A complicated question with one very simple answer:
Cost
The build quality of the Surface is definitely impressive. Its internals are not. Yes, everyone hates the Tegra 3, some with good reason. However, it’s not the worst thing to ever happen to consumer tablets. In fact, I remember the
Nexus 7 receiving a ton of praise for its “underpowered chip”. Here’s what the reviewer had to say.
Okay, so a 35-second boot time does leave a little bit to be desired, but once you're inside the OS, applications load quickly and respond briskly, even graphics-heavy ones like the Google Play magazine app. Webpages are rendered promptly and swiping through them is snappy.
But remember that the Nexus 7 came out in June 2012. Everyone really seemed to like the Tegra 3 back then. Jump ahead to the release of the Surface RT and suddenly
it’s the worst possible thing to ever happen to tablets.
So what made the Tegra 3 powered Nexus 7 so palatable and not the Surface? Probably the $300 dollar price difference!
The Nexus 7 launched at $200. You could even argue that the Nexus 7 was too cheap. That Google would have been justified if they sold it at $250-$300. But try selling the Nexus 7 at $500 and it doesn’t really work. Unlike Apple’s
incredibly powerful A5 chips, or the Samsung Exynos 5250, the Tegra 3 was starting to show its age. So, $200 seems like a completely justifiable price. And to give the Tegra 3 some credit, it’s not completely useless. From the article above,
On Geekbench, a cross-platform benchmark that measures raw processing power rather than graphics, the quad-core Tegra 3 blew its competitor way as it achieved an overall score of 1,571 to the A5X’s 692.
The Surface RT is probably the best tablet to ever take advantage of the Tegra’s processing power. As I’m typing this right now, I’m running 8.1 while outputting to a 1080p monitor, using Microsoft Word and IE11 with 8 tabs open. I also have Xbox Music docked to the right and it’s streaming my music from the cloud. Hate the Tegra 3 as much as you want but that multitasking should not be underestimated. I tried multitasking on the “more powerful” Kindle Fire HD 8.9 and the browser could barely handle two tabs (it froze on me). So even though the Tegra 3 is good,
it’s just not $500 dollars good. Especially not in 2013 money.
Do you remember the prices that manufacturers
said their tablets were going to cost? Like when Lenovo said RT tablets
would launch at 300 dollars.
A $300 Tegra 3 powered Surface RT sounded reasonable, right? NOPE! The prices for initial RT tablets were insane. The Surface launched at $500, and in many places you could only buy it bundled with a touchcover for $600+. Other RT tablets launched around the same price point. You cannot launch Windows RT tablets at the same price point as full blown Windows 8 tablets and laptops. The one advantage that RT was supposed to bring was cost and Microsoft took that away.
Windows RT’s problem is that for $500 dollars there was always a superior product next to it. Android tablets offered similar hardware to RT tablets but are far cheaper. The iPad is expensive but has the impressive A5 chip and retina display. Windows 8 tablets/laptops gave you full blown Windows and that’s just hard to beat for the asking price.
Flat out,
RT tablets should have never launched above $350. That was supposed to be the trade-off that everyone was expecting. You pay a lot less but in return you get a slimmed down version of Windows that has a longer battery life and isn’t plagued with the same problems of x86 computers.
Yes, Microsoft needed to do a better job explaining the differences between RT and Windows 8. But even if Microsoft did, even if the public knew the differences, even if there was no desktop mode, Microsoft (and OEMs) were still charging way too much money for an inferior product. Plus they waited too long to drop the price. Now the Surface RT is $350 and Microsoft should do the right thing and launch a brand new marketing campaign to explain why the Surface RT is worth the asking price.