but it still fell off every time I put the Pro in my backpack.

Based on specifications alone, the Surface Pro can compete with almost any similarly-priced ultrabook on the market. I'm impressed that Microsoft managed to get so much extra power into a device that's still slimmer and lighter than most ultrabooks, and the fact that it could makes me wonder why the Surface RT exists at all. More on that in a minute.