App compatibility, battery life

When Microsoft announced its new line of Windows PCs in May, the company said they were “built for AI” with new chips from Qualcomm that were more power efficient than previous Intel processors.

Among the first to hit the market, called Copilot+ computers, is a convertible Surface Pro tablet. It can handle heavier computing tasks and has longer battery life than laptops with Intel processors. It’s a similar strategy to one Apple began in 2020 when it began shipping custom, power-efficient Arm chips in MacBooks, a move that has proven wildly successful.

But what Microsoft has finally released with the Surface Pro is a huge upgrade over its predecessor, and it’s not unreasonable to imagine that this device heralds a new era of AI-powered computing. At least for now.

Microsoft’s Surface line of computers hasn’t been a huge success. The company reported $1.07 billion in hardware revenue, including Surface computers, in the first quarter, a small part of its total revenue of $61.86 billion.

I've been reviewing the Surface Pro for two weeks. Here's what you need to know about it.

The Surface Pro is a high-end device. Microsoft sent me a review unit with a 12-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, a 512GB solid-state drive, 16GB of RAM and an OLED display. The device starts at $999, but this model costs $1,499.99. Performance is fast for web browsing — Google shipped an Arm version of Chrome for Windows in March — and productivity software and some video games, including “Retrowave World” and “Poly Bridge 3,” run well.

The display is detailed and bright, with smooth scrolling thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate. The touchscreen is also responsive. The premium stand that supports the display remains sturdy. Underneath the stand, you’ll find a compartment that protects the solid-state drive, making it easy to replace or upgrade the hard drive.

In my early tests, the Surface Pro delivered more than eight hours of battery life. Microsoft promises up to 10 hours of web browsing. The Surface Pro 9 with Microsoft’s Arm-based SQ3 chip, which was released in 2022, is advertised as having up to 19 hours of battery life, but reviewers found app compatibility to be an issue. Unlike previous Arm-powered Surface PCs, like the Surface Pro X from 2019, this model can run a wide range of apps, meaning buyers won’t have to compromise on compatibility too much.

This is because Microsoft has introduced a new emulator called Prism to help these new devices run software designed for Intel and AMD chips.

Almost every day, developers are building intelligent software that relies on AI models for a variety of purposes. Most often, the software uses servers in data centers to run heavy processing tasks. But increasingly, developers are delegating some of the processing to users’ phones and computers. The Copilot+ computer is supposed to be well-suited to this emerging type of software, thanks to its Neural Processing Unit, or NPU. This architecture results in longer battery life because the rest of the chip can do other work.

Microsoft is including some of its own AI features in Windows 11 that rely on the NPU. If you join a video call, you can open the Settings app on your Surface Pro Copilot+ PC and turn on an option called Eye Contact. It will make it look like you’re looking directly into your webcam during calls, even when you’re reading text. Apple has a similar simulated eye contact feature for FaceTime calls on the iPad.

In Paint, you can enable Cocreator mode to produce an image inspired by whatever you draw on the screen using a description you type in. The computer's Neural Processing Unit (NPU) outputs the image, but only after Microsoft sends your text prompt to the cloud to make sure you're not trying to create something malicious or offensive.

I found it fun to see how Cocreator would interpret my suggestions, but the results weren’t impressive. It would have been better to just press the Copilot key on my keyboard, which opens a chat window with Microsoft’s Copilot, and ask it to create images in a text chat. But you don’t get many free image-creating credits with Copilot before it starts to process requests more slowly, whereas Paint is consistently fast.

There’s an AC adapter in the box that magnetically connects to Microsoft’s Surface Connect port. This will be familiar to those who’ve bought Surface devices in the past decade. But you can also charge using one of the two USB-C ports, which is convenient.

The Surface Pro can connect to three 4K displays, while the MacBook Air with the M3 chip can drive one external display at up to 6K resolution at 60Hz refresh rate.

There’s no headphone jack on the $999 tablet. And it doesn’t come with a keyboard, as usual. After all, the iPad still doesn’t come with a keyboard.

The standard Surface Pro keyboard, which magnetically attaches to the bottom of the Surface Pro, sells for $139.99, and if you also want a model with Microsoft's Slim Pen, you'll pay $279.99.

Microsoft sent me the new Surface Pro Flex Keyboard with the Slim Pen, a $449.98 bundle. It’s more expensive than a regular attachable keyboard because it connects via Bluetooth. Microsoft promises 41 hours of continuous typing with the accessory. It charges while connected to the Surface Pro.

For some users, it may be useful to remove the keyboard and use it while keeping the tablet within easy reach. I didn't find the accessory to be a huge upgrade from the good old Surface Pro keyboard.

The biggest AI feature coming to the new Surface Pro and other Copilot+ PCs isn't here yet.

When Microsoft announced its Copilot+ PCs in May, executives spent a lot of time talking about its Recall feature, which would let you type a few words to search your PC’s activity and see matching results. The company delayed the feature’s launch and said Recall would be disabled by default after security researchers discovered that hackers could access users’ private data through screenshots the feature took.

Meanwhile, some apps, including Google Drive and ExpressVPN, still won’t work on these new devices, at least for now. And as Windows on Arm gains early momentum, there may be times when a traditional version of an app is available in the Microsoft App Store, but the Arm-native version can be found on the developer’s website. (This is the case with the VLC media player, for example.) But as a general rule, software is less of an issue now for Surface PCs with long battery life.

Microsoft has reduced Copilot’s ability to control your PC on that device, making it more like a chatbot visiting the web. When the company brought Copilot to Windows 11 last fall, the assistant could open programs, switch to dark mode, and disable Bluetooth.

The 11th-generation Surface Pro is worth considering, as long as you can be sure that the apps you need will run on an Arm-powered device. That’s likely to be truer than it was five years ago.

The battery life is good, I like how easy it is to upgrade and replace the storage, and the display is excellent. It’s a solid upgrade over previous models. Microsoft made the right decision to move to Arm-based processors. But the company has been promoting this device as an “AI PC,” and for now, the biggest AI features are yet to come.