I just picked up my SP4! Have you?!

[BruhMan]

Battery life is BAD!! Microsoft says 9 hr in some places, then "up to" 9 hrs. In other places. With 50 % screen bright, power saver on, and all radios off you're looking at 7 hrs max.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[ttsoldier]

Battery life is BAD!! Microsoft says 9 hr in some places, then "up to" 9 hrs. In other places. With 50 % screen bright, power saver on, and all radios off you're looking at 7 hrs max.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

I think saying it's BAD is a stretch.... One man's trash is a nother mans treasure. My current laptop with a 3rd gen ivy bridge (i7) get;s about 2 hurs battery life, if so much.

I would be more than grateful for 7 hours battery life!

The way you guys complain about battery life it's like you are never around a plug to just plug in. I cannot see my self sitting down for 7 -9 hours with out a charger/plug close by.

Everyone is complaining about battery way to much :/

What do you guys expect? A full day battery life??

 

[chattoe]

I think saying it's BAD is a stretch.... One man's trash is a nother mans treasure. My current laptop with a 3rd gen ivy bridge (i7) get;s about 2 hurs battery life, if so much.

I would be more than grateful for 7 hours battery life!

The way you guys complain about battery life it's like you are never around a plug to just plug in. I cannot see my self sitting down for 7 -9 hours with out a charger/plug close by.

Everyone is complaining about battery way to much :/

What do you guys expect? A full day battery life??

If it's being advertised as a tablet which it is then yes it should be lasting all day!

 

[ttsoldier]

If it's being advertised as a tablet which it is then yes it should be lasting all day!

Like which other tablet?

 

[ioaniro]

If it's being advertised as a tablet which it is then yes it should be lasting all day!

Funny, I would have actually gone the other way. Because it's advertised as a laptop replacement it should last longer/whole day. A tablet lasts the whole day in internet browsing and such, you find a taxing game for your tablet and start playing it will not last the day. A laptop replacement however should approach laptop battery numbers in productivity related tasks. Even if the surface pro 4 lasts 9 hours of watching videos/internet browsing, who buys a surface just for that? I would have preferred Microsoft giving away numbers like 9 hours of note taking in one note or 9 hours of writing in word or something similar (as a simple productivity scenario). In any case I haven't had issues with the battery life on my pro 2 so I expect pro 4 would be fine too. And the next upgrade to pro 6 hopefully improves the battery :grin:

 

[chattoe]

Like which other tablet?

MS aren't comparing it with any other tablet and neither am I but generally tablets do last a day

 

[ttsoldier]

MS aren't comparing it with any other tablet and neither am I but generally tablets do last a day

Can you pprovide me with a model of such a tablet?

 

[rgc6789]

I picked up the same today and I've been less than impressed. It's frozen 4 times in 3 hours, plus the touch screen has become unresponsive twice - I had to reattach the keyboard.

I'm hoping it is nothing more than firmware updates, but they better fix it quick or I'm going to have to return it.

I had a lemon - exchanged it at Best Buy and new one is working well. There are a few issues that I have found:

* I have a Bose SoundLink Mini which connects via Bluetooth. It's unusable with Skype - sound is broken up and distorted. This should be a firmware/drive fix.
* I keep knocking the pen off the side when transporting it.
* The new screen is making my 1080p monitor look like it's a CRT.
* Trackpad on keyboard seems to work better on some programs than others. It can be jumpy and finicky, but thinking this is a software update fix.

 

[DCProjMgr]

Can you pprovide me with a model of such a tablet?

Well the obvious comparison is the iPad.

But the SP4 is not designed for the light use of a media / web consumer tablet. This is a laptop in a tablet form factor, so I would expect ultrabook laptops would be a better point of comparison. The SP4 is probably a couple of hours less battery life than the Lenovo X1 Carbon and the Dell XPS 13. But it is also more than 30% lighter than either of those laptops.

It seems pretty clear from the current set of reviews that Microsoft and Intel prioritized performance improvements over battery life improvements in the design of the SP4. This is a perfectly valid approach. It would be interesting to see how much battery life you can get out of it if you tweak the power settings to further throttle CPU and GPU performance.

 

[kwill]

Picked mined up yesterday and so far I'm loving the improvements. Screen is ridiculous and the new keyboard is so much better that it's insane! Fan seems to not kick on as often (matter fact I only remember it kicking on so far when I was installing all of my apps). All in all, it was worth the upgrade for me as Windows Hello alone is a huge feature.

 

[GatsbyGlen]

I've had the i5/8/256 for a couple of days now from Best Buy and so far I'm happy with it. I also got the black keyboard to go along with it.

Can I still get the Microsoft Accidental Protection Plan? I thought about getting this, instead of the Best Buy option.

How long do the pen tips last? I'm assuming I can get replacements from the Microsoft store when needed. This is my first Surface Pro and I'm really liking the pen feature. I'm amazed at how much better my hand writing looks, haha!

 

[jayk82]

Just got my i5/8/256 with black cover from Best Buy as well! Still trying to set everything up, I haven't had enough time to simply play with it yet. Really looking forward to it. Coming from a MacBook Pro w/ Retina.

 

[chattoe]

Just got my i5/8/256 with black cover from Best Buy as well! Still trying to set everything up, I haven't had enough time to simply play with it yet. Really looking forward to it. Coming from a MacBook Pro w/ Retina.

Let me know how you fair with it. I'm also looking at moving from a MacBook Pro and possibly my iPad

 

[jayk82]

Let me know how you fair with it. I'm also looking at moving from a MacBook Pro and possibly my iPad

So far, I'm really, REALLY liking it. I have had some of the known issues (screen tint, audio pop, etc.) but the Nov. 2nd updates seemed to have fixed the vast majority of them for me. I have not missed my MacBook Pro or iPad Air 2 at all, still have my iPhone 6S Plus for my iOS fix (although I did just now bite the bullet on the $60 Lumia 640 just to have my first Windows phone experience.)

Really nice being able to have this docked in at work while using Outlook / Excel / PowerPoint / OneNote & even using the Edge browser, then grabbing it and running to customers' offices / meetings and still being just as productive as in my office. Did I mention I'm really liking it so far??

 

[WildKarrde]

I picked up my i5 8GB yesterday. So far I'm undecided as to whether I'm gonna keep it or not. It's better than my SP2 in almost every way, but I really like my power covers, so not entirely pleased with the battery life on the SP4, and I prefer the form factor of the SP2, thought the SP4 is noticeably lighter. I *might* be able to get $600 from my SP2 and accessories, but right now I'm asking myself if the SP4 is really worth the extra $900 on my very tight budget.

I haven't really had a chance to flex its muscles yet though... or test out an external battery pack. Those will be my deciding factors.

If I didn't already have an SP2 I'd definitely keep it, though.

 

[Drayk]

Hey...I have a Surface Pro 3, Core i7, 512GB. Is it worth going to now, even if I have to step down in processor and storage or should I hold on to my SP3 another year and get the new type cover?

I was actually wondering this same thing. I have a SP3, i7, 256gb ssd w/8gb ram. The i7 gets a little hot at times. I upgraded from an SP3, i5, 128ssd, 4gb ram. My thought is the i5 wouldn't get as hot and would use less battery. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated...
Would there be a big/any advantage with moving to a SP4, 256, 8gb ram???

 

[boltman2013]

I exchanged my first one it was 99.5% perfect but had a few lingering issues possibly my fault as I really tweaked it with and upgrade to Education , Hyper V ... also some registry tweaks... for some reason he 11/2 firmware would not apply. Called MS spent an hour troubleshooting, dis the built in reset... then tried to recreate the recovery drive...could not. So I used the online surface image option and again that drive would not work either. Took it back to the store had them help me re-image it and on reboot I immediately checked to see if I could create a recovery drive..no. Also the camera on reboot would not work... So at that point I exchanged it. I think something happenned to the built in recovery and not hardware .

My new one I was very systematic in on-boarding it. No internet...Setup...recovery drive, Update another recovery drive, Restore point, install ESET, Update store, another restore point. Then Office.

So far this surface is 100% perfect runs nice and cool 22-45C and actually has even less bottom light bleed. Very happy with the second one. It all works!

 

[boltman2013]

I exchanged my first one (M3) it was 99.5% perfect but had a few lingering issues possibly my fault as I really tweaked it with and upgrade to Education , Hyper V ... also some registry tweaks (turned on credential guard) ... for some reason he 11/2 firmware would not apply. so used my recovery drive, and somehow it did a n in place upgrade got back to pro applied 11/2 firm .Tried to recreate a new recovery drive it failed. Called MS spent an hour troubleshooting, did the built in reset after a bunch of reboots and device manager stuff... then tried to recreate the recovery drive...could not. So I used the online surface image option and again that drive would not work either. Took it back to the store had them help me re-image it and on reboot I immediately checked to see if I could create a recovery drive..no. Also the camera on reboot would not work... So at that point I exchanged it. I think something happened to the built in recovery and not hardware .

My new one I was very systematic in on-boarding it. No internet...Setup...recovery drive, Update another recovery drive, Restore point, install ESET, Update store, another restore point. Then Office.

So far this surface is 100% perfect runs nice and cool 22-45C and actually has even less bottom light bleed. Very happy with the second one. It all works and runs Windows and Office perfectly!