You nailed it in the early conclusion part. A tablet that has good processing power, runs desktop class apps (and desktop OS), has very good battery life. Microsoft Surface Pro 5G is a halo class product (so is the price), but at certain price points where the Surface Pro 5G and iPad Pro meets, I'll go with the Surface Pro 5G in the tablet class.
I completely agree. I am really enjoying my arm based Lenovo Thinkpad X13s 5G with 16GB RAM, 512GB storage. For playing video, office work, 2D drawing, and web based work, it shines. i have only had a hand full of apps not supported under Windows for ARM, such as Google Drive for Desktop. It is not a gaming device, but games like Temtem and Epistory seem to run fine. May have to drop the resolution a little, but they run smooth. When connected to a dock with two external monitors, it is quick and snappy. Battery life is great. Overall I have enjoyed using an ARM based Windows device.
I love my Surface Pro. It is an SP4 and it has the flickering screen issue when it gets too warm, but I love it nonetheless. I wish I could afford this Surface Pro because I'd get it in a heartbeat. Thanks for the thorough review and comparison.
If Microsoft is serious about Windows on ARM, they need to start putting ARM SoCs in cheaper Surface devices. Like how most people don't need a flagship phone and will probably be perfectly happy with a midranger, even fewer people need flagship laptops. If we can start recommending a $400 laptop with ARM on Windows with a decent enough SoC and at least 8 GB memory, that's when we'll start to see actual widespread adoption of the platform. A $1300 flagship is a good start, but it'll just be that, a start, until we see more mass consumer devices with cheaper price points.
great video as always Sir. I'm still really happy with my surface go 2 m3. Not the best at any specific thing by far but it's a great smaller form factor tablet device that isn't just an overblown phone. Plus, the LTE option is a nice feature to have as well. Super underrated device.
Had a Surface Pro 3 back in the days, it's one of the best device I ever had. Until I received my Steam Deck which rocked my world. And that's my take, I don't care about CPUs or SOCs anymore, in fact I don't care about specs sheets anymore (call it wisedom, or I'm just getting older). What matters the most is user experience, and right now I'm having a blast with my Deck, although it's way less powerful than my main Win11 PC. But the overall software experience is so nice and convenient that I don't really care about what runs in the background (even for some tasks in desktop mod). In my mind hardware has to fade away behind software, and I'm very happy to see that Windows finally becomes more and more relevant on ARM. But MS is still very late in the game, that's a shame.
actually, that RPG "resource point" comparison was very apt. Someone should absolutely create an app where you assign resource points to what you want and get a list of devices that will serve you best.
I wish Microsoft would make a Surface Go with an ARM processor, that would be the best tablet for me. I always liked the Surface Go form factor, but I feel like the intel chipset really leaves a lot to desire in terms battery longevity and price-to-performance.
I totally agree with you! I had a Surface Pro 7 but it was a bit clunky as a tablet due to its size. Last year I bought a Surface Go 3 with the I3 and I absolutely love it: Small, super portable, silent, and enough computing for me as a home computer. I mostly use it at home so battery is not a huge concern, but a Go tablet with an SQ2 or 3, would be amazing.
I've been wanting to see such kind of thing since the first gen Pro X. Microsoft can easily take the 7c+ Gen 3 and use it to make a Lite version of SQ3. I still love how compact the Surface Go tablet is.
Totally agree with that! I'm still rocking a surface go 2 for meetings and outdoors work. The portability and weitght are great! I can live with the low performance. But the battery life is a big issue for me, a "go" product should have 8-10 hours of battery life (not 4-6, as the surface go currently have)
Yup. Apple stans keep saying things like "you REALLY DONT want MacOS on an iPad" but then i use my Windows tablets, and yeah. I really DO want a full OS on a tablet...
I'm still a big fan of the surface pro. my water cooled sp6 still crushes most of the tasks I give it, but I felt a bit attacked when you mentioned folks who use their pro's mostly docked ;)
Watching this after your Robo & Kala review (not in the market...yet...but that looks mighty tempting). I actually have a Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook as my secondary portable computer, and if all you need is a nice screen with access to the web it actually does a good job, I've been happy with it. Not everybody likes Chromebooks, though for basic to mid use cases, its done well for me. Nice to see you mention it either way.
The Lenovo x13s has become my work computer even as a software engineer. The only thing I struggle with is the x86 version of Slack. Both the x86 and x86_64 version suffer from serious lag while using the program (with the x86_64 version suffering far, far worse). Absolutely love the WoA ecosystem, can't wait for the next generation of chips :)
@@SomeGadgetGuy I've tried, but the UI isn't great for it. It doesn't scale well to a tablet/laptop size, though it does absolutely run better. But not being able to see all the channels I have messages waiting in without navigating away from messages I'm reading, and not being able to have a thread side-by-side with a channel are deal breakers for me
tbh i expect more from windows on arm, i think it's more usable now but nowhere near Apple's. At this pace x86 will catch up to arm in efficiency (mostly AMD). Let's just hope Microsoft doesn't go google on us and abandon the project, there too much potential.
I haven't had a 3.5mm anything in a decade. You can just get a $2 adapter for USB C or lightning and of course there is wireless. If you had your way, floppy discs, USB A ports and DVD drives would still be on laptops.
@@NVGEARit has been proven time and time again that while wireless is good, it will always be behind a wired connection in several ways. It’s the same with ethernet vs wifi. Although a small tablet/laptop that can’t do much more than some light browsing doesn’t need ethernet, but really professional use laptops (not talking macbooks) do benefit very much from an ethernet port
Awesome video. I have a Surface pro 9 5G and want to love it, but there are a couple of quirks for me that ultimately make it a no go. The biggest one is that wireless display adapter will not allow me to extend screens to the surface. I can extend the Surface screen to another display but not vice versa. The next is weird in that my main wifi acess point will cut out or suffer signal loss. I can then use the other one without issue. Before anyone suggest it I did return it and the replacement does the same thing. I love the battery life, performance was more than fine for my needs. I relented and got the intel version as there is not many tablets in this size category.
It's funky when you run into issues like that. My WiFi 6 router has always been a little tempermental, and A LOT of the phones and tablets I review have issues connecting to the 5GHz radio. Then the SQ3 comes around and it connects PERFECT. Sorting those personal issues is tough. We think "this is a standard and it should just work", but those little differences add up.
You are one of the few who sees this device from a realistic perspective rather than making irrelevant comparisons to performance laptops designed for gamers & creators.The SP9 5G is a fantastic product at the right price. I picked one up for £950 on eBay and it's well worth that. Excellent for recording lectures, using Office on the go, Teams conferencing, and running multiple tabs in Edge (much improved). 5G reception is fabulous. Absolutely brilliant device!
This was a well-done video! It was a nice practical demonstration of what the different devices can perform and I appreciate that. What is interesting is that personally I have a really hard time figuring out what the usage of a tablet is, so I always have a hard time finding a reason to recommend something like this or a tablet in general to a person. I guess it's because I considered that anything that I would do on a tablet I would rather use a PC for. Obviously that is limited to my personal preference.
The surface pro x has upgradable storage aswell, same system but it's more for businesses so they can remove the ssd before getting rid of the device. Do love to see this review. I'm gonna try redo some of your tests on my Surface pro X SQ2 16gb, see how performance has improved.
I bought the SP9 5G and love it!! Beautiful screen, 5G and a full fledged desktop makes it the best tablet around. Sure, I wished the starting price was a bit low, but I got an 8ram/256gb for around 1k which isn't terrible. This little guy replaces my tab s8 and ipad mini as my go everywhere table. There's no other company making tablets like this other than Microsoft.
What do you think about windows 11 as a touch operating system? I am working on a video review for that and have been using a windows 11 tablet and I think the android susbsytem is a game changer for windows as a tablet OS.
I do enjoy the "new format" before it did feel a little like filler to respond to comment most of us would not think about and just focus on your review Now once in a while I do not mind ^°
The Surface Pro 9 with ARM is very interesting. But there is no SD-Card slot, no USB-A port and no headphone jack anymore. Doesn't this bother you? You didn't mentioned it. This are the points that prevents me from buying it. It would be a downgrade from my Surface Pro 7.
I've personally been working to move everything over to USBC. So instead of older USB flash drives, I have little portable SSDs for my field backups. Other devices have been easy to buy USBC cables for over at monoprice. The SD card doesn't bother me AS much because of the transition to USBC and the genuinely excellent hubs we can get for cheap now. And when I really max out this storage, this is the only tablet I know of that not only CAN upgrade the SSD, but it's easier to do than any laptop I've used recently. The headphone jack stings the most for me, but you're also talking to the guy who has four different portable DACs that I need to use now that LG is out of the smartphone game. Moving a THX AAA amp certified ESS DAC from my phone to my tablet is a bummer, but It's the best portable audio quality I can count on. Again, I have to put this up against other premium tablet competition. If I'm going to buy something like a Galaxy Tab S8, the Surface crushes it.
Interesting, I have the 7 too and there are some features on the 9 that are an upgrade, like screen and processor. Battery life is ok on the 7 but more is better ;)
I came from a MacBook Pro 13" 2017. Switched to Surface Pro 9 because aint no way I'm paying over $2000 for a phone processor for a productivity device. What engineering software runs on an M1/M2 processor natively? What hardware is supported on an M1, M2? Does eGPU work on an M1,M2? Can I dual boot into Windows on an M1/M2? - Phone processors on a laptop/desktop are useless to me. x86 for life.
After using a Surface Pro 4 for years, I bizzarely can't come back to a classic laptop with a "high" keyboard. I got accustomed to the flat and very shallow keyboard, and don't like to type on "normal", thick and tilted keyboards anymore. Also : I love the semi-fanless tablet that I can bring in bed but isn't an Android or Chromebook device à la Lenovo Duet 5. But... man are these things *overpriced* . Damn you, Microsoft.
I mean, less expensive than an iPad Pro, a LITTLE more expensive than a Galaxy Tab S8+ 5G, close to the same price as a Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra (which is wifi only). I think the Surface is priced right where it needs to be.
I've been eyeing the 5G version because of the 8cx Gen 3-based SQ3. However, oddly, it's only available to buy through the only telco company in my country that still aren't serious about 5G connectivity. I really found that a shame since the previous Pro X was available to the general public. I could have just get the Intel version, but my NUC 11 Enthusiast is still doing a solid top work.
@@SomeGadgetGuy Really pushing for a Surface Pro as an IT portable system. It should run Extron and other troubleshooting apps just fine, love a tablet formfactor and since it's not my dollar, why not go for an Intel Evo with 32GB RAM with 1TB? I want to go full starfleet engineer and do all of my tasks with a tablet, dammit. Although on TNG they had multiple tablets for multiple tasks. Sorry... Padds.
You nailed it in the early conclusion part. A tablet that has good processing power, runs desktop class apps (and desktop OS), has very good battery life. Microsoft Surface Pro 5G is a halo class product (so is the price), but at certain price points where the Surface Pro 5G and iPad Pro meets, I'll go with the Surface Pro 5G in the tablet class.
I completely agree. I am really enjoying my arm based Lenovo Thinkpad X13s 5G with 16GB RAM, 512GB storage. For playing video, office work, 2D drawing, and web based work, it shines. i have only had a hand full of apps not supported under Windows for ARM, such as Google Drive for Desktop.
It is not a gaming device, but games like Temtem and Epistory seem to run fine. May have to drop the resolution a little, but they run smooth.
When connected to a dock with two external monitors, it is quick and snappy. Battery life is great.
Overall I have enjoyed using an ARM based Windows device.
I love my Surface Pro. It is an SP4 and it has the flickering screen issue when it gets too warm, but I love it nonetheless. I wish I could afford this Surface Pro because I'd get it in a heartbeat. Thanks for the thorough review and comparison.
Thank you Juan for all the years of hard work you give us bro! Been watching for years.
Hey I appreciate that. Glad you've enjoyed the videos. 😊
If Microsoft is serious about Windows on ARM, they need to start putting ARM SoCs in cheaper Surface devices. Like how most people don't need a flagship phone and will probably be perfectly happy with a midranger, even fewer people need flagship laptops. If we can start recommending a $400 laptop with ARM on Windows with a decent enough SoC and at least 8 GB memory, that's when we'll start to see actual widespread adoption of the platform. A $1300 flagship is a good start, but it'll just be that, a start, until we see more mass consumer devices with cheaper price points.
Was it a 16 GB or 8 GB RAM model that was tested? Thanks.
great video as always Sir. I'm still really happy with my surface go 2 m3. Not the best at any specific thing by far but it's a great smaller form factor tablet device that isn't just an overblown phone. Plus, the LTE option is a nice feature to have as well. Super underrated device.
Had a Surface Pro 3 back in the days, it's one of the best device I ever had. Until I received my Steam Deck which rocked my world. And that's my take, I don't care about CPUs or SOCs anymore, in fact I don't care about specs sheets anymore (call it wisedom, or I'm just getting older). What matters the most is user experience, and right now I'm having a blast with my Deck, although it's way less powerful than my main Win11 PC. But the overall software experience is so nice and convenient that I don't really care about what runs in the background (even for some tasks in desktop mod). In my mind hardware has to fade away behind software, and I'm very happy to see that Windows finally becomes more and more relevant on ARM. But MS is still very late in the game, that's a shame.
actually, that RPG "resource point" comparison was very apt. Someone should absolutely create an app where you assign resource points to what you want and get a list of devices that will serve you best.
I wish Microsoft would make a Surface Go with an ARM processor, that would be the best tablet for me. I always liked the Surface Go form factor, but I feel like the intel chipset really leaves a lot to desire in terms battery longevity and price-to-performance.
I totally agree with you! I had a Surface Pro 7 but it was a bit clunky as a tablet due to its size. Last year I bought a Surface Go 3 with the I3 and I absolutely love it: Small, super portable, silent, and enough computing for me as a home computer. I mostly use it at home so battery is not a huge concern, but a Go tablet with an SQ2 or 3, would be amazing.
I've been wanting to see such kind of thing since the first gen Pro X. Microsoft can easily take the 7c+ Gen 3 and use it to make a Lite version of SQ3. I still love how compact the Surface Go tablet is.
Totally agree with that! I'm still rocking a surface go 2 for meetings and outdoors work. The portability and weitght are great! I can live with the low performance. But the battery life is a big issue for me, a "go" product should have 8-10 hours of battery life (not 4-6, as the surface go currently have)
Basically anyone that is frustrated with ipads limitations has an option in a portable arm computer in the sq3
Yup. Apple stans keep saying things like "you REALLY DONT want MacOS on an iPad" but then i use my Windows tablets, and yeah. I really DO want a full OS on a tablet...
I'm still a big fan of the surface pro. my water cooled sp6 still crushes most of the tasks I give it, but I felt a bit attacked when you mentioned folks who use their pro's mostly docked ;)
I mean there's docked, and then there's watercooled. You went ALL the way around from nerdy to flipping cool, so I'll give you a pass 😄👍
I have the service pro 8 still love it hoping to see a OLED screen on the 10 then maybe I'll upgrade
I'm super excited for the rest of the computer industry move into arm based and power efficient ARM SoCs
Watching this after your Robo & Kala review (not in the market...yet...but that looks mighty tempting). I actually have a Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook as my secondary portable computer, and if all you need is a nice screen with access to the web it actually does a good job, I've been happy with it. Not everybody likes Chromebooks, though for basic to mid use cases, its done well for me. Nice to see you mention it either way.
I LOVE ChromeOS for that, and it helps reinforce the fallacy of "compute power" sold to a lot of consumers.
Nice informative video, thank you.
Btw I think the Laptop Go's fan sometimes kicks on when auto checking for updates when sitting idle.
The removable storage is a plus for me as it makes it easy to fit a larger one that what it comes it comes with
It's a HUGE feature.
The Lenovo x13s has become my work computer even as a software engineer. The only thing I struggle with is the x86 version of Slack. Both the x86 and x86_64 version suffer from serious lag while using the program (with the x86_64 version suffering far, far worse). Absolutely love the WoA ecosystem, can't wait for the next generation of chips :)
This is silly, but could you run slack on Android?
@@SomeGadgetGuy I've tried, but the UI isn't great for it. It doesn't scale well to a tablet/laptop size, though it does absolutely run better. But not being able to see all the channels I have messages waiting in without navigating away from messages I'm reading, and not being able to have a thread side-by-side with a channel are deal breakers for me
tbh i expect more from windows on arm, i think it's more usable now but nowhere near Apple's. At this pace x86 will catch up to arm in efficiency (mostly AMD). Let's just hope Microsoft doesn't go google on us and abandon the project, there too much potential.
Windows on ARM is great. We just need to see ARM stop suing their partners so we can get higher performance options.
3.5 millimeter jack anyone? these products are dead to me if it's not included.
Ditto. I'm not paying for features to be taken off.
They couldn't include because of the lack of space /s
I haven't had a 3.5mm anything in a decade. You can just get a $2 adapter for USB C or lightning and of course there is wireless. If you had your way, floppy discs, USB A ports and DVD drives would still be on laptops.
@@NVGEARit has been proven time and time again that while wireless is good, it will always be behind a wired connection in several ways. It’s the same with ethernet vs wifi. Although a small tablet/laptop that can’t do much more than some light browsing doesn’t need ethernet, but really professional use laptops (not talking macbooks) do benefit very much from an ethernet port
Agreed but there's a $ 9 adaptor for that.
Awesome video. I have a Surface pro 9 5G and want to love it, but there are a couple of quirks for me that ultimately make it a no go. The biggest one is that wireless display adapter will not allow me to extend screens to the surface. I can extend the Surface screen to another display but not vice versa.
The next is weird in that my main wifi acess point will cut out or suffer signal loss. I can then use the other one without issue. Before anyone suggest it I did return it and the replacement does the same thing.
I love the battery life, performance was more than fine for my needs. I relented and got the intel version as there is not many tablets in this size category.
It's funky when you run into issues like that. My WiFi 6 router has always been a little tempermental, and A LOT of the phones and tablets I review have issues connecting to the 5GHz radio. Then the SQ3 comes around and it connects PERFECT. Sorting those personal issues is tough. We think "this is a standard and it should just work", but those little differences add up.
I'd like to know if sq3 could play something like fifa 15 or nba 2k14 generally light sports and racing titles from the past.Thanks in advance
You are one of the few who sees this device from a realistic perspective rather than making irrelevant comparisons to performance laptops designed for gamers & creators.The SP9 5G is a fantastic product at the right price. I picked one up for £950 on eBay and it's well worth that. Excellent for recording lectures, using Office on the go, Teams conferencing, and running multiple tabs in Edge (much improved). 5G reception is fabulous. Absolutely brilliant device!
Nice buy!
Surface pro X arm has also upgradable ssd option.
This was a well-done video! It was a nice practical demonstration of what the different devices can perform and I appreciate that. What is interesting is that personally I have a really hard time figuring out what the usage of a tablet is, so I always have a hard time finding a reason to recommend something like this or a tablet in general to a person. I guess it's because I considered that anything that I would do on a tablet I would rather use a PC for. Obviously that is limited to my personal preference.
I use a DAC. Quality makes it worthwhile. Why not a sabre dac in a laptop...The Ess chips include BT apt’x etc
Can you please recommend an affordable model number for HQ 24 bit audio :)
The surface pro x has upgradable storage aswell, same system but it's more for businesses so they can remove the ssd before getting rid of the device. Do love to see this review. I'm gonna try redo some of your tests on my Surface pro X SQ2 16gb, see how performance has improved.
Please let me know how it goes!
I bought the SP9 5G and love it!! Beautiful screen, 5G and a full fledged desktop makes it the best tablet around. Sure, I wished the starting price was a bit low, but I got an 8ram/256gb for around 1k which isn't terrible. This little guy replaces my tab s8 and ipad mini as my go everywhere table. There's no other company making tablets like this other than Microsoft.
Do you think the surface pro 9 5g is better than the tab s8 im tossing up between the 2. Is the 5g arm based pro good for video editing ?
@@silverpro8356 To be honest I'm not a video editor so I wouldn't know but I would assume having a desktop OS would be better than a mobile OS
@SILVER PRO Depends, it does my editing fine, just got to give it a moment to load up then it'll work fine.
maybe you could review the huawei matebook e go supposedly the pro version have sd 8cx gen 3 too
Ohhh. That's cool. I loved my little matebook.
Can't wait for the Surface Pro 10 5G with 8cx Gen4, the move to TSMC and Nuvia cores is going to be amazing
UGH... Want so bad... This ARM court case is super frustrating...
Thanks for the video bro
You're very welcome. If you liked this, you should also check out the robo and kala ruclips.net/video/OVsZek_ZCP8/видео.htmlsi=h1ObgHYje_bk0hfv
What do you think about windows 11 as a touch operating system? I am working on a video review for that and have been using a windows 11 tablet and I think the android susbsytem is a game changer for windows as a tablet OS.
I'd like to know if sq3 could play something like fifa 15 or nba 2k14 generally light sports and racing titles from the past.Thanks in advance
I’d like to see a good ARM based Surface Laptop with 5G. That would be a banger. Are viruses still an issue on ARM based Windows?
It was quite wind a few days ago.
I use Autohotkey on all my windows computers. Does anyone know if Autohotkey will run on the 5G device?
Great work! Ignore those energy suckers!
I do enjoy the "new format" before it did feel a little like filler to respond to comment most of us would not think about and just focus on your review
Now once in a while I do not mind ^°
The Surface Pro 9 with ARM is very interesting. But there is no SD-Card slot, no USB-A port and no headphone jack anymore. Doesn't this bother you? You didn't mentioned it. This are the points that prevents me from buying it. It would be a downgrade from my Surface Pro 7.
I've personally been working to move everything over to USBC. So instead of older USB flash drives, I have little portable SSDs for my field backups. Other devices have been easy to buy USBC cables for over at monoprice. The SD card doesn't bother me AS much because of the transition to USBC and the genuinely excellent hubs we can get for cheap now. And when I really max out this storage, this is the only tablet I know of that not only CAN upgrade the SSD, but it's easier to do than any laptop I've used recently.
The headphone jack stings the most for me, but you're also talking to the guy who has four different portable DACs that I need to use now that LG is out of the smartphone game. Moving a THX AAA amp certified ESS DAC from my phone to my tablet is a bummer, but It's the best portable audio quality I can count on.
Again, I have to put this up against other premium tablet competition. If I'm going to buy something like a Galaxy Tab S8, the Surface crushes it.
Interesting, I have the 7 too and there are some features on the 9 that are an upgrade, like screen and processor. Battery life is ok on the 7 but more is better ;)
I came from a MacBook Pro 13" 2017. Switched to Surface Pro 9 because aint no way I'm paying over $2000 for a phone processor for a productivity device. What engineering software runs on an M1/M2 processor natively? What hardware is supported on an M1, M2? Does eGPU work on an M1,M2? Can I dual boot into Windows on an M1/M2? - Phone processors on a laptop/desktop are useless to me. x86 for life.
After using a Surface Pro 4 for years, I bizzarely can't come back to a classic laptop with a "high" keyboard. I got accustomed to the flat and very shallow keyboard, and don't like to type on "normal", thick and tilted keyboards anymore.
Also : I love the semi-fanless tablet that I can bring in bed but isn't an Android or Chromebook device à la Lenovo Duet 5.
But... man are these things *overpriced* . Damn you, Microsoft.
I mean, less expensive than an iPad Pro, a LITTLE more expensive than a Galaxy Tab S8+ 5G, close to the same price as a Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra (which is wifi only). I think the Surface is priced right where it needs to be.
Thanks, Im not yt comment guy but video fun an useful
Can it run Excel macros?
I've been eyeing the 5G version because of the 8cx Gen 3-based SQ3. However, oddly, it's only available to buy through the only telco company in my country that still aren't serious about 5G connectivity. I really found that a shame since the previous Pro X was available to the general public. I could have just get the Intel version, but my NUC 11 Enthusiast is still doing a solid top work.
Ooof that is kind of frustrating.
I thought this was a surface duo video.
JC WOULD NOT stop talking about ARM at Newegg. I can't stress just how much ;)
HA! Thank you!
I feel validated by Apple silicon 😅
@@SomeGadgetGuy Really pushing for a Surface Pro as an IT portable system. It should run Extron and other troubleshooting apps just fine, love a tablet formfactor and since it's not my dollar, why not go for an Intel Evo with 32GB RAM with 1TB? I want to go full starfleet engineer and do all of my tasks with a tablet, dammit. Although on TNG they had multiple tablets for multiple tasks. Sorry... Padds.
Tech is WAY more fun when you're spending OTHER people's money 😁
@@SomeGadgetGuy verdad
Vampire Survivors is a great game