Personal Review of Surface Pro 2

[jnjroach]

I thought I would start posting my thoughts on the Pro 2

Unboxing experience - First Class (just like Gen 1)

Setup - If you have set up a Windows 8 or 8.1 machine it works the same (very quick). What is new, the Syncing of your Apps and Settings from your other 8.1 Machine is seamless and quick. Start Screen Sync works well, even moving between a 720 RT to the 1080 Pro.

The Pro is chunky especially coming from the Gen 1 RT and it does get warm around the Edge Venting. This thing is very fast, blows my IvyBridge Samsung Ultrabook away with similar specs (Except the UB was a Hybrid Drive).

Touch is responsive and Digitizer is what we've come to expect from Wacom, Inking in OneNote is very good, no lag with very good Palm Rejection. I'm getting really good edge accuracy without the jitters we come to expect.

So far I've uninstalled the version of Office and installed Office 2013 Pro Plus and ran updates, joined it to the Corporate Domain and Configured Outlook and have finished Syncing with SkyDrive and OneNote. I will start battery tests shortly, it came OOB with around 50% battery I ran it down to about 15% with installs and updates in around 2 hours (Balanced Power Scheme and adaptive brightness with WiFi and Bluetooth), should also mentioned I did one 45 minute Lync Conference Call as well and that tends to use up battery very quickly.

The Type Cover 2 is amazing, the cursor bounce is non-existent the Trackpad buttons will take some getting use to. Touch Cover 2 is also I great upgrade, works much better than Touch 1 and has Auto-Complete like the OSK does. I've been typing this paragraph with the Touch 2 and I'm actually typing faster on it than Type 2.

So far this is a great machine and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an ultraportable hybrid that has power and an active digitizer.

I will be added more to this as I observe more. I'm headed to the Midnight launch in Bellevue tonight if there are any Western Washington members in the area. I will be buying 3 of the DP to HDMI Adapters to tie us over till we can get the Docking Stations.

 

[Deleted member 10837]

I'm interested in some real world gaming benchmarks.

 

[jnjroach]

Sorry, I don't really have any games to test....

 

[Deleted member 10837]

What about some free artificial benchmarks such as 3DMark, PCMark, Cinebench, Geekbench, Unigine, etc?

 

[ALLCAPS]

I'm interested in some real world gaming benchmarks.

I'm very interested in this as well. I play to do some light gaming on mine, and I'm curious just how light I'll have to keep it. Want to run at least Diablo III and WoW on it. I also plan to do some development in Unity/Visual Studio, and it'd be really sweet if the SP2 was up to the task.

 

[oion]

I'm very interested in this as well. I play to do some light gaming on mine, and I'm curious just how light I'll have to keep it. Want to run at least Diablo III and WoW on it. I also plan to do some development in Unity/Visual Studio, and it'd be really sweet if the SP2 was up to the task.

There have been plenty of gaming videos with the Surface Pro 1 on Youtube, including WoW, so I'd check those out--if the SP1 could play those games fine, then undoubtedly SP2 wouldn't flinch.

Edit to add: Not that I'm letting Jeff off the hook with benchmarking and more detailed stuff since he did get quite a haul for free. :cool2:

 

[jnjroach]

I will see what I can do, I will say at the Launch Event on 9/23 we were demonstrating the Surface Pro 2 running Portal 2 full screen using the Xbox controller on battery. Visual Studio will run without issue and so should Unity.

 

[hypokondriak]

I thought I would start posting my thoughts on the Pro 2

Unboxing experience - First Class (just like Gen 1)

Setup - If you have set up a Windows 8 or 8.1 machine it works the same (very quick). What is new, the Syncing of your Apps and Settings from your other 8.1 Machine is seamless and quick. Start Screen Sync works well, even moving between a 720 RT to the 1080 Pro.

The Pro is chunky especially coming from the Gen 1 RT and it does get warm around the Edge Venting. This thing is very fast, blows my IvyBridge Samsung Ultrabook away with similar specs (Except the UB was a Hybrid Drive).

Touch is responsive and Digitizer is what we've come to expect from Wacom, Inking in OneNote is very good, no lag with very good Palm Rejection. I'm getting really good edge accuracy without the jitters we come to expect.

So far I've uninstalled the version of Office and installed Office 2013 Pro Plus and ran updates, joined it to the Corporate Domain and Configured Outlook and have finished Syncing with SkyDrive and OneNote. I will start battery tests shortly, it came OOB with around 50% battery I ran it down to about 15% with installs and updates in around 2 hours (Balanced Power Scheme and adaptive brightness with WiFi and Bluetooth), should also mentioned I did one 45 minute Lync Conference Call as well and that tends to use up battery very quickly.

The Type Cover 2 is amazing, the cursor bounce is non-existent the Trackpad buttons will take some getting use to. Touch Cover 2 is also I great upgrade, works much better than Touch 1 and has Auto-Complete like the OSK does. I've been typing this paragraph with the Touch 2 and I'm actually typing faster on it than Type 2.

So far this is a great machine and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an ultraportable hybrid that has power and an active digitizer.

I will be added more to this as I observe more. I'm headed to the Midnight launch in Bellevue tonight if there are any Western Washington members in the area. I will be buying 3 of the DP to HDMI Adapters to tie us over till we can get the Docking Stations.

Hmmm it seems like the 75% power increase isn't being realized by most people. I was expecting 7 hours...

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

 

[jnjroach]

I've been on battery 2 hours now and I'm at 79%....


I do realize that it is indexing both my root drive and my two O365 inboxes in Outlook. That is the one thing that all of the so called reviewers forget when they unbox and benchmark.

 

[hypokondriak]

I've been on battery 2 hours now and I'm at 79%....

Ok cool. I'm going to be sensitive here this is almost my entire reason for upgrading / staying with the product. The battery life on the SP1 makes me so crabby.

I know you posted earlier to me on this, but does multi touch scrolling on the new type keyboard still work effortlessly?

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

 

[CrippsCorner]

Don't batteries sometimes take a few charges to become fully optimised?

Jeff you say you uninstalled Office... I wasn't aware the Surface Pro 2 came with Office, unless you're simply referring to a trial version?

Just one more thing, did you get the 4Gb or 8Gb model? Thanks.

 

[jnjroach]

Don't batteries sometimes take a few charges to become fully optimised?

Jeff you say you uninstalled Office... I wasn't aware the Surface Pro 2 came with Office, unless you're simply referring to a trial version?

Just one more thing, did you get the 4Gb or 8Gb model? Thanks.

It has Office 2013 Standard, which you can run and add your key, I needed Pro Plus that would activate against my KMS Server. I'm running the 256/8 Version.