Surface Go

Good advice from @dstrauss on all counts. I haven't read the entire thread, but after you posted your comment there was a total of 1 post that showed faster write speeds and that poster said it went down to 130 (which is what every other published SSD test showed for the SG 128GB. Still, make sure yours is fully up to snuff before the window expires.

My experience with all Surface devices (up to and including SB 1) is that the SSD sequential write speeds are abominable as are their 4K write speeds, which are more important in everyday usage. I know some have posted some better numbers in various Surface device reviews since SP3 through SB2 but there is something endemic in the crappy SSD devices they use or the firmware - my SB 256GB SSD is a branded Samsung pcie/nvme but it's speeds are very much like those shown by the poster here with his SG. It may be that the > 512GB drives are faster, but that seems like too much of a disparity. Same of course goes those awful Marvel wifi chips which I hear are being replaced by Qualcomm finally in the SG. So bizarre that a $399 device has (much) faster wifi than a $3,000 SB2!

Anyway, I know I'm whining, but I've come to consider the slow SSDs and wifi as the "Surface tax." And whatever makes the SG test higher on first run, but then drop way down probably explains why some tests - eg, notebookcheck.net - show faster SSD write speeds on 256GB SP3, SP4 and SB1 models, all of which I have owned an average of 3 each, all of which turned in crappy write speeds.

 

Well, as a guy who broke in on cassette tapes in 1975 on a TI breadbox, and graduated to 5.25" floppies with an IBM PCjr, even mSDXC is "fast"...everything is relative (except for Wacom over N-Trig).

 

Picked up a new one tonight. My scores are much better. They've all been around what you see. Thanks for the replies.

 

FYI... received mine tonight and can't switch out of S Mode... same with a bunch of people: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/97x1hj/cant_switch_out_of_s_mode/

Error: Something happened and we couldn't start the upgrade

 

I am affected by this bug as well. I called Microsoft technical support about it last night.

 

You probably have the Samsung SSD in it now. I had heard the Toshiba SSD were slower compared to the Samsung SSDs.

 

Ah, the PCjr... I remember having one of those. I had the Microsoft side-car that gave you a Microsoft mouse. It definitely wasn't a speedster. Nor was the 300 baud modem.

 

I had a RAM sidecar with individually socketed RAM chips...

 

Thanks for the reply. I just checked and it has the same Toshiba SSD as my returned SG.

 

Nice... the card I had was called the Microsoft PCJr. Booster... and it added a whopping 128K of RAM. Its item number 6 in this article that walks through Microsoft's hardware history - https://www.pcmag.com/feature/300240/the-secret-history-of-microsoft-hardware/6