Is a Surface Pro 4 a good solution for my situation?

[FlatSurface]

Had a perfect use case today.

I spent the first part of the morning in my home office, getting some stuff done. Then I met a prospective client at 11 am. The setting was casual and I kept thinking... woulda been great to have a tablet here!

Then back home, into the office again, more work done. After work I want to slouch down on the couch or something.

Kind of screams Surface to me: if I get two devices, I'll be lugging them along to meetings.

 

[JordanAT]

The SP4 will frustrate you to no end. I say this as someone who's house has two android phones, to iPhones, three iPads, a linux server, and 6 Windows machines (laptops, tablets, and desktops). Here's why:

The current crop of apps available for Windows tablet mode are very limited in functionality, poorly maintained (in general), and there is very little choice. Some apps which are stock/standard on both android and iOS don't exist in *any* fashion - paid or free. Many seem like they have MS equivalents, but you will find that those are Windows Phone only. Continuum is coming, but I would anticipate any crossover to be a minimum of a year off. You can emulate Android (DuOS), but I wouldn't do that without an 8GB machine (which I have) and it still hammers the CPU and drains the battery. And the apps are not nearly as friendly as the iOS ones. Anyone with ForScore will laugh at you while you struggle with Reader or any other MS/W10 app for reading music.

The battery life will kill you. Not literally, but it will make you very sad. Battery life is 4 hours. If you must guarantee longer than that (like, you are a hour from the office and billing $200/hr - or are on stage for a gig and need it to Just Work [TM[) you need to have an external battery or a charger. Period. Yes, I've gotten 6.5 hours on a charge. I would not put $600 in billable time, or a live gig, on the line, because I've gotten as little as 3.5 hours of useful time on a charge without doing anything intentionally power-hungry.

The standby time is also awful. And when I say awful, I mean when compared to a MBP, and iPad, an Android tablet, or even some cheap 10 tablets (like the Best Buy UnBranded one I have). This is AFTER the recent update that "fixed battery drain. My original SP4, upgraded to the current "battery saving" drivers, burns 7%/ hour when sleeping (8.5% if a USB device is plugged in) and 1%/hour when OFF or in hibernate. It means that after I finished my rehearsal last night with 50% battery and I let it sleep, then doze to hibernate, I woke it this morning and it only had 20% battery left. Now...to be fair, MS is replacing this device.

I have a brand spanking new SP4 (a replacement) I'm setting up, and - from scratch - it has about a 1.3%/hour drain in sleep mode, and about 25-45mW drain when hibernated, but I haven't actually installed any software on it yet. I'm hoping it doesn't cause more phantom drain. This still means that it will lose 20% of it's charge per week while just sitting on a table.

Okay - that's all the sucky stuff. Are you still with me? Are you still so delusional that you're thinking, "I'd give up all that if I had a 2lb tablet that had a real pen and could be my only computer. I can tweak a bit, and I'm willing to spend some time customizing to get it jsut the way I want it." Really? Then run, do not walk, to the MS store and get one of these babies. Because - damned - they are about as amazing as it gets. It's just light enough to be a tablet - not Air light, but comfortable for all but the weakest wristed, Starbucks soy latte drinking metrosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that). And with the typecover, it's a real everyday machine.

I have an i5/8GB/512GB. If you aren't going to store much on it, the 256 is probably fine. In fact, if you're really tight on money, and you won't run a virtual machine (or second OS like DuOS), you can probably live with the m3/4GB/128 and get a 128GB uSD for $50 to put your OneDrive or Dropbox folder on. The m3 is, surprisingly, not much slower in practice than the i5. The i5 will sustain high speeds for longer, but the m3 is within 5-7% of the speed for short bursts. Here's the breakdown:

m3: general use, need to stay quiet always (no fan)
i5: general use with some heavy computations - Photoshop, Premiere, DAW work
i7: you really want to game on the run
note: if you do so much video that you think you need the i7, you don't want the SP4, you want a real desktop, or at least the top of the line, 4 core rMBP.

4GB: general use, no virtual machines (that includes Android emulators)
8GB: Video editing, one virtual machine, reasonable sides CAD work (but not huge)
16GB: you're a developer, or you're working with really big video, or some other speciaized program that *requires* more than 8GB to run.

128GB: you don't store anything locally
256GB and up - whatever you think you have to have with you and are willing to pay a 300% premium (per GB) over a laptop drive cost to keep.

I run everything on mine. I run two 4k monitors with AutoCAD. And I'm working on a 24+/- track vocal recording in Reaper. And doing some Premiere work for our video (simple, though - nothing really complex). Oh - and don't listen to the Chrome naysayers. I transcribed a bunch of handwritten (in OneNote) notes into a Chrome Sheets spreadsheet two nights ago - and was on track to get 6.5 hours of battery life. The only thing to avoid in Chrome is video. Doesn't matter if you use Flash/VP8/h264ify - Chrome really does hammer the CPU for video; use Edge for that.

Okay..that turned out longer than I expected. Good luck!

 

[FlatSurface]

@JordanAT : wow, I really appreciate the amount of time you put into that post. Thanks man!

I have to say, though, that I'm a little confused by your post. You say the Surface Pro 4 will frustrate me... and yet you sing its praises!

Heck, you're not even turning it back in after it failed you - you're setting up a new one!

So, what am I missing?

It sounds like the problems you described (taking it along to consultancy jobs - although I would always take the charger - and the gigs / practice sessions) are spot on.

Here's my problem: I figure I could buy an iPad for the music, surfing in bed and on the couch... but I reckon it would suck to take along to work, because, well, iPads suck for getting anything done. I could pair it up with a Macbook Air for work (and I likely wouldn't take my iPad along as well)...

... but why bother, when you can have both AND be able to take digital notes with the SP4?

Also, spec wise... other people in this thread have been saying the i5 is worth it. I likely won't need the RAM (although I think my MBP has 8 gigs, I don't think I've ever used them) and 128Gigs of storage also has never been a real problem for me (MBP has 128gig SSD as well).

You haven't made this easier for me, dude. Thanks.

 

[leeshor]

Let me try to boil down what I think was the primary salient point. In tablet mode there is a serious lack of numbers/quantity as well as in some cases quality in the Microsoft Store. That's pretty much a given. BUT, those that are there, though the selection may be small, for the most part work.

 

[JordanAT]

More than that - not knowing if your SP4 will turn on is "throw it across the room" frustrating. The software is at such an incomplete stage right now that I have to bring a spare battery or charger everywhere. Also - 4 hours of life, everything above that is bonus. If you're used to iPads and MBPs (9-10hrs of real battery life), this is a huge shift in how you work. You always must carry a spare power source. Everywhere.

The tablet mode mostly works fine, though the first time you try to fill in a web form, and can't see what you're typing because the keyboard does not properly resize your app window, you'll be frustrated. When you move the Windows Taskbar to the top of the screen (preferred for drawing mode), and then your applications open windows with their totle bars trapped under the Taskbar so you can't move or adjust them without changing the Taskbar location, you'll be frustrated. The first time you try to snap two apps in Tablet mode - one top, and one bottom - becuase you're using it in portrait mode (say, play a file in Groove while reading the sheet music in Reader), you'll be frustrated because - HA! you can't do that - two apps at once is side by side only.

Did you know there isn't a single photocopy application in the App store for the camera? Nope - the only one is for WPhone. You can use OneNote, if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind doing 5x as much work to get a simple copy of a document. Music readers? Forget it. You get generic PDF readers which aren't optimized for libraries and music notation. Want a HAM radio APRS transcoder? Nope. HP48 emulator? Nope. Vine app? Nope. Evernote? Hey - there's one in there...but it sucks. OneNote? Same problem. Office? Bad news. Hyperlapse? Nope. Gmail - not a chance (and the embedded mail can't auto-fill your gmail contacts, and Calendar can't load future events past a couple of months).

The good news is that the desktop apps for most of that stuff are great and available. The bad news is that none of them are optimized for tablet/finger use. You get used to it, but...you guessed it, frustrating.

Most Apple folks I know won't put up with that @#$. Apple's ecosystem is much more continuous, and much more complete. IF you're willing to admit that Microsoft makes lousy tablet software, and that their store is half a decade behind where iOS and Google Play are, then you're a good candidate for the SP line. Because it really is an amazing piece of kit. But it requires a lot more maintenance and patience than most lifetime* Apple users are used to. If you need your hand held, you'll be wasting your money.

*By lifetime, I mean in the iOS era. I owned an Apple ][. That doesn't count. ;-)

 

[FlatSurface]

The truth is, I don't much care for tablet apps. With the sole exception of a music reader, which I'll need, but I've already found several candidates. I've been using a Windows Phone for the last year and yeah, not having a proper mail app does annoy me - but like you said, on the SP4 I'll have outlook.

But I see your point. The tablet mode is very much lacking, both in software and in battery life. I get the feeling that last part will frustrate me the most (although not having a proper mail app in tablet mode will probably start to frustrate me in the longer run - unless they develop one in the mean time!). I'm also not looking forward to charging my device all the time - heck, I barely use my MBP unhooked, because I simply don't like not knowing when it will run out (even if it usually does last long enough).

One other thing I thought of is that I like to work with a brighter screen. My MBP screen is always at full brightness when I work, except when I'm not powered and then I dislike it. For browsing and stuff it's fine, but actually getting anything done is an annoyance for me with lower brightness.

I'm glad I started this thread, it's been very, very enlightening. Sadly enough I'm still far from a decision!

 

[JordanAT]

FWIW, the screen is Bright. I usually keep it at 50%. 100% is too bright for me to work on comfortably, 60-65% is about the same brightness as my Wasabi Mango monitors (LG IPS panel).

As I said, if you can go in eyes open, and you're okay with the tablet limitations, it's really a do-everything machine. I wouldn't go back, personally. And, if you are willing to implement the optimizations here and on reddit, you can get 6 hours as a pdf reader. That may be enough for you, given that you are often plugged in.

If it makes you more inclined, there's a 600g battery out there (qi-Infinity, iirc) that makes the tablet + battery + typecover weigh about the same as a 13" MBP and will run the device for about 16-20 hours total.

 

[Philtastic]

I don't really see the big problem with the lack of tablet-optimized apps. Maybe I don't have fat fingers or something? Like, MuseScore (MuseScore | Free music composition and notation software), a free "desktop" music notation program, scrolls with touch, so, if all you were doing was reading off your music, that works. If you were going to do edits, you've got the pen for that... or you can get StaffPad (StaffPad – Windows Apps on Microsoft Store) if you want to literally draw in your notations. There are HAM radio programs (Ham Radio Software) and emulators for every system ever created. I don't see what the problem is with the built-in OneNote and Mail apps - they have decently large UI elements. I can also refute JordanAT's claims that the built-in Mail and People apps can't auto-populate: I literally just checked a Google contact that I inputted on my Android phone and have never used on my Surface but there it is even with the picture that I assigned to it from a Facebook contact sync (also on phone).

Concerning battery life, I have not done any tweaks at all to my power profile and I can regularly get 5-8 hours without any problems when doing mostly light tasks (web browsing, Office, music). As a random sampling, after reading these posts at 5:00 pm, I took my Surface off charger and continued to use it as I was: at 25% brightness, I had 1-5 Chrome tabs open while I searched for HAM radio programs et al., opened MuseScore a bunch to confirm its features since I haven't used it all that much, listened to music, and edited a Word document. Over the course of the following hour and 15 minutes, there was about ~10-15 minutes where the screen was off because I had to run off and do something away from my work desk... but that's fine because apparently this thing chews battery even when screen-off/asleep. You can see the attached screenshot for how well it did: 13% battery over 75 min which would lead to a projected battery life of 577 min or 9.5 hours (my calculation) or, as the Windows projection has, a projected battery life of 8 hours total.

I wonder if the people who have terrible battery life have extra antivirus, malware, and spyware scanners running in the background. I'll update later when I've let my Surface run longer since I'm at work here late anyway.

 

[JordanAT]

The problem is not the availability of desktop apps that are great. I use Musescore, and have StaffPad (though I'm convinced I need a dozen hours to get used to it - it doesn't like my handwriting ), but most music I get is in PDF form - either scanned or digitally printed. When you have hundreds or thousands of scores, there are very few touch-friendly readers that can access and catalog like ForScore. I have used Google services through Chrome app windows for about 3-4 years, and it is so far superior to the Mail and Calendar experience (which I wanted to switch to, but had to give up after 10 days because it was painfully slow and incomplete). Mail, Cal, and OneNote DO have great finger UI elements, but they are terribly stripped down. Example: you can't create a new notebook in OneNote App unless you're connected to a network. My first experience trying to use it for a new project in the field left me DOA on the tablet. Not a life-ending experience, but frustrating.

On the battery front, I have 60 cycles on my battery (it's now at ~95% of the design capacity when full) and over most of its life [since Nov 15], these are my averages:

Since OS install [Battery Life] 4:48:14 [Sleep] 13:24:53

My best battery life is 7:15, my worst is 2:53. I never trust the time remaining in the tray - I've had it as high as 14 hours, and as low as the equivalent of 1:40 for a full charge. For example, my tray icon currently says I have 7:52 remaining on my battery with 92% charge right now. If you really want to see battery life, run powercfg /batteryreport. Checking again on the tray icon, I now have 91%charge with 2:05 remaining.

 

[Philtastic]

The problem is not the availability of desktop apps that are great. I use Musescore, and have StaffPad (though I'm convinced I need a dozen hours to get used to it - it doesn't like my handwriting ), but most music I get is in PDF form - either scanned or digitally printed. When you have hundreds or thousands of scores, there are very few touch-friendly readers that can access and catalog like ForScore. I have used Google services through Chrome app windows for about 3-4 years, and it is so far superior to the Mail and Calendar experience (which I wanted to switch to, but had to give up after 10 days because it was painfully slow and incomplete). Mail, Cal, and OneNote DO have great finger UI elements, but they are terribly stripped down. Example: you can't create a new notebook in OneNote App unless you're connected to a network. My first experience trying to use it for a new project in the field left me DOA on the tablet. Not a life-ending experience, but frustrating.

On the battery front, I have 60 cycles on my battery (it's now at ~95% of the design capacity when full) and over most of its life [since Nov 15], these are my averages:

Since OS install [Battery Life] 4:48:14 [Sleep] 13:24:53

My best battery life is 7:15, my worst is 2:53. I never trust the time remaining in the tray - I've had it as high as 14 hours, and as low as the equivalent of 1:40 for a full charge. For example, my tray icon currently says I have 7:52 remaining on my battery with 92% charge right now. If you really want to see battery life, run powercfg /batteryreport. Checking again on the tray icon, I now have 91%charge with 2:05 remaining.

I don't see why you didn't just make a new page in your current account's notebook and then, when you were later online, made a new notebook and moved the page over later if it were so important.

Yeah, I don't trust the Windows projected battery life remaining which is why I'm actually calculating a projected time based on actual battery percentage. The problem with using the overall average usage time is that it includes some really vicious battery usage (for me, mostly playing some games) which would not be indicative of the kind of usage scenario that's relevant to a discussion on battery life. In fact, even including some of that game time, my powercfg overall average battery life is apparently 6:20:56 and 34:24:49 on connected standby, highest being 7:20:48 and lowest 0:54:10. I'm now 2h15m into this real usage (light tasks) battery drain test and it's now at 74% which gives a calculated total battery life of 519 min or 8.6 hours. Some changes in usage were that I stopped listening to music since I had stuff to do and I loaded Photoshop CS5 to save my screenshots, it went to sleep for ~10 min due to doing work elsewhere.

 

[JordanAT]

Again - sure, it works (OneNote), but you have to use a workaround. iOS just lets you create a notebook (i.e., it Just Works [TM]). As long as Apple users are willing to put up with a workaround for nearly everything tablet-based (and some desktop things), the SP4 is great - far, far better and more versitile, on the whole, than either an iPad or the smaller MBPs. But if you go in expecting sunshine and roses from W10, it's a pretty rude awakening.

 

[Philtastic]

I am now pretty much exactly 5 hours into my random battery drain test: 50% battery left. I will note that about 1 hour of that was in sleep because I had to do some work away from my desk but, given what others have posted, that wouldn't matter much since, allegedly, sleep drains almost as much battery as when it's fully on (it doesn't). Including that hour of sleep, my projected total battery life for light use is 10 hours. If we exclude that hour of sleep where we'll assume that it did not use any battery at all (it used about 1-2%), projected total battery life after 4 hours of actual use is 8 hours.