Watching history circle around again is fascinating, especially at the intersection of laptops and tablet PCs. The original device that would eventually be called the Surface Pro remains a vivid memory. In 2012, it was named the Surface for Windows 8 Pro, both long gone. The latest Microsoft Surface Pro ($999.99 to start; $1,499.99 as tested) isn't the first Surface tablet—it's not even the first with an Arm-based processor.
But it is the first of what Microsoft calls Copilot+ PCs, hallmarked by advanced AI features powered by a neural processing unit (NPU) that's part of the main processor. At least for the moment, these Copilot+ Surface models are a Qualcomm-only affair, powered by the chip maker's new Arm-based Snapdragon X chips instead of the usual x86 processors from Intel or AMD. However, despite their best efforts, Microsoft and Qualcomm have yet to fully overcome the performance and compatibility hurdles that have marred Windows on Arm from the start. Because of that, and the fact that its essential accessories are still sold separately, we can't give the latest Surface Pro a heartier recommendation at the moment than the score you see above.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X and NPUs Explained
Even if you're a regular PCMag reader, Snapdragon processors, NPUs, and the introduction of both Copilot+ PCs and AI PCs might require a quick refresher.
First are the Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Chipmaker Qualcomm is best known in the smartphone category and in many Android tablets. The latest version of Qualcomm's flagship processor is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) called Snapdragon X designed for laptops. The chips use the Arm64 instruction set, which competes with Intel's x86 (also used by AMD). Apple notably ditched Intel a few years back for house-designed chips based on Arm.
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One Cool Thing: Copilot+ Laptops With Snapdragon X Elite
However, Windows traditionally runs on the x86 instruction set for processors, limiting the operating system to Intel and AMD chips. Qualcomm has tried to make Windows on Arm happen for years, but switching away from x86 means that most apps won't run without either being rebuilt for Arm or using emulation. At Microsoft's big Surface 2024 reveal event, it announced that many major apps would get Arm-native versions, and everything else would be made usable with a new emulation technology called Prism. The goal is to make it indistinguishable whether Windows is running on x86 or Arm64 chips.
Why the big push for Snapdragon and Arm now? Laptops are undergoing a quiet revolution as AI becomes a significant part of the regular user experience. Generative AI tools that rely on remote servers, like Dall-E and ChatGPT, have some folks clamoring for similar tools built into their laptops to run on-device, but laptop processors haven't yet been up to the task. Most on-device AI requires heavy-duty graphics hardware to provide the necessary horsepower.
Enter the NPU, essentially extra processing hardware built into the SoC to handle machine learning tasks. Intel coined the NPU name, but Apple already provided similar capabilities with its Neural Engine, leaving Intel and AMD to play catch up. The first NPUs eked out a mere 10 to 15 trillion operations per second—or TOPS, the new measurement for AI task performance. That's enough to power simple AI features like webcam background blur but not enough for a ChatGPT-like experience to run locally.
The latest NPUs are several times more potent than the first NPUs introduced in late 2023. Microsoft has started a new subcategory called Copilot+ PCs, which use NPUs capable of 40 TOPS or more to power several built-in AI features, like instant captions and translations. A new Paint feature, Cocreator, combines sketching and written prompts to create generative images, and there's also a new Copilot chatbot experience. Qualcomm's Snapdragon CPUs are the first to market with an NPU that can produce the necessary performance for the locally run features. Still, they will soon be followed by Intel's “Lunar Lake” and AMD's “Strix Point,” which may well match or beat Arm's NPU performance and deliver the x86 experience that most Windows users know.
The Surface Pro isn't your standard Windows machine despite the Microsoft name. The Qualcomm hardware inside is still an unproven option, making this tablet more of a proof-of-concept than a mainstream device. If you want to support the Windows on Arm movement or be an early adopter of AI features a couple of months before Intel and AMD options hit the market, then it's worth considering, but the rest of this review shows that it's not the tablet PC for most everyday shoppers. At least, not yet.
Configurations: Attractive, But Those Accessory Prices...
The basic Surface Pro sells for just $999.99 and features a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, 16GB of memory, a 256GB solid-state drive, and an LCD screen. However, it does not include the keyboard/screen cover ($179.99) that turns it into a detachable 2-in-1 laptop, nor does it include the Surface Slim Pen ($129.99) for note-taking or drawing. You'll need to buy the accessories separately, bumping the total price to $1,309.97 for the least-expensive configuration with these two crucial parts.
Our review unit upgrades from the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus CPU to the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite, giving you a bump in processing power and speed. It also swaps in a premium, 13-inch OLED panel, a first for the Surface Pro. With 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD for storage, this version of the tablet alone sells for $1,499.99, and you can opt for 1TB of storage for an extra $200.
Our tablet shipped with the Microsoft Surface Slim Pen (2nd Edition) and Pro Flex Keyboard for Pro (11th Edition), a two-for-one package that sells for $448.99. The package includes an upgraded wireless version of the keyboard cover and the same Surface Slim Pro Pen.
With the accessories, our review unit tallies up to $1,949.97, nearly double the base model's price. It has all the necessary elements for a laptop-like experience without the base model's cramped storage and less powerful chip.
Design: Still the Category Leader
Hardware aside, you cannot deny the Surface Pro's superb physical design. It is still one of the most impressive designs in personal computing and the category leader among Windows tablets. Despite cramming laptop capability into a compact tablet, Microsoft manages a simple and intuitive experience. The new and numerous NPU-powered Copilot features only help achieve that result.
Microsoft's chassis is impressively slim, measuring just 0.37 inch thick and weighing less than 2 pounds. The aluminum construction is light but sturdy, and our review unit came in a cool blue finish that Microsoft calls "Sapphire." Other color options include Black, Platinum (silver), and Dune (golden beige).
The tablet's light weight and grippy enclosure are exceptionally comfortable to hold, and the integrated kickstand remains second to none. It provides flexible positioning and sturdy support for the tablet no matter what angle you place it at. The friction hinge on the kickstand swings out as far as 165 degrees for more comfortable pen use or reading, which most laptops, let alone tablet PCs, don't do well. The Surface tablet design is still the best for portability and flexible use.
Using the Microsoft Surface Pro: Inputs, Screen, and Ports Are All Improved
The new Flex Pro keyboard is one of the coolest hardware updates to the Surface Pro. However, I'll repeat it: It's still grating that the true 2-in-1 capability of the Surface Pro still requires an extra accessory purchase, which, in this case, was an additional $448.99 for the bundle we got.
At least the keyboard has markedly improved, with a stiffer design and carbon-fiber backing for a surprisingly sturdy, steady typing experience. Of course, it doesn't feel as stable or as substantial as a genuine laptop keyboard. But it's remarkably close.
It also has a new trick. When you pull the magnetically attached keyboard cover away from the Surface Pro, it detaches but stays wirelessly connected over Bluetooth, letting you continue using it as a keyboard and touchpad. It's a small but impressive improvement over past versions.
My only gripe with the Keyboard Flex Pro isn't the keys but the touchpad, which doesn't always respond to my fingertips, taking a moment to wake up and start moving the cursor. It happens most often when the keyboard sits idle for a bit, but this stuttery wake-up is jarring compared with every other feature, which seems to react instantly.
At least the touchpad is smooth and responsive, if a bit tiny. Compared with past iterations, the pad has been widened to make more room for cursor control, but its vertical size still feels cramped. The haptic feedback provides a pleasing click response, and multitouch gestures work as expected.
Our review unit also came equipped with an OLED display; the base model is a more common IPS panel. The move to OLED is significant not because the IPS display isn't good—arguably, it's one of the best you can get!—but because OLED is simply that much better. The deeper blacks, the crispy contrast, the vivid colors—everything that makes OLED excellent makes the Surface Pro better.
Touch-screen capability is vital to the Surface tablet experience, but I'm just as impressed with Microsoft's flat Surface Slim Pen. The shape still looks gawky, but you can't deny how smoothly the pen tracks. It has a more natural pen feel than the overly slippery sensation you usually get when putting a pen tip or stylus to glass.
The Surface Slim Pen also has some deeper features, with a button on the side, a clickable end cap (which pulls up Microsoft OneNote), and haptic feedback built in. The pen charges wirelessly whenever it's docked in its bay on the keyboard, but only when the keyboard is attached to the tablet.
One of the benefits of a true tablet, as opposed to a convertible 2-in-1 design, is the rear-facing camera in addition to the expected front-facing webcam. The front-facing webcam looks sharp, thanks to its 1440p Quad HD resolution, which beats the Full HD webcams on many premium laptops. Looking at myself on the webcam, I'm pleased with the sharp detail and realistic colors.
In addition to the high-res sensor, Microsoft boosts the image quality with AI enhancements called Windows Studio Effects. Some of these are mild, like automatic framing, which keeps the webcam image centered on your face even if you move a bit. Eye-contact mode automatically makes your eyes look like you're looking directly at the camera (which looks more natural for other people on a video call) versus looking at your screen, which is what you're inclined to do. Other AI tweaks are significantly more noticeable (if less practical), like creative filters that make your live webcam feed look like an animated video, a watercolor, or other illustration.
Microsoft's rear-facing camera will be handy when you're out and about and want to snag a photo of something. This secondary camera has a 10-megapixel sensor, which can capture 4K images and video.
The Surface Pro's port selection is slim, but that doesn't mean the tablet is light on connectivity. The dual USB-C/USB4 ports provide many capabilities, from DisplayPort connectivity and data transfer to power delivery with fast charging (provided you use a 65-watt power supply). The USB4 bandwidth is also ideal for connecting a desktop docking station or a pocket-friendly hub.
One especially welcome Surface Pro feature is multiple monitor support. The tablet can handle up to three external 4K monitors while providing full support for the tablet touch screen. That's a notable step up from, say, the 2023 version of the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro, which can only handle two 4K displays, and that only with the lid closed.
Wireless connectivity is also on the cutting edge: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. The Wi-Fi 7 spec is still extremely new, but it works with your existing Wi-Fi 5 or 6 routers, since backward compatibility is baked in.
Life With Copilot and Windows on Arm
As part of my hands-on evaluation, I was eager to try Microsoft's new AI features. When Microsoft announced one feature after another at the Surface launch event, I was sold. I'm an AI enthusiast and was looking forward to the magic of on-device AI, of which Microsoft promised several.
The announced flagship feature, Copilot Recall, promised easy file search with natural language and contextual understanding. Thanks to a system that would take screenshots of all your laptop activity and then use AI vision and contextual knowledge to make it easy to retrace your steps and find whatever you needed, it looked powerful and genuinely helpful.
But it also looked like a privacy and security nightmare and has since been, well, recalled and relegated to a piece of the opt-in Windows Insider Program beta, mainly due to security concerns. Given that this sounded like one of the most useful applications of AI assistance I'd seen, it's a real disappointment that the feature was flubbed so severely that I can't even try it on this consumer device.
The remaining features are less all-encompassing but still interesting. Let's look at each.
Cocreator in Paint
Cocreator combines MS Paint with generative AI images, letting you sketch and prompt to turn your humble drawings into impressive art. At least, that's the idea.
In reality, the sketch-and-generate tool is hokey. The first time I tried it, my sketch of a dog was turned into a clip-art-style image that didn't resemble the view of the dog I drew or the prompt I'd written, which asked for a golden retriever.
A few tweaks later, I still couldn't get a proper side view of a standing dog. Cocreator reinterpreted my simple sketch of a doghouse in the background as another dog, with my AI-enhanced design getting further and further from my intended image.
The next time I tried the new feature, I needed to sign up for it. The feature is now in preview, and AI generations are limited by a credit system similar to the one used on Bing's Image Creator.
Live Captions
This exciting-sounding feature promises live, closed-caption-style text for any audio on the system (such as video calls or streaming content). It can auto-translate that text to and from 40-plus languages. The idea of live, instant translation during video calls sounds amazing, and I've been eager to try it out.
I started with something simple: a narrated video of a chess match. While this isn't the most exciting visual material, it has a consistent cadence, a shared vocabulary across languages, and a wealth of material to view in almost any language.
But on the first video I tried, the live captions stalled halfway through as the announcers finished their commentary on the match, and the video switched to a post-game conversation between the players. The announcers got captioning, but the players mysteriously did not. (YouTube's automatic captioning, on the other hand, picked up the dialogue just fine.) I tried a few more English-language videos without further weirdness.
However, when I switched to a German chess tutorial video, the lag between spoken language and translated text was several seconds behind the spoken words. It feels silly to complain about the live audio translation, but it was enough that I had trouble following the video while reading the delayed text.
Switching to slow-paced origami instruction videos for beginning Japanese language learners, the captioning struggled even with the narrator's slow, clearly enunciated instructions. Reliability was hit or miss (as compared with YouTube's automatically translated captions), but it was generally understandable.
I then confirmed this in a brief video call with a German-speaking friend. The translation quality was fine enough, if imperfect, but the lag was significant. It sounds silly to complain that automatic live caption translation is anything less than impressive, but the lag makes smooth conversation difficult.
Video Call Enhancement
Webcam features like background blurring are nothing new, but the latest Copilot+ systems let the PC use the NPU instead of the primary CPU or GPU to handle this image processing, freeing up performance headroom for your actual work. This enhancement is felt rather than seen, resulting in less lag and smoother multitasking during meetings.
Other features, like creative filters, are more visible, so I also played around with them. The result is noticeable: Altering images of my face to make them look more like a watercolor or animation (think Pixar, not anime or cartoons) is frustrating due to the tool's lack of granular controls. I can't adjust the level of filtering, so I have no way to turn the artistic rendering up or down, and the effect is frankly underwhelming. Anybody who's expecting Snapchat-level image filters will be disappointed. This seems to be more of a proof of concept than an actual feature.
Improved Copilot App
Finally, we have the improved Copilot app, which brings the Bing Copilot tool to your desktop as a properly windowed experience instead of the sidebar presentation we've seen on past systems. This is a handy change, letting you go full screen with the chat interface or use it in side-by-side windows as you work in another app.
But frankly, it doesn't seem like much of a change, and that general sense of "underwhelming" is pervasive with all of these AI features. Microsoft delivers enough here to claim AI-powered features but not enough functionality quite yet to make them the prime driver for buying a new tablet.
Granted, this is early days for the whole concept of on-device AI, and the Copilot features aren't limited to the Surface line. (You'll find nearly a dozen other Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PCs in stores now.) But it feels like a lot of hype around some middling features, and the reality just falls flat.
Testing the Microsoft Surface Pro: Level Your Expectations of Windows on Arm
The Surface Pro is more than just a showcase for Microsoft's new AI-enhanced version of Windows; it's also a big step forward for Windows on Arm, specifically the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor.
Shifting from x86 to Arm64 is no small change, but Microsoft is trying to soften the abrupt shift with several apps that run natively on Arm. Plus, a new emulation layer called Prism promises to let you use regular x86 apps on the new hardware.
It also introduces some significant wrinkles in our testing process. Many of our standard key benchmark tests won't run on Snapdragon X, regardless of Microsoft's emulation claims, so direct comparison with leading Windows machines is seriously limited.
But plenty of freshly minted benchmarking tools were built or reworked for this new Arm environment, so we're not entirely out of luck for our usual test-focused evaluations. We've put together a new lineup of tests specifically for this batch of Snapdragon machines, but take these results with plenty of salt. These aren't our usual tests or the traditional measures we apply to review units, so we have a much more limited comparison set for these tests.
That makes for some shaky comparison-making and necessitates more tea-leaf reading than usual, but it also illustrates the larger problem: You'll find a lot of apps and use cases that you're used to on a Windows machine that you expect to simply work because you've used the same apps in one form or another for years, possibly decades. But they don't.
Microsoft has wrangled native-on-Arm versions of its Office suite, Edge and Google's Chrome browsers, Slack, streaming apps like Disney+ and Spotify, WhatsApp, Zoom, and Adobe Photoshop. Microsoft claims that 90% of your time will be spent on these applications. Prism, Microsoft's emulator that's similar to Apple's Rosetta 2, is meant to pick up the slack for that remaining 10%, but we'll have to do some more testing to see how well it does the job.
For the moment, I have my suspicions. Though my experience has been limited to trying to run our standard benchmark tests, I got a taste of what life will be like when emulation isn't enough, and it can be frustrating. A number of test apps just didn't work, and a few anecdotal tests done in emulation were markedly slower.
We were actually able to compare the emulated version of Handbrake with Handbrake running natively on Arm64. Though both versions ran just fine, the x86 version of our transcoding test showed the kind of performance hit emulation introduces: It took nearly 4 minutes longer using emulation (11:21 when emulated, 7:23 with proper Arm support). And that slower performance is what you get when an app works as intended, which isn't guaranteed as of this writing. (Of course, a native Arm version of Handbrake exists too, and we mapped out that performance as well, which was much better.)
But for most of our benchmark tests, we were left to hunt for Arm64-compatible versions or find usable equivalents, which we didn't always find. Testing mainstays like our PCMark 10 productivity suite and many of our usual 3DMark tests weren't supported, and I suspect users will run into a similar situation more often than Microsoft suggests. Early reports suggest that app support is hit and miss, and it's even more so for things like drivers for printers and other peripherals.
It all raises questions about whether your new Surface Pro will properly support the specific apps and device drivers you need. And right now, we just don't know. We'll be following up with more pointed testing on app support in Snapdragon-powered systems in the coming weeks. But shoppers should bear in mind that this is an evolving situation. Within the next few months, this could all be a much reduced concern.
Windows on Arm today should be fine for users that mostly need to use web apps or light productivity tools. (Browsers and key software like the Microsoft Office suite, along with many key communications apps like Slack and WhatsApp are widely supported.) But if you want to simply use a system out of the box without having to think about what version of Windows is supporting what, or what CPU your system is running on, then x86 is still what we recommend.
Reviews are as much about the systems you compare a product with as the tests you run, but the Surface Pro's hardware and OS make direct comparisons difficult. Thankfully, it's not the only Snapdragon-based PC here, with the recently reviewed 13-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop (2024) launching alongside it and the tested but not-yet-reviewed HP OmniBook X AI. These systems give us a clear baseline of where the Surface Pro falls in terms of performance compared with other Windows on Arm systems.
But that's hardly representative of the broader laptop world, so we have also run some or all of these same tests on several competitor systems, including the x86-powered Acer Swift Go 14 (2024), which has an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, and the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425) and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, which use Intel Meteor Lake U- and H-Series CPUs, respectively.
We also had some testing overlap with the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024) and have included it for comparison where we can. However, it suffers the further complication of being an Apple M3-powered macOS laptop with a distinct test lineup that doesn't always match its Windows competition.
Finally, to get a clearer sense of how the Surface Pro tablet did in battery and display tests, we also compared it with the Intel-based Surface Pro 9 from 2023. This system wasn't tested on the same selection of Arm-friendly benchmarks, but because the battery and display tests run equally well on both Windows versions, we can directly compare the two.
Note that our test-model Surface Pro used the middle of three Snapdragon X Elite CPUs in the current line. As mentioned earlier, the base model of this tablet uses the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus; the three 12-core Snapdragon X Elites differ slightly in boost clock rate. The middle X1E-80-100 tested here is the top option for this tablet. (Few OEM models based on Snapdragon X are using the top X1E-84-100 chip yet.)
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
We usually run the same general productivity benchmarks across mobile and desktop systems, but Windows on Arm left us scratching our heads about testing productivity and content creation. We had to skip our usual PCMark 10 tests but weren't out of luck on other tests. Newer versions of our favored tests often provide an Arm-compatible option.
We ran the newer Geekbench 6.3, which has an Arm64-compatible test built-in. We did the same in the HandBrake video transcoding test, using HandBrake 1.8 (instead of 1.4) and a newer version of Maxon's Cinebench rendering benchmark (trading R23 for the 2024 test).
Two legacy tests stayed in the mix: Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses the Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Running these with Prism gives us a better idea of how emulated apps perform.
HandBrake 1.8 is the closest to a pure processing test here, recruiting multiple processing threads to convert a video clip from 4K to 1080p. This timed test showed decent transcode times, but the Surface Pro's time was the slowest among our competing systems, even if still within an acceptable range. Of course, this being a tablet as opposed to a clamshell laptop, working within that more constricted thermal environment, we expected it to fall behind the other Snapdragon X Elite models here.
Cinebench multi-core rendering tests were another matter entirely, with the Surface Pro turning in the second-highest score and matching most competitors in single-core performance. However, both single- and multi-core results were notably lower than those of the Surface Laptop, illustrating how the differences in form factor can affect performance, even when running nearly identical processors. That's again simply a reflection of clamshell-type laptops providing more space for airflow, giving them more thermal leeway than the slimmer tablet.
In legacy tests, we saw mixed results. In Cinebench R23, the Surface Pro trailed the rest, but in Geekbench 5.4, the new Surface tablet took the third-place spot, right behind the 2024 Surface Laptop and the HP OmniBook X AI, both running on Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs.
Graphics Tests
Our usual graphics tests, whether basic graphics benchmarks like GFXBench or actual gaming tests, weren't any better supported on Arm. In place of our familiar benchmarks, we had to rely on some newer tests that are part of UL's 3DMark suite, including some that we already use to test Macs and new tests that provide Arm compatibility.
We start with 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited and Wild Life Extreme Unlimited. These two tests are run in Unlimited mode to work at any resolution, stressing the laptops' graphics hardware and testing at 1440p and 2160p, or 4K, respectively.
Next we used two versions of the UL's new 3DMark Steel Nomad test, which focus on common gaming APIs, like DirectX 12 and Apple's Metal, giving us a rough idea of how the Surface Pro will do with games. These tests focus on geometry and particle effects, not including ray tracing. On all of the 3DMark tests, higher scores indicate better performance.
In Wild Life Unlimited, the Surface Pro barely avoided the lowest scores. Wild Life Extreme Unlimited told a slightly different story, with the Surface Pro tablet beating several systems with a score of more than 6,000 points. The Apple MacBook Air led the pack, but it sort of cheats—Apple loads up the M3 with something closer to discrete GPU hardware and packages it on the same silicon as the CPU for faster performance. The result is often closer-to-game-ready graphics.
The Surface Pro delivered surprisingly impressive results in both the Lite and standard Steel Nomad tests. Whether that translates into actual gaming performance remains to be seen as we sort out our Arm gaming tests. Still, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite seems capable of general graphics demands, such as web browsing, streaming media, or even some photo editing.
AI Tests
Next, we wanted to test AI performance on both the Snapdragon systems we're evaluating and the other NPU-equipped laptops we currently have available for testing. The problem is that AI hardware testing for consumer laptops is nascent—new enough that established standards are still underway, and the tests available to us aren't always clearly comparable in what they run or how they run it. But for our first real crack at AI/NPU performance testing, we used the Procyon AI Computer Vision Benchmark by UL and Geekbench’s cross-platform ML test.
UL's Procyon AI Computer Vision Benchmark leverages several AI inference engines executing everyday machine-vision tasks using various popular neural networks. The tests were run using integer operations under respective platform runtime SDK models: Qualcomm SNPE for the X Elites and Intel OpenVINO for the Intel machines.
Of these results from this test, we're most comfortable comparing the various Snapdragon X Elite systems among themselves. We wouldn't directly compare them with the x86 machines here, for which the benchmark required us to run the test separately on CPU, GPU, and NPU. As we said, we're iffy on how comparable these tests actually are with one another because that's a wide range of options, and the test results gave us a wide range of numbers. Check back as we refine our AI hardware testing in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Geekbench’s cross-platform ML test simulates real-world machine learning tasks to gauge the overall AI workload performance, leaning on the CPU, GPU, and NPU. We ran this test in its CPU and DirectML (which leverages the GPU, in this case integrated) inference backend options. We're a little more confident in this comparison across x86, but the test isn't yet optimized for Arm, so take it with another heap of salt.
In UL Procyon, the four Snapdragon-equipped models we tested (all using variations on the same X Elite CPU) scored remarkably similar results within the 100-point range. The Surface Pro scored the lowest of the four, but only by a slim margin. The takeaway? One Snapdragon X Elite system is about as fast as another on the AI front.
More interesting were the two versions of Geekbench ML that we ran. In the DirectML test, we again saw similar results for the various Qualcomm systems, hovering right around the 2,000-point mark. But those numbers were far exceeded by some of the Intel systems, which sometimes put up double the scores. This variation seems to stem from what graphics hardware is in use. These systems have integrated graphics solutions, but some use Intel UHD Graphics, others use more advanced Intel Arc Graphics, and others use AMD Radeon integrated GPUs. For now, it seems that more powerful integrated graphics drive better performance.
The CPU-specific version of the ML test, on the other hand, was closer across the board. The Snapdragon machines bumped up to just under 3,000 points, while the Intel and AMD laptops ranged between 2,400 and 3,800. For a test that's not optimized for Qualcomm or Arm, this mostly tells us that CPU support for AI features is robust, whether it's an x86 chip or an Arm64 CPU.
Battery and Display Tests
The only portions of our standard Windows-laptop test suite that functioned normally on the Surface Pro were our battery and display benchmarks.
We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
In video rundown tests, the Surface Pro lasted a respectable 14 hours and 23 minutes. We haven't been able to battery test all of our Snapdragon systems yet, but as evidenced by the 2024 Surface Laptop's 25-plus-hour mark, the laptops will likely have a clear leg up, thanks to their larger chassis and extra volume to fill with larger batteries. The best evaluation is probably to compare it with the previous Surface Pro 9, which lasted 13 hours in the same test. Adding an hour to the battery life year-over-year is a notable improvement, likely due to the combination of Snapdragon's energy efficiency and the battery-extending virtues of OLED panels.
Speaking of OLED, the Surface Pro's screen provides broad color coverage and high brightness, but maybe not as much as we had hoped. Visually, the OLED display looks fantastic, but the color reproduction isn't quite as vivid when measured by our colorimeter. On the other hand, the brightness is among the best we've seen, with higher peak nits than the previous Surface Pro tablet or the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Final Thoughts on Snapdragon
The move to make Surface Pro a Qualcomm-only system was bold and part of the biggest push yet to make Arm a viable hardware choice within the Windows ecosystem. But a chicken-and-egg problem appears anytime new hardware is introduced, where developer support is scarce at first. In this case, nobody had Snapdragon systems to develop on, and even now that they do, only a handful of early adopters will be using them in these first days. So who would developers be making stuff for?
Microsoft and Qualcomm have done their best to prevent this by delivering day-one support for some of the most popular apps. Still, it only takes one or two attempts to step out of that small, manicured garden of apps to realize that Windows on Arm is still something of a wild frontier.
For most shoppers, that's reason enough not to buy the Surface Pro right now. But that could change in the coming months. After all, you'll find Snapdragon-powered laptops today from Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, and Samsung, among others. The landscape could change quickly.
Regardless, I keep returning to the fact that I've been hearing about Windows on Arm for my entire career, and never seen it materialize into anything substantial. The Surface Pro and other new Snapdragon models may be the wave of systems that crack that particularly hard nut, but it's still too early to tell.
Qualcomm's big chance is in its introducing Microsoft's Copilot+ PC features, supporting the latest AI features before Intel and AMD. But the lead time isn't long, and the features aren't enough. I'm generally bullish on AI in many incarnations, but if this is Microsoft's attempt at a new era of PCs, I'm just not too excited. That doesn't bode well for Qualcomm's big AI gamble because a mere smattering of exclusive features won't spur the kind of sales that need to happen for Windows on Arm to finally take off.
Verdict: Don't Bet (Just Yet) on Surface Pro's Big Arm Gamble
The 2024 Microsoft Surface Pro is a beautiful product that retains the legacy of one of the best-designed tablets ever made. The OLED display and detachable Flex Pro keyboard are genuinely exciting refinements to Microsoft's already stellar tablet design.
But Microsoft has yoked the latest Surface Pro to Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon hardware, and that's not a clear winner yet. Our own testing attempts show that this cake may need some more time in the oven, even if it is a big step forward for competing processor options. The CPU muscle is mostly there, but a new CPU paradigm needs a revolutionary opportunity to make this play work. The AI era of PCs may be that perfect moment, but right now, we're not dazzled. As excited as we have been about AI features in theory, the practical application feels like a missed opportunity...so far.
If you're the sort to throw down $2,000 to back a new technology or to play with the latest features, don't let us stop you. But for most shoppers, we say hold off on the Surface Pro for a little while, at least. Intel and AMD have their own AI PC models coming soon, with robust x86 OS support, a huge app ecosystem, and enough capability to ease the sting of less-than-useful AI features. This game's just in the top of the first inning.
An early Copilot+ PC, Microsoft's 2024 Surface Pro delivers a few cutting-edge AI features using Qualcomm's new Arm silicon. It's pricey, though, once kitted out with its accessories. Given the early uncertainty around Windows on Arm, we suggest waiting-and-seeing unless you're an early adopter.
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