Hands-on Experiences with the Surface Pro 4

[Poirots Progeny]

When I played with the pro 3 on Thursday holding it as I do like my iPad it felt pretty heavy. The OS was silky smooth.

I'm just worried in regards to using it in my lap as I don't have a desk what with the way the keyboard is,

It is heavier than an iPad - it does a lot more and packs different hardware, but then it's a pc, NOT a tablet. It's probably better to think of a big black tower pc, when thou want to compare the sp line - and the keyboard is supposedly stiffer, with bigger keys. I use the sp3 on my lap but have to say I prefer it on a desk - good for work and better in the back. But you can do it. If the keyboard is improved as they say, the lap experience should be greatly improved. But yes, you can definitely use it in the lap, and you can just use the screen keyboard and that may be even easier!

 

[Anastashia197]

I went there too! The Surface Pro 4 was so awesome. I wasn't sure If I wanted to upgrade from my Surface Pro 3 (which I bought just 4 months ago), but after feeling out the SP4 - I was convinced. I pre-ordered within 30 minutes of trying it out. :grin:

 

[Anastashia197]

It's definitely stiffer. I tried out the new type cover and the bounce of the keyboard has lessened from the old one.

 

[wplee]

I spilt coffee on my business laptop's keyboard on Thursday, soaking under the keys. Now the return key and delete etc are sticking. Another advantage the Surface Pro 4 has over the Surface Book, much cheaper to replace the keyboard.

 

[chattoe]

I went there too! The Surface Pro 4 was so awesome. I wasn't sure If I wanted to upgrade from my Surface Pro 3 (which I bought just 4 months ago), but after feeling out the SP4 - I was convinced. I pre-ordered within 30 minutes of trying it out. :grin:

What stood out for you to convince you to upgrade, do you use the pro as your main laptop and tablet?

 

[Poirots Progeny]

I spilt coffee on my business laptop's keyboard on Thursday, soaking under the keys. Now the return key and delete etc are sticking. Another advantage the Surface Pro 4 has over the Surface Book, much cheaper to replace the keyboard.

Now I have to ask... Did you do that on purpose??? Lol
.
Good to hear the kb is stiffer - it's a day one purchase for me, wwhenever it arrives in the UK!

 

[Talldog]

Well, my wife and I got to the Microsoft store this afternoon to look at the SP4. Love the new keyboard and the way the pen sticks to the side and the new screen and, well everything. We ended up pre-ordering 2 of them, I7/16Gb/256.

I generally try to avoid wishing away any of my life, but boy I sure can't wait for 10/26 to get here.

 

[Axeelant]

Since so many of you are upgrading, i'll just go on and say this. Is someone is willing to sell their SP3 with i7 for 800€ i'm willing to buy it hahaha

 

[donhillla]

I hope they do come in on 10/26. But, pre-order online has the i7 ship date before 11/20. Earlier would be better.

 

[onysi]

Went and played with the Surface Pro 4 at the Woodland Hills, California store last night

that's my store too lol. i saw the Teal cover, and it made me rethink.. i'm aiming for red, but that teal looks elegant with silver body of the surface. I forgot to ask about the Lumia phones after preordering both band 2 and surface pro 4. I will probably go back later this week but ehh maybe Ill see u there on the 26th

 

[GSOgymrat]

I went to the Microsoft store and saw the Band 2, Surface Pro 4 and Lumia 950 XL. I've pre-ordered the Band 2 and I'm going to pre-order the Lumia 950 XL but I'm undecided on Surface Pro 4. Surface Pro 4 is definitely an improvement, particularly the keyboard and the pen. The problem is my Surface Pro 3 meets my needs, especially since I can just upgrade the Type Cover, and Surface Pro 4 is a serious chunk of change. This trip to the Microsoft store is going to be expensive!

 

[tennisfan#AC]

I went to the Microsoft store and saw the Band 2, Surface Pro 4 and Lumia 950 XL. I've pre-ordered the Band 2 and I'm going to pre-order the Lumia 950 XL but I'm undecided on Surface Pro 4. Surface Pro 4 is definitely an improvement, particularly the keyboard and the pen. The problem is my Surface Pro 3 meets my needs, especially since I can just upgrade the Type Cover, and Surface Pro 4 is a serious chunk of change. This trip to the Microsoft store is going to be expensive!

I visited Best Buy yesterday and played around with the Surface Pro 4 and came to the same conclusions as you. The Surface Pro 4 is an improvement and a little lighter in weight. And like you, I am very happy with my Surface Pro 3. The keyboard feels so much better and the pen now feels like a real pen when you write on the display. I really hate that Best Buy didn't have a Surface Book for me to check out. I need to purchase a laptop for a coworker, so he will get my Surface Pro 3 and I will purchase the Surface Pro 4 for myself. LOL.

 

[jbaylon]

Does anyone know of any discounts I can make use of? I've heard of a 10% Best Buy student discount that I can make use of, but I'm wondering if there are more/better ones. Similarly, does Microsoft directly offer a student discount?

 

[Isseikun]

Yes, there is student discount for Surface device for students. But your institution would need to be registered with Microsoft. Looking at the list of schools, it looks pretty comprehensive =)
:grin:

 

[tboy2000]

Would an NUS Extra card qualify for student discount on SP4? I did use it to buy Office University for 4 years for ?60.

Update: Yes it works.

 

[anon(7901790)]

I went to the Microsoft store and saw the Band 2, Surface Pro 4 and Lumia 950 XL. I've pre-ordered the Band 2 and I'm going to pre-order the Lumia 950 XL but I'm undecided on Surface Pro 4. Surface Pro 4 is definitely an improvement, particularly the keyboard and the pen. The problem is my Surface Pro 3 meets my needs, especially since I can just upgrade the Type Cover, and Surface Pro 4 is a serious chunk of change. This trip to the Microsoft store is going to be expensive!

I agree. While the SP4 is awesome, I can't justify replacing my SP3. What I DID do though was get the new type cover and pen; so my SP3 is now an SP3+.

 

[right_mr1]

I went large on the surface pro 4 - essentially purchased it to replace my laptop. Its a shame that in the UK the surface book was not available however, I felt the only thing I was losing was the extra battery life, screen size and the Nvidia graphics chip (I know this isn't a pro 4 vs book thread so I will leave it there)
on discount I got the 256gb i7 16 gig pro 4 version

Early Thoughts:
Cons:
The software was initially buggy as hell (the screen sometimes turns off in sleep mode but wont wake up again???? software updates fixed this occurring maybe 9 out of 10 times, but every now and again, it gets stuck with the screen off and I have to force reboot it)
The battery life is not great at all. A tablet will easily outlast this bad boy. However the M3 version is meant to have much much better battery life than this.
The lack of accessories like a replacement POWER CABLE has me completely gobsmacked.
Sometimes the fan can get quite noisy. My best friend here is task manager. windows 10 has a great task manager and I can work out
The windows store literally has no useful applications. You will have to rely mostly only full windows applications
Sometimes when I am gaming, (Ghost recon phantoms mainly ) with the power cable plugged in, my battery still gets drained!
The battery gets heavily drained in sleep mode and also I think in shutdown mode? (how is the latter possible??)

The Pros:
The sheer power of this thing is immense. I have not yet experienced a slow down yet and apart from the screen off and on bug and every now and again some apps or the edge browser refuses to open until I reboot - such bugs are acceptable, because...windows 10 boots within seconds!!!
The screen really is quite incredible.
The pro 4 keyboard is really nice.
Not that I expected it, but the kick stand is great and also the device sits quite nicely on my lap - I was concerned it would fall off all the time but no. Also the kick stand can be set to some very impressive angles.
The pen is quite nice and moderately useful I suppose.
I really like the facial recognition to log into the device (note this does not work when you have sunlight directly on your face)

Overall conclusion:
I really like this device. In fact, I love it. though once in a while the fact the screen gets stuck off really annoys me. It is beautifully designed and has immense power and runs full windows. I'm a fan. I'm glad I didn't waste my money on another android tablet. This is probably the best portable device I could have purchased (though I still cant quite believe how much I paid for it).
I hope windows will start selling replacement power cables on their website!! though I suspect this is backward compatible with the surface pro 3 but I don't want to waste ?65 and find out it doesn't work with this device.

 

[thatdennis]

I went large on the surface pro 4 - essentially purchased it to replace my laptop. Its a shame that in the UK the surface book was not available however, I felt the only thing I was losing was the extra battery life, screen size and the Nvidia graphics chip (I know this isn't a pro 4 vs book thread so I will leave it there)
on discount I got the 256gb i7 16 gig pro 4 version

Early Thoughts:
Cons:
The software was initially buggy as hell (the screen sometimes turns off in sleep mode but wont wake up again???? software updates fixed this occurring maybe 9 out of 10 times, but every now and again, it gets stuck with the screen off and I have to force reboot it)
The battery life is not great at all. A tablet will easily outlast this bad boy. However the M3 version is meant to have much much better battery life than this.
The lack of accessories like a replacement POWER CABLE has me completely gobsmacked.
Sometimes the fan can get quite noisy. My best friend here is task manager. windows 10 has a great task manager and I can work out
The windows store literally has no useful applications. You will have to rely mostly only full windows applications
Sometimes when I am gaming, (Ghost recon phantoms mainly ) with the power cable plugged in, my battery still gets drained!
The battery gets heavily drained in sleep mode and also I think in shutdown mode? (how is the latter possible??)

The Pros:
The sheer power of this thing is immense. I have not yet experienced a slow down yet and apart from the screen off and on bug and every now and again some apps or the edge browser refuses to open until I reboot - such bugs are acceptable, because...windows 10 boots within seconds!!!
The screen really is quite incredible.
The pro 4 keyboard is really nice.
Not that I expected it, but the kick stand is great and also the device sits quite nicely on my lap - I was concerned it would fall off all the time but no. Also the kick stand can be set to some very impressive angles.
The pen is quite nice and moderately useful I suppose.
I really like the facial recognition to log into the device (note this does not work when you have sunlight directly on your face)

Overall conclusion:
I really like this device. In fact, I love it. though once in a while the fact the screen gets stuck off really annoys me. It is beautifully designed and has immense power and runs full windows. I'm a fan. I'm glad I didn't waste my money on another android tablet. This is probably the best portable device I could have purchased (though I still cant quite believe how much I paid for it).
I hope windows will start selling replacement power cables on their website!! though I suspect this is backward compatible with the surface pro 3 but I don't want to waste ?65 and find out it doesn't work with this device.

Try changing your power plans, that might help with your cons. I think someone here had it up, it's a thread named "no throttling" or something like that.

For the replacement power cable, you can chat with MS to get it replaced quickly (no hassles) but the only drawback is you need to wait for the shipping.

 

[anachrotech]

Just received and fired mine up tonight-i5/8/256. So far, so good. Very smooth operation and the screen is to die for. No fan noise or heat and barely discernible light bleed (I had to really look to see it). Updates went well and presently setting up Defender. I'll revisit this post if anything changes my opinion, but this blows the doors off the SP3 i5/4/128 I had.

 

[right_mr1]

Try changing your power plans, that might help with your cons. I think someone here had it up, it's a thread named "no throttling" or something like that.

For the replacement power cable, you can chat with MS to get it replaced quickly (no hassles) but the only drawback is you need to wait for the shipping.

yes thanks, I did change my power plan and no longer use the hibernate mode. fingers crossed this seems to have sorted the issue out. I'm not fussed about not being able to use the hibernate mode.

more recently I had a driver error on my type cover which meant the gesture support stopped working. I unplugged the type cover and deleted the driver and reattached it and that sorted the problem out.

thanks re the power cable issue. It seems like the pro 3 cable is fully compatible with this one. so I purchased a cheap alternative and it works fine.

generally I am happy with this device. it is powerful enough to replace my current i7 laptop which is now a few years old and while that 17 inch screen desktop replacement model is a quadcore beast with an NVidia graphics card, this little pro 4 can hold its own.

overall, I hope the machine doesn't start slowing down like my previous ones. I'm pretty happy with it overall and really like its portability. I think I will probably invest in a portable usb battery charger so that I am not too reliant on a powerpoint while on the move. I probably need a few more accessories too like a mini display port to hdmi and also a USB splitter. I don't feel like shelling out the fortune that Microsoft charges for some of its accessories.