Surface Pro 4 Overall Experience

[seq1]

I am planning to buy a Surface Pro 4 (128GB / Core i5 / 4GB RAM) by the end of this year. I would like those who have already purchased one to post in their experience with the device. Things that you feel people should be aware about before buying the Pro 4.

Things that I would like to specifically know about is the
1. Battery life
2. Touch screen response
3. Boot time
4. Surface Pen experience.
5. How good is the read/write speed for things that are stored in the microSD storage.
6. Light bleeding issue. Is it bearable?
7. Are you happy with your Surface Pro 4?

 

[badMojo69]

1. Battery life --- Meh about what I expected 4ish hours
2. Touch screen response -- Fine
3. Boot time -- Royal suck with type cover connected.
4. Surface Pen experience. -- Great
5. How good is the read/write speed for things that are stored in the microSD storage. -- No Idea.
6. Light bleeding issue. Is it bearable? -- Fine. I had 1 issue as the bright spot was right at the bottom in the center of the screen, but it was much better than my S3.
7. Are you happy with your Surface Pro 4? Nope...sending it back as I cant stand the unnecessary "imop" fan noise and other related heat and boot issues from just surfing.

 

[RicKaysen]

Not seeing the boot issue here. Mine fires up in seconds. Maybe you just have a bad one. The battery is disappointing though.

 

[seq1]

Not seeing the boot issue here. Mine fires up in seconds. Maybe you just have a bad one. The battery is disappointing though.

badMojo69 mentioned that the boot issue occurs when the type cover is connected. Is your Surface working fine even with the type cover attached?

 

[GatsbyGlen]

I think I'll have a better feeling for battery time after using it for a little while longer. I understand that sleep is really connected standby, and that certain apps can perform background actions (like a smartphone). In the beginning, we are all installing new stuff, setting things up, indexing files. This might be causing drain issues for some. I'll be tweaking some settings to determine impact, using the powercfg reports as a guide. Right now, it tells me I can expect around 6 hours of active use after full charge, and 81:46:23 20%/16 for Connected Standby. I'm trying to understand what that bold number means

 

[ryankelsey7]

I am planning to buy a Surface Pro 4 (128GB / Core i5 / 4GB RAM) by the end of this year. I would like those who have already purchased one to post in their experience with the device. Things that you feel people should be aware about before buying the Pro 4.

Things that I would like to specifically know about is the
1. Battery life
2. Touch screen response
3. Boot time
4. Surface Pen experience.
5. How good is the read/write speed for things that are stored in the microSD storage.
6. Light bleeding issue. Is it bearable?
7. Are you happy with your Surface Pro 4?

I've had amazing battery life. 8 hours plus. I have very little light bleed. One small spot in bottom center of screen that I didn't notice until I was using it in bed. Boot time has been fast. Surface pen is great. It launches OneNote Cortana and screenshots flawlessly. Windows hello works awesome for me. SD card reading is lightning fast. I have a live hate relationship with it right now because of all the bugs. The bugs make it an unreliable device right now. Too often the display driver crashes and freezes the touch panel becomes unresponsive. Wifi speed and connection is bad often. Popping speakers. All my problems have been intermittent but to frequent. This is an expensive device that has way too many issues for such a high end device. I've only had it for three days but the device has enough promise I'm willing to ride it out in hopes of a fix.

 

[boltman2013]

Surface Pro M3


1. Battery life.... 5-8 hours
2. Touch screen response... excellent
3. Boot time.... about 15 seconds to desktop with Hello login
4. Surface Pen experience....excellent
5. How good is the read/write speed for things that are stored in the microSD storage.... Unknown
6. Light bleeding issue. Is it bearable?.... in dark can see slight light bleed is definitely bearable
7. Are you happy with your Surface Pro 4? Best computer I ever used Ecstatically Happy

 

[RicKaysen]

badMojo69 mentioned that the boot issue occurs when the type cover is connected. Is your Surface working fine even with the type cover attached?

Yes...it's always connected

 

[Rooks308]

Wait... is the battery life on the non Core M models really that bad? I thought Microsoft was saying you should get like 9 hours with it (not 4!!). I also thought Skylake was much more energy efficient?

 

[lovenokia]

Not sure where you guys are getting 4 hour battery life from. I have had a surface pro 3 for over a year now and I am getting much better battery life than that. I use mine for web browsing, surfing, note taking via the pen and everything works without a hitch. The pro 4 should have the same battery life considering that skylake is more efficient.

 

[badMojo69]

Not sure where you guys are getting 4 hour battery life from. I have had a surface pro 3 for over a year now and I am getting much better battery life than that. I use mine for web browsing, surfing, note taking via the pen and everything works without a hitch. The pro 4 should have the same battery life considering that skylake is more efficient.

It doesn't... at least not ATM.

 

[anon(8555314)]

My wife got an i5 128. She returned the first one after it bricked in the first hour. The second one gets so hot from normal use that I think she'll be returning for attempt #3.

 

[Nutmegz]

i only get about 4 hours too i5 version

 

[Iain_S]

I used mine at work last week for programming home automation and it lasted the whole day, 8+ hours.

but it really needs some firmware updates pronto from MS, especially the intel graphics driver.

 

[CanAm89]

Had one to demo. Was very underwhelmed for something with a 1300 dollar price tag.

Wound up going for an Acer R13 instead. Near-identical specs at less than half the cost. Loving he R13. It has some minor annoyances, but they've been fixing them with BIOS updates. Battery life is outstanding (I get 8-11 hours working on it sometimes), it's speedy, and the rotating hinge thing it has just works and is NOT flimsy in the least. Worthy replacement for my well-traveled, abused Aspire TimelineX 4830TG. Paid 700 bucks for that years ago and it was severely underpriced for its era. Decent i5, 4GB of Ram, 14" form factor. I'd given up on finding something worthwhile for under 700 to replace it, but my R13 thoroughly outmatches it and has a lot more going for it, to boot.

 

[anon(5327127)]

Not sure where you guys are getting 4 hour battery life from. I have had a surface pro 3 for over a year now and I am getting much better battery life than that. I use mine for web browsing, surfing, note taking via the pen and everything works without a hitch. The pro 4 should have the same battery life considering that skylake is more efficient.

For video playback. We have ZERO ideas of what people are using their SP4s for so battery life statements from random people should be taken as is

 

[elindalyne]

Keep in mind a lot of the battery life issues seem to stem from a bad intel driver. It should be taken care of sooner rather than later.

 

[usafballer]

As someone who owned the SP3 - a device I loved at first, but then with Windows 10 that whole experience went downhill, here are my thoughts on the SP4 after 4 days with the unit.

Bottom Line: MS released SP4 about 1-2 months before the software and drivers were ready.

Pros:
- New Thermal system is much better, stays silent for most tasks - my SP3 kicked on the fan way too frequently
- Cooler to hold in your hand - even when the fan is on - heat is well distributed
- I can use steam in-home streaming without the fan kicking on, this is awesome (SP3 always had fan running for this task)
- Brightness - this is an amazing display - watch a fullscreen video, set the brightness to 50-75 for some very nice contrast and visuals
- Magnetic PEN attachment is strong and effective - I can now keep the PEN attached to the unit at all times
- Better overall performance, especially the iGPU - can play some 2-3 year old games quite well, but you have deal with some CONs
- It is noticeably lighter than the SP3, but not game changing
- Windows HELLO is awesome - when it works

Cons:
- BUGS out the wahoo - hopefully most will be resolved, but they released SP4 too early
- Video driver is a mess - known issue by MS
- Realtek audio driver causes connected standby power drain (for me) - not sure if a known issue or not
- Battery life has been fairly poor for me - not going to quote a time, but I feel like it is 1-2 hours less than what I expected from my SP3 so far
- Unreliable sleep mode - went to bed last night with 40% power in the battery, woke up to a completely dead SP4 SLEEPSTUDY confirms multiple causes - display driver and realtek audio driver seem to be leading candidates
- I've had a few issues required full reboot (touch stops responding) - and one time the unit would not wake after pressing the power button approx 6 times
- WHEN the system needs to kick on the FAN, it's a very loud at max RPMs. If you plan to do processor/GPU heavy tasks, prepare to put on some headphones to cover up the extremely loud FAN (i.e., in a game)
- Windows HELLO seems to work about 80% of the time, even in the dark, but at odd times it seems like there is a driver crash or something - but it doesn't know about it (IR light will come on, but you can't see an image of yourself in the Settings at all).

I think two months from now, we will likely have a much better user experience, once drivers are mature, bugs are squashed, and I'm betting MS can do something about the fan ramps in the firmware so that it is less aggressive to hit max RPMs under 30-50% CPU load. That said, I'm on the fence over whether I want to wait for this to sort itself out. I'm a bit sour that my great SP3 went south with Win10, and I feel like MS is taking their consumers for granted with the entire "Windows 10 is a working product" concept by ramming it down everyone's throats who were fine with Windows 8.

 

[seq1]

Any improvement after the November Hardware update?