Surface book or surface pro 4?

[Marcelo Siciliano]

I'm between the surface book i5 nvidia 256 and the pro 4 i5 256, but I'm worried about the issues. I see that a lot of the issues that pro 4 had are now fixed. What about the surface book issues?

 

[kevinpleasants]

I have the Surface Book i5 256gb. The only problem I had with mine was the display driver crashing and recovering every now and then. After an update I have NO problems with my Surface Book. Good luck. I hope this helps.

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[Marcelo Siciliano]

What about the battery life? Are you getting more than 6 hours?

 

[Dush Ku]

I have a base model and on regular web browsing and MS Office use I get about 12% battery drain per hour. So a decent 8 hours or so at 35% screen brightness. Which may sound dim, but the screen is so bright that's what has been comfortable to look at.

 

[Lethal_NFS]

I'm between the surface book i5 nvidia 256 and the pro 4 i5 256, but I'm worried about the issues. I see that a lot of the issues that pro 4 had are now fixed. What about the surface book issues?

Chrome crashes often
SD card does not go all the way in
Tablet battery life is about 3 hours
Low memory issues
The lid does not open easily. You have to use 2 hands to open it
Reported issues using the dock

These are the issues I have run in to.

 

[zerospace-net]

You should probably pose this question to the Pro 4 folks as well . Please note that I am using the i5/8GB/256/dGPU model Surface Book. I bought my machine from a Microsoft Store on launch day and have NOT exchanged it nor reset it since then.

My Issues:
- Battery life 6-8 hours at best (yes, tablet battery lasts about 2-3 hours, but this is by design and needs to be considered before purchasing). I do really miss the tablet-first aspect of a Surface Pro (I had a Pro 3), but I gave that up for the on-demand dGPU in the SB. I can live with the shorter tablet battery if I can have better graphics performance. I honestly expected better battery life while in connected standby, but this is a known issue that is supposed to be addressed sometime soon.

- I still have display driver issues. It no longer crashes/recovers, but I get a lot of black screens in various scenarios (sometimes on wake, I just get a black screen that never wakes up requring a forced restart; I've had the black screen at random times while detaching/reattaching the clipboard from the base). These issues seem to be FAR more prevalent the more I dock the SB to an external monitor and undock regularly. If I just use the SB as a laptop by itself, it's quite stable. Note that I DO NOT use the Microsoft Surface Dock. I simply use a mini-DP to DVI active adapter, a USB 3.0 to ethernet adapter along with a powered USB hub. I also get random patches of black on context menus within applications like Firefox (mainly in Firefox), and I've also had some display issues in other Windows apps as well. It's hard to describe them as anything but weird display issues, but they all seem to be OS or driver-related.

- Occasionally does not play nicely with some USB devices. No rhyme or reason to this, it just sometimes acts like my USB to ethernet adapter isn't there (only on initial plug in, once it recognizes it, it stays that way just fine). Other times, it will decide not to like my wireless mouse (mouse simply stops working, but usually this is nearly immediately after plugging it in). A quick unplug, re-plug fixes this. These both happen very rarely, but they DO happen.

- Hibernate sometimes causes weird issues on wake. I try NOT to allow my SB to enter a full hibernate state, as it often behaves weirdly on wake/resume. If I'm going to see any BSoDs or weird hangs, they happen after resuming from hibernation. Usually they happen immediately upon resuming -- I'll get the lovely, dreaded black screen with the RealSense camera light stuck "on" (this happens far more often on resume from hibernate than resume from connected standby). I've had the nvidia driver cause a BSoD immediately following a resume from hibernation once (back in November). It's been a bizarre, hard to hash out set of errors and glitches, but mostly following a wake from hibernation, rather than connected standby. So, I don't trust hibernation at ALL.

Other than my obvious issues with the display drivers, I have no significant problems with the Surface Book's abilities. I use Photoshop daily (it runs on the dGPU) without any issues. I have not had any low memory problems. I play some games on my Surface Book, and things work fine (Diablo 3, mainly). No major issues with Windows apps. As long as the drivers are all playing nicely, everything works great and performance is fantastic, in my experience.

 

[xandros9]

yea in general i think this thread is fine as it is, we don't do redundant threads out here. (or at least, we try)

the question's fine here.

 

[zerospace-net]

yea in general i think this thread is fine as it is, we don't do redundant threads out here. (or at least, we try)

the question's fine here.

I mean no disrespect, but how is the person posing the question to get answers on the performance of Surface Pro 4s from owners of Surface Books? I know I can't answer that, as I own a Surface Book and not a Pro 4. Unless this thread shows up in both forums, if the OP wants a well-rounded set of answers on which to base a decision, they should probably ask what the issues are with the Pro 4 in the Pro 4 forum or spend a lot of time sifting through the threads there looking at posts about issues. I didn't meant to suggest that they literally re-post this exact thread over there, but rather, seek the same information from Pro 4 owners as well.

 

[xandros9]

I mean no disrespect, but how is the person posing the question to get answers on the performance of Surface Pro 4s from owners of Surface Books? I know I can't answer that, as I own a Surface Book and not a Pro 4. Unless this thread shows up in both forums, if the OP wants a well-rounded set of answers on which to base a decision, they should probably ask what the issues are with the Pro 4 in the Pro 4 forum or spend a lot of time sifting through the threads there looking at posts about issues. I didn't meant to suggest that they literally re-post this exact thread over there, but rather, seek the same information from Pro 4 owners as well.

perhaps my POV is a bit skewed, but these all appear in the New Posts section etc. and the subforums aren't too restrictive, - like I don't own a Pro anything, but hello!

 

[zerospace-net]

perhaps my POV is a bit skewed, but these all appear in the New Posts section etc. and the subforums aren't too restrictive, - like I don't own a Pro anything, but hello!

Got it. I just realized its a mute point anyways, the OP seems to have already made up his/her mind about the Pro 4 and I think is specifically asking about the Surface Book's issues, so I stand corrected! (How I missed that initially, I don't know, I blame mornings & not enough coffee ) Either way, I've already provided my input on that matter, so I shall quit hijacking this thread & move on.

 

[orlbuckeye]

I went to Best Buy looking at the Surface Pro 4 and came away wanting the Surface Book. The big reason is the price of the SP4 with the keyboard isn't that far off from the Surface.

One of the posts talked alot about the battery life of the Clipboard alone being 3 hours but I always use the Clipboard attached to the base and flipped and closed over the keyboard and I get the same battery life if I'm using as a laptop. Also one of the connectors that attached to the base(keyboard) can be used to plug in the power supply to charge or just use the power supply to power the tablet.

 

[CraigCole]

I'm between the surface book i5 nvidia 256 and the pro 4 i5 256, but I'm worried about the issues. I see that a lot of the issues that pro 4 had are now fixed. What about the surface book issues?

As a rather unhappy Surface Pro 4 owner I'd say wait on getting either of these products. Sleep/wake issues, display-driver crashes and sleeping battery drain are but a few of the troubles you'll face with the SP4. Looking at the forums here it seems the Surface Book is even less reliable. Good luck!

 

[Marcelo Siciliano]

As a rather unhappy Surface Pro 4 owner I'd say wait on getting either of these products. Sleep/wake issues, display-driver crashes and sleeping battery drain are but a few of the troubles you'll face with the SP4. Looking at the forums here it seems the Surface Book is even less reliable. Good luck!

I have a different impression! I have been looking both forums and I looks the surface book is more reliable than the SP4. Looks like it has less big issues than sp4.

 

[Lethal_NFS]

How can something on it's 4th revision has so many issues????