Surface Pro (2017) Discussion Thread

Best Buy is going to be an early casualty of the retail establishment crumble. They literally never have anything decent on display or if they do, its weeks late.

 

I just spoke to the Store representatives and they do not have the new stylus or Surface Pen in yet. Sorry.

 

"The last generation keyboard will still work, and likely be available, but Microsoft is touting the new Signature Type Covers, which offer Alcantara fabric over the keyboards for a softer feel, and they are available in Platinum, Burgundy, and Cobalt Blue, which happens to coincide with the colors of the new pen, if you’re into matching sets. The Alcantara is covered in a polyurethane coating to provide protection from liquids and oils, so hopefully they will hold up well. The Alcantara on the Surface Ergonomic keyboard has been pretty decent so far."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11434/microsoft-announces-the-new-surface-pro

It's the only place I've seen it mentioned so far.

 

How bout just with SP4 pen? Theoretically, the digitizing resolution should be same (regardless of the pen), so even testing the older pen will give us a good idea of any jitter improvements.

 

what was the battery on the SP4?

nevermind its 39 from the below discussion....

 

So, will this new pen work on a Surface 3? By work, I mean will the features such as tilt be available on an S3 when you use the new pen. Or is there a unique controller on the new SPs?

 

There is a new controller in the SP5 (I don't care, I'm still calling it that ), but from my understanding, it's only required for the direct-to-screen low-latency ink rendering.

Tilt sensing will require the new Pen and the feature will be added via firmware update to the older Surface models with N-Trig digitizers (except the Laptop, as noted on the store page):

(Ars Technica)
"Initially, the tilt feature will only be available on the new Pro, but Microsoft has told us that it plans to release updates for certain older systems to enable tilt. The Surface Studio, being a machine that is in many ways built for artists, will particularly benefit from such an update."

 

Don't get too excited, you have to look at the "Designed Capacity" which is 45 Wh. That is the rated capacity value, which we can compare to other devices. I think, not 100% sure how BatteryInfoView tool measures/calculates. Still a nice improvement over the SP4's 39 Wh.

 

I already noticed this. However, all the four other Surface Pro (2017)'s showed this very same number.

EDIT: Lisa Gade confirmed a 49 Whr battery. It must have been a last minute change which is not being correctly shown in the preproduction models on display. However, the on-screen charged capacity of 49 Whr, which reflects the actual rating, is correct.

 

Battery capacity:



Device Manager:







Benchmarks:





Short observations:

+49 Whr rated battery capacity! (Ignore the rated capacity in my screencap. It is erroneous since it is a preproduction model. The actual charged capacity shown reflects the correct rating. Lisa Gade, in her first look video below, confirmed this 49 Whr rated capacity.)
+The i5 model is 5 percent faster than the i7 model Surface Pro 4 and 20 percent faster than the i5 model Surface Pro 4!
+Even though the i5 model is completely fanless, I experience no throttling even after dozens of consecutive benchmark runs!
+Subjectively, it feels much more solid in build and evenly distributed in weight than the Surface Pro 4!