Surface Pro 4 is the first Surface to release under Windows 10, and at a year and a half after Surface Pro 3, the Surface Pro line was due for an upgrade. Whereas Surface Pro 3 sported very similar internals to Surface Pro 2, but presented an incredible redesign of the exterior, Surface Pro 4 this time keeps the exterior almost identical to Pro 3, but has some nice upgrades internally, as well as with the accessories.
Surface Pro 4 has the same magnesium housing as Surface Pro 3, keeping the 3:2 aspect ratio and amazing friction kickstand with unlimited positions, which now feels even better to use. It has all the same ports as Surface Pro 3, and it’s even the same size, though this year’s model is 0.7mm thinner, now coming in at 8.4mm. So what’s new?
Though the device is the same size aside from being thinner, it features a slightly larger screen as the bezels have been reduced, moving from 12” up to 12.3” with a 3:2 aspect ratio and 2736x1824 resolution – that’s 267 PPI, up from 216 with the Pro 3 – in case you’re curious, that’s a slightly higher pixel density than the iPad Pro, and the Surface Pro 4 displays are calibrated out of the box for 100% sRGB, meaning they have great colour reproduction.
Pro 4 is slightly lighter, coming in at 786g for the i5/i7 or 766g for the m3 model, compared to 800g for Pro 3. This difference between i5/i7 and m3 is because the m3 model is fanless, so the removal of the fan saves you 20g in weight. Speaking of fans, Pro 4 has a majorly upgraded cooling system, and the fan now provides secondary cooling. The primary cooling system is now a copper plate next to the battery, which is beneath the kickstand. The copper plate is so effective that it can dissipate 60% of the heat produced by the SP4, leaving the fan to dissipate the other 40% only in intensive situations. The main benefits of this are that you will hear the fan even less, as for most tasks the fan will not be spinning at all, and now the heat is spread out across the device instead of having one hot corner behind the CPU, and the other half being cold to the touch.
They have also upgraded the storage to PCI-E SSDs now, meaning they are faster, and I have noticed an improvement in response time. They actually source their SSDs from two companies – Toshiba and Samsung. Microsoft, for whatever reason, has chosen to use a high-grade Toshiba, and a lower-grade Samsung, and which you get is luck of the draw unfortunately. This wouldn’t be an issue if performance were comparable, but the Toshiba drive actually has twice the write performance of the Samsung. In general usage, this is apparently negligible, but it’s worth noting and I’m not happy with Microsoft’s decision here.
That’s enough of general specs, what I want to talk about now are the main attractions of this device, at least for me personally. The IR camera, the pen, and the keyboard.
As I said earlier, this is the first Surface device to release under Windows 10, and as such, it supports Windows Hello facial recognition, a biometric authentication technology allowing you to log into your Surface with your face. Facial recognition with any old camera has been done before – you can fool it with photographs, so it’s not very secure. This implementation is different, and requires an IR camera. The IR camera checks that you are a living person, and so it cannot be fooled with a photograph – it can’t even be fooled by an identical twin. Recognising someone with an IR camera and checking that they are real sounds like a complicated job, and you might assume it will be slow – however, the most surprising thing about this technology is how fast it is. The camera recognises you very quickly, almost instantly – then you have to wait a second or two for Windows to log you in. It is a very cool technology and I very much enjoy using it instead of a pin or password, and as it uses IR, it even works in pitch black environments.
Onto the pen, it’s really fantastic. Great mostly-magnesium build like before, now with a few new features. The new pen has 1024 pressure levels, up from 256, for a smoother and more natural inking experience. It has replaceable tips, with 4 different tips available, called 2H, H, HB and B – the default tip that comes with the pen is the HB tip. The HB tip isn’t exactly like a pencil, but provides a very satisfying feel to inking, and I love it. The B tip has slightly more grip, and the others have less - the H is very much like the previous pen tip for Pro 3. These additional tips are not included with SP4. If you want these, you need to purchase the Pen Tip Kit separately, however I would only recommend this to artists as I think the standard tip is great for writing and general use.
The pen has one side button now, used for right clicking or lassoing in OneNote, and the eraser is back where it was originally – at the top of the pen, and it actually feels like an eraser, which like the new pen tip, is absolutely fantastic. The eraser has more functionality still – you can click it to open a new page in OneNote, double click it to capture and annotate a screenshot, and hold it down to activate Cortana in listen mode, all very convenient features. The pen also has a flat edge now where it can magnetically attach to the Surface Pro 4, on either the left or right side, and to some parts of the bottom, though it attaches much stronger to the left side – so strong that even under rigorous shaking, the pen will not fall off. This is very convenient for storage, and I love this feature.
Type Cover 4 Is another strong upgrade over the previous keyboard. The keys feel much better now – smooth, more rigid, and the overall keyboard is larger. I find the keyboard much more pleasing to type on, as it has a good amount of key travel and provides satisfying feedback. The trackpad has also been upgraded, now 40% larger and much smoother, it’s far nicer to use. The keyboard is still backlit, now with 5 levels of white lighting, including off. The function key is a toggle now, with a light on it to tell you whether the toggle is on or off, like the Caps Lock key. The one complaint I have with the keyboard is that the windows key is not in its usual place. On most English UK keyboards, the Windows key is the second key in on the left – on SP4, it is the third, and this caused me to hit the wrong key on a regular basis at first, however I’ve adjusted to it after a week, and am now using my desktop keyboard and Type Cover 4 without confusion.
The final thing I want to touch on is Intel Speed Shift technology. This is not Surface Pro exclusive – it’s a feature of Skylake processors, and as Surface Pro 4 is one of the first devices to use Skylake ultrabook processors, it benefits from this technology. So what is it? Speed Shift, in short, allows the device to respond much faster to tasks, lowering latency on first interaction. Most of the time when not being used, the CPU will idle at low frequency, but when you interact with the device it needs to ramp up the clock speed to max as fast as possible for responsiveness, and this is what Speed Shift does. Speed Shift makes a real-word improvement to responsiveness for most interactions, including touch responsiveness, and it was enabled in the Windows 10 update on 12th November, codenamed Threshold 2.
Surface Pro 4 is a quality of life upgrade, but doesn’t really bring any essential functionality that Pro 3 didn’t already have, and there’s nothing wrong with that. At this point, Microsoft has pretty much perfected the form factor – there isn’t another manufacturer who has come close to Microsoft in making a laptop replacement like this, yet more and more are now attempting it.
As I said earlier, I feel that the main attractions of this device are the IR camera, keyboard and pen. You may already know that the keyboard and pen are both backwards compatible with Surface Pro 3, meaning most of what I like about Surface Pro 4 is the accessories, and that is indeed the case. Though Surface Pro 4 is an incremental upgrade, offering a more responsive, more satisfying experience, I do feel that the best parts of this device are in the accessories. The new keyboard is fully functional with Pro 3, and the pen is too, aside from it only using 256 pressure levels with Pro 3. Still, if you can buy a new keyboard and a pen for your Pro 3 and get a large chunk of the new experience, why get a Pro 4?
If you’re new to Surface Pro, Surface Pro 4 is a fantastic option. It’s a bit thinner and lighter than the last model, with a newer, faster processor and a generally more responsive experience, with a slightly larger, though considerably more pixel-dense display, and much better cooling. This is a great device to get if you can afford it. If you already have a Surface Pro 3, but can’t afford the Pro 4 upgrade, then if you just purchase the new keyboard and pen, I think you will be pretty happy with your mini-upgrade.
This review is also available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RJ9RW11UEWN7U/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
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