Microsoft Surface roundup: Surface Pro X, Surface Laptop 3, and their processors

In a bonus episode of The Vergecast this week, Dieter Bohn hosts a Microsoft Surface roundup with deputy editor Dan Seifert and senior editor Tom Warren. The trio go through reviews of this years new product lineup and how they compare with their counterparts. Links: Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15-inch review: it’s a bigger Surface Laptop Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13.5-inch review: have a normal one Microsoft Surface Pro 7 review: I wish this looked like a Surface Pro X Microsoft Surface Pro X review: heartbreaker Surface Pro X vs. Pro 7: ARM needs some legs Microsoft bet against Intel with its new Surfaces — and lost Microsoft leak reveals Windows 10X will be coming to laptops Microsoft unveils new Edge browser logo that no longer looks like Internet Explorer Microsoft’s Edge Chromium browser will launch on January 15th with a new logo Microsoft previews the future of Office documents with Fluid Framework for the web Hands-on with Microsoft’s xCloud game streaming service Xbox Game Streaming hands-on: turn your Xbox into a game streaming server Xbox Elite 2 controller review: Microsoft’s best Xbox controller just got better Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:06Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship. Actually, today is not a flagship. Today is like a, it's like a skiff. It's a bonus episode that we're recording. I am Dieter Bone and I am joined today by Tom Warren and Dan Seifert. Hey, guys. Hello.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Hello from Brexit land.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. We're not going to talk about Brexit because it's too painful. And so we're going to talk about other pain. I was thinking that, you know, we reviewed, Microsoft dropped a bunch of new Surface computers and they were really fascinating, important Surface computers because there are a lot of different ways they tried to do some really new stuff. And Microsoft is also doing new stuff with the way that they're having people build apps and so on. I've been referring to it in the newsletter. We've been writing about it on the site, but there's so much stuff here that I didn't feel like we could really capture all of it in our reviews. There's so much stuff that we left on the cutting room floor that I wanted to record a bonus episode. So I guess to get started, Tom, can you talk a little bit about this year's round of hardware

• 2:07Speaker 02

  from Microsoft and how it felt different? And I'm not even getting into the stuff about the Neo and the Duo and the future looking stuff. I'm talking about just the stuff that they actually released.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they did three things. They did the Laptop Free, the Surface Pro 7 and the X. And they're all kind of different in their own sort of ways. So the Laptop Free, they kind of, they obviously. Went for USB C, you know, all the sort of upgrades you'd expect, but then they throw in this one where they did an AMD laptop on the 15 inch version. And similar to that, on the Pro X side, you know, you got the Pro 7, which is Intel. Looks the same as a Pro 4, I mean, even a Pro 3, kind of, really. Like, we're talking five years of the same hardware, essentially. So that's pretty much, everyone should probably know what that's all about. But it's got USB C now.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  But they also did another one, the Black Surface Pro X, which has a Qualcomm chip inside. It's not, it's basically an SQ1 processor they've co-engineered with Qualcomm. And it's basically an 8CX processor inside.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  So, yeah, that is the hardware lineup. That's their holiday lineup and some, obviously some earbuds as well. But we're not talking about those because we don't have them yet.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  I'll admit, I forgot about the ear pods, earbuds. So thank you for reminding me.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, how could you, they're giant reflectors on the side of your head. How could you possibly miss them?

• 3:28Speaker 04

  They're Necco wafers.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  They've also, like, really annoyed Will.i.am.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  It's actually, we're giving them a good review.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  We're derailing into Will.i.am litigation discussion.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  We're definitely going to give these headphones a good review because they annoyed Will.i.am. Like, that's, that's absolutely happening. Well, let's get the laptops out of the way. Dan, you reviewed them. The 13.5 inch one, you, you had a meme headline. Congratulations, you said have a normal one.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  I snuck it in.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tell me about this laptop. It seems like it's, okay, it's a Surface Laptop. They put a USB port on it instead of display port, the end.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Basically, yes. I mean, so like they swapped that display port out that was on the first two versions of the Surface Laptop. And I'm pretty sure nobody used. Finally, for USB C port, which you can do video out and you can charge it through the USB C port. But it's not a Thunderbolt port, which is an annoying thing. And I think it's going to come up, that annoyance is going to come up again when you talk about the other devices. And then inside of it has the 10th gen Intel Ice Lake processors. So these are quad core chips, really great performance. They have actually really surprisingly good integrated graphics with them. This is not a gaming laptop. It doesn't have a discrete graphics card. But if you wanted to, like, you know, process a 4K video on this, you could do it. I did it in a test and like, it wasn't the worst thing in the world.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  I wouldn't recommend it for doing that, but like, if you need to, you can get it done. They still have the great three by two screen. I love the screen on these things. It's the best screen to work on if you're doing productivity stuff on a laptop. Awesome keyboard, awesome trackpad, really great basics. The one that I reviewed is the gold model, which they called Sandstone because of course, but it's gold and it doesn't have the Alcantara fabric on it, which is kind of like the other big change. They kind of, for a couple of the colors, they dropped the fabric. So this is like, when you use this thing, it feels like you're using a MacBook Air because it's just basically an aluminum deck, which is fine. It's just not like unique as, as maybe the, the blue or the silver, which still have the, the fabric on them.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, the, the fabric thing is the, that's the biggest change, right?

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Did you prefer the fabric?

• 5:32Speaker 04

  I prefer the fabric. I think the fabric actually like feels nice under the hands. Like it's, it's not cold to touch. It's not sharp. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't feel like a, a every other laptop that you could buy. So it's like kind of unique. But there was like some concerns with durability, you know? If you look at, I've got a Surface Laptop One that I got as my work computer two years ago, and there are definitely some, you know, handprints in the fabric where it is.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Have you tried cleaning it?

• 6:01Speaker 04

  Nah.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a patina. So like, you know, if you're worried about that, the metal ones are obviously not going to have that issue. And then like, the other thing that like is less applicable when you first open the box or use the laptop or whatever, is that Microsoft apparently made these a lot easier to take apart and repair. So you can actually open them up pretty easily and access the SSD and swap that. You can swap parts like the keyboard easier. iFixit did a whole teardown on it and they like, I think, brought the score up from like really low up to something in the mid-range.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  Because I guess the, the display is still hard to, to change. You're probably not going to do that. I think you still need to have like a quote authorized service center do that for you, but it's now more possible. Whereas the other one, you basically just had to rip it apart.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  So here's a, here's a funny thing about the Alcantara, right? So this year's Alcantara, the silver one, like or whatever color you want to call it, is slightly darker than before. It's like, yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  That, that is right. Yes. I remember noticing that.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  I wonder why they did that.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  If you go into a Microsoft store and you pick up one of these things and it's like beat to hell, like it looks terrible in the gray or silver color. It's terrible.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  They got rid of the red color too, which was like the nicest color.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. The one other thing I want to talk about here at the 13.5 because it actually applies to every single surface we're going to talk about today is they kept the Surface Connect charger thing, but Jake, the little wing tip, whatever the hell you want to call it, that you magnetically attach into charge. You could still attach dock to it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I feel like they did this bait and switch or something where like they added fast charging. But so far as I know, it only really, really works off the Surface charger. You won't fast charge that well off a USB C, right?

• 7:47Speaker 04

  Well, I got some pretty fast charging speeds off the USB C port. Yeah. As long as you have a high enough wattage charger.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  I think what I tested on was like a 90 watt or 87 watt USB C charger, which is like what you get with a MacBook Pro 15 inch. Just because I wanted to see if it did compare to the Surface connector, which is a 65 watt charger. So as long as you're using like a 65 watt or above, you should get some fast charging speeds. But what you won't get is fast charging while you're using the laptop. And that is if you use either the USB C port or the Surface Connect port, it's going to charge like a normal slow speeds. If you close the lid and let it go to sleep, you can get that like 80% in an hour or in my tests, I got up to 40% in 30 minutes.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  I would much rather have another USB C port than the Surface Connect at this point, right?

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, maybe Tom can speak to this more than I can, but.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  I like the Surface Connect though, but it makes no sense when there's USB C.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Right. I think it's like a legacy thing, right? Like Microsoft has a bunch of commercial customers who all bought that terrible Surface Dock and they still want to use it. And so the Surface Connect lets them do that. Like it also has that MagSafe knockoff so that it like doesn't, doesn't pull your laptop off the table. But I agree, I would much rather have, I would much rather have a, another USB C port and Thunderbolt 3.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Because if you had Thunderbolt 3, I could plug in an external GPU and actually do real video editing or maybe gaming if I was so inclined. I could use really fast external storage, which is if you are a creator. Using these for photo or video editing, that's always helpful. It's like four times the bandwidth of USB C. So I think it's a very silly misstep at these price points for Microsoft not to have included Thunderbolt 3.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think the Kinect is the reason why it doesn't have Thunderbolt 3.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  The Kinect?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  The Surface Kinect, yeah, because I think it's like to do with whatever the tech specs are on it, like the PCIe lanes and stuff.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  That are used by it. So yeah, I don't, I don't think they can, unless they've got like a new version of the Kinect. It does, like, it doesn't support past 115 watt, stuff like that for charging.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  So it's a little restrictive.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  So let's talk about the 15 inch. This laptop at first, until I like really sat and like pondered it and came to a realization about it. It was the most confusing thing ever, right? Like, it seems obvious at the start, but then you reviewed it and it, it turns out it's not like, with a MacBook Pro, if you get a 13 inch, you know, like it's a little bit limited. It's just a 13 inch, but if you just want like power and a little bit like, you know, slightly better thermal limits, you can get the 15 inch and that becomes like the power computer, power laptop. And I was expecting, especially since there's an AMD version, the 15 inch of the Surface Pro to be like the power Surface Pro laptop. And it's, it's, it's not, not.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  Not at all. No, it is, it is like if you took the 13.5 inch and just stretched it to a 15 inch chassis.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Like, I mean, that's, that's really what it is. And like, if you want a MacBook Air like computer, which is what the Surface Laptop is, in a 15 inch size, then the Surface Laptop 3 15 inch is that product. But if you were thinking, oh, I'm going to upgrade to the 15 inch and get more power and I'll have more capabilities and do X, Y, and Z that I can't do on the smaller one, that's not the case at all. And in fact, if you're a consumer, we're going to talk about this more with the AMD Intel differences. If you're just like buying the one that's accessible to you in the 15 inch, it's, it's actually not as good as the 13 inch Intel in terms of performance. So like you're, you're taking it a step backwards. You're also not getting a bigger battery, which is kind of bonkers to me. Like the battery inside the 13 inch model and the 15 inch model is the exact same capacity.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  So that's kind of just not so to me.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Well, and like the the size of it is if you're not doing anything fancy with like power, then it seems to me that you should at least try and do something cool with like the bezels. But like this is like a bog standard 15 inch laptop.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, the bezels are kind of big. It's not super powerful. You mentioned the MacBook Pro differences earlier, and the reason the MacBook Pro 15 inch is so much more powerful is because you can get discrete GPUs and you can more importantly get like 45 watt CPUs. The CPUs in the 15 inch Laptop 3 are still 15 watt chips, so it's the same class of chips. You're not getting any more power there and you can't get discrete GPUs. You can get different, if you get the AMD one, you get a different integrated GPU, but it's not as good as Intel's latest GPUs. So like you're taking a step backwards there.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  So it is kind of baffling. It is kind of like a very niche thing, I think, for someone who wants a thin, light computer that's also a 15 inch screen.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  But yeah, that's really what it boils down to. I think the keyboard is fantastic on it. I actually liked, I fell in love with the keyboard first when I reviewed the 15 inch model, because that's the one I did first and it carries over to the 13 inch model. But the keyboard is tremendous. The trackpad is probably the best trackpad you're going to get in the Windows world, bar none. Like it's bigger, it's smooth, it tracks great, it's got the best drivers, all that stuff. The screen is great, the touch input on the screen is great. So like all of those like interaction things are really nice and I'd say best in class in Windows. But then you're limited to the same ports that you get on the 13 inch. You're limited to the same capabilities in terms of like power. You actually get worse battery life because a smaller battery pushing a bigger screen is not going to do you any favors.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  And and all the other things that we mentioned with the 13. So and it costs more.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's talk about AMD then, Tom. What's the deal here?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm surprised they went with AMD. Like, no one uses AMD on laptops. Like, they do, but they're kind of like few and far between.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Just because AMD aren't quite there on the mobile side. I don't know why they did it. Like, so Dan obviously had performance problems. A bunch of reviews had performance problems and battery issues and all that sort of stuff. It was all the sort of stuff that we kind of feared as soon as you say AMD is going to a laptop.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  And I think they did it because it's just to put pressure on Intel, right? It's just to say, you know, we have another option, even though it's not going to scare Intel like right now. But obviously AMD are trying to be way more competitive in that space. They're certainly competitive in the desktop space now. They're like, they're up there and they're there. But in the mobile space, they're obviously still, you know, still a step behind. So. But I think that that was the main reason. Like, and I think it kind of goes back to the Surface. The Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4. I think they came out at the same time. And there was a bunch of sort of Intel-related issues with those chipsets. And Intel kind of struggled to be there. And Microsoft were kind of like the first on, what was it?

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Was it Kaby Lake back then?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  I think it was Skylake.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Skylake, sorry, yeah, Skylake. I always get the names mixed up.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  These names, Intel continues to, I think that people would like Intel twice as much if they had better code names and not just, they just went back to numbers. It's so stupid.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  I think, I think the Pro 4 was sixth generation. So that's a more sane way to put it.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. They had a few issues. Apple stayed away from that notably.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  And yeah, I think there's no, there's no question that they had issues. And I think that that decision probably stemmed from as early as then, where they thought, right, we need to have some sort of other option here.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, I mean, Dan, you used this, right?

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  How did you feel about using it? You just wanted the Intel? Like, what was wrong with it?

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, it depends what you want to get out of it, right? Like, but I feel like, you know, the model that I reviewed, I believe it was like about $1,600 as configured. And it just didn't feel like a $1,600 laptop should in terms of like what it should let me do. If I'm, if I'm going to deal with carrying around this bigger. Laptop, it does weigh more. It's not the heaviest 15 inch laptop, but it's also not the lightest. And, you know, and, and I'm gonna like pay this pre price premium for it. Like, I want to be able to do more than just work in office. And, and, and the AMD version just kind of let me down. Like, I, I did some export tests with Premiere Pro, which is, you know, obviously the, the, the most popular professional video editing suite on Windows. That was like completely unusable. A few minutes ago, I said that you could use the 13 inch model to, to render 4K video.

• 15:52Speaker 04

  You can't do it on the 15 inch with AMD. I even had trouble playing like 4K video from YouTube. Like just playback, like it would stutter and chop and skip and things like that. And I'm like, this is a brand new laptop in 2019 and it can't play 4K video on YouTube. Like what is going on here?

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you got to imagine that. I bet you most of that's due to codecs and some sort of.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely. But like, I'm sure that the, the, the codecs is, AMDs are not optimized for even VP9, which is what YouTube uses. And then the Premiere Pro problem is that Intel has Quick Sync technology, which helps render H.264 video. And AMD doesn't have it. But at the end of the day, I, I, I as the end user or the consumer don't care.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  You don't care about that.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  I just want it to work and like, I'm gonna buy the one that works.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't see AMD sort of fixing that like overnight. That's, you know, there's a lot of politics involved in that.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  And when, when Microsoft announced these at their event, a big discussion around the 15 inch model was how powerful it was. And like, how it was 2X whatever they were comparing to and like had the special, you know, AMD Vega 9 and Vega 11 graphics, chips on there. And, you know, in, in like actual things that you want to do with a laptop, though, like they didn't, they didn't step up.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  I mean, Intel's just laughing right now, right? Like they.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  I would assume so.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  They've spent the last year and a half, two years hearing me and lots of other people say, you suck. You can't get it. You can't get it done. Why are you, why are you still stuck on whatever nanometer you're on? And Apple's running laps around you and ARM is going to eat your lunch. And AMD's coming for you. And, and then there's finally a laptop that's like mass consumer in theory that doesn't have an Intel chip. But it's just like womp, womp. And Intel's just sitting back, just told you so.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the salt in this wound is the fact that Microsoft is selling an Intel version of the 15-inch laptop for $100 more than the AMD one.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  And it is, on paper, only available to business commercial customers, but if you have the link to Microsoft Store, you can just click it and buy it.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  So like, that is kind of like the obvious thing caveat there that like, I guess Microsoft knows that apparently it's not good enough for their commercial customers.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  The only thing is, if you buy that version, it doesn't come in a box. It comes like stuck to a piece of cardboard.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Oh, that's perfect. That's exactly how I don't, I, computer boxes are super annoying. There's like, there's so much air in them. It's, I don't know, I just had to send back a whole lot of Chromebooks and it was just like stacked up. The Chromebooks were like, you know, maybe like half a foot tall, a foot tall, but like the boxes were like, were like six feet tall when they were all put it, put back in their boxes. So it was super annoying.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Anything else you want to say about the laptops? I think that, you know, just kind of sum it up. If you're looking for a 13-inch laptop and you're looking for a Windows one, I think the Laptop 3 is actually an excellent choice, as long as you don't mind the loss of Thunderbolt 3. It's right up there with what Dell's doing on the XPS 13s and what HP's latest stuff. So I think it is actually an excellent laptop.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  If you are like insistent on getting the 15-inch version, then I strongly recommend seeking out the Intel model and getting that instead. I would not recommend the AMD version to anyone.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  I mean, XPS 13 or Surface Laptop 13?

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Go. I mean, the answer for me is I would buy the XPS, but if my, like, a family member asked me what to buy, I would probably tell them to buy the Surface because I think the Surface is maybe just slightly more durable and slightly just simpler in certain ways.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  I don't know if I would say it's more durable, but the XPSs are pretty, pretty solid machines.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  They got like a flex to them, even now. There's like a little bit of a to them.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  The thing I like about the Surface is it's 3x2 screen. So like, if you're using it for productivity, it is a million times more comfortable to use than the XPS 13, which is still using a 16x9 screen.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Right. That's the big thing about all the surfaces.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. And like, so I think for me, that is the clincher. Like, it sucks that I won't have Thunderbolt 3 and my battery life might not be as good as I get with the Dell. And I don't have as many port options, but I'm on a screen that I'm much happier to live on for six, seven, eight hours a day than I am on the Dell, so.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  I have one question about the Surface Pro, sorry, the Surface Laptop before we move on. Is the keyboard. So the Alcantara one, it always had like a little bit of a flex, right? Like you kind of get with the Pro. So I'm assuming the other one doesn't.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, like, I have to caveat this with that I have not used the Alcantara version of the Laptop 3. I've only used the aluminum ones. And it was rock solid. Like, this thing is like, like, it is, doesn't flex at all. The keyboard feels great. I read some other reviews where some people didn't really like the travel with it and things like that. But I think the spacing, the size of the keys, the travel is really nice under my fingers. It is like, I put this in the review, I don't know how Microsoft could actually improve this keyboard beyond what it is. I'm sure that's a silly thing to say and like, there definitely could be better things. But in terms of like, of the laptops I've used in the past couple of years, this is like my favorite keyboard.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  All right. Surface Pro 7, Tom, you reviewed it. Tell me something other than like, it's a Surface with new chips.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  Well, it has USB-C too.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  And, oh yeah, sorry, of course.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  That's pretty much the only difference. Yeah, so I reviewed the 6 last year and that was already, you know, sort of pushing it on the sort of samey idea and design. And this is, yeah, it's the same. The big difference, obviously the USB-C, that's cool. It's good to have finally, but it should have kind of really been there last year at least and probably before. But the only other big thing is Quick Resume. And it's kind of interesting that they've done this this year because I'm sure they could have done this the year before, even before that with the chips. But it's interesting that it's happened this year alongside the Qualcomm Surface. And it basically means, you know, you unfold the keyboard away from the display and it instantly resumes.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  You don't have to touch the button. And it'll go into this sort of light standby state for like, I can't remember how many days it was. It was like 72 hours or something insane. And it will do that. And when it's in that state, it uses like less than a percent battery.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  I will say that every Surface I have tested or used until this one has always felt broken. I always thought it was broken because I assumed that when you open the keyboard, it should light up. Because that's how that's how laptops work. That's how the iPad works with its keyboards. Everything works, but with the Surface, you'd have to like, open it up.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  You have to tap the power. Yeah. And it's weird how you kind of got used to that. And then now that it's changed, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, this is this is what it should be doing. Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Apart from that, they've got like studio mics. And they've kind of done that sort of thing across the across the line. Not really. I haven't really tested it too in depth, so I can't really speak. But like, that's pretty much it in terms of hardware.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  It's it's really not that different, sadly.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  I mean, we'll get into this with the Pro X in a minute. But I bought the Surface Pro 7, which I feel like okay about, but also dumb about because I'm sure that they're going to finally do a proper redesign next year. And maybe they'll have an LTE option next year. But, you know, I've been using the Surface Go for the past year. So I am feeling great about life. I am very, very annoyed that Microsoft does not offer. They've got like, I don't know, eight different specs that you can configure. And they don't have the one that I want. They have black. I want black. I5 because I don't want a fan, like, no matter what. And I want 16 gigs of RAM and 256 storage. And they don't offer that.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  You can get black 8 gigs. You can get black with an I7. But if you want the I5, 16 gigs of RAM, 256, like the the platonic ideal mid range Surface, like this is what everybody wants at a Surface Pro is that that spec, you could only get it in gray.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  So I will say that the core I7, I've used the black core I7 Surface Pro 6 with the fan. And I don't think I've ever heard the fan.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Really?

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Hmm. Yeah, I think you'd really have to push it to to get the fan going.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  I think they are just saving you from the grief of fingerprints on the black model leader.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  Well, you don't get so many, so you get way more fingerprints on the Pro X than the black Pro 7.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, and on the laptop, because they're aluminum.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  I mean, don't tell me that, because now I'm gonna return the Surface Pro 7 i5 and get the black one.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  I feel like you've been doing a Surface juggle recently.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Oh, man. So, okay, we're gonna get into the Pro X, but just, just so everybody understands the mockery that I've had to live with because of my own stupidity. Surface Pro X gets announced, I'm like, this is it, I believe, and I pre-ordered one. And then like, two weeks later, I was like, this is stupid, I shouldn't, I shouldn't preorder this. I mean, I'm good at review it, it's fine, so I cancel my preorder. And then a week later, I'm like, yeah, but if it's really popular, then if I do want it, then if I, if it goes out of stock, I'm gonna have to like, wait, and that sucks, so I pre-ordered it again. And then a week later, I'm like, this is stupid, I can't do this, and I canceled my preorder.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  And then the next day, the day after I canceled my preorder, I got the review unit. So just to be clear, I didn't cancel because of the review unit. Review the thing, decide, you know what, that's it, I'm buying the Surface Pro 7. I buy the black one at the, with 8 gigs, I tell Tom and Dan, alright, this is what I bought, I really want the black one, I want the i5, didn't want to spend as much for the i7. I'll be okay with 8 gigs, right? And they're both like...

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Like, the sound of their like, intake of breath came through in Slack.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  It's like when a family member tells you they bought a laptop, and they tell you the one that they bought, and you're like, oh, God.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure you'll be very happy with it. Oh, my God. So, like, the same day, I ordered the, the good one, the 16 gigs of RAM one, and they both came, and then I had to return the, the black one. And now you're telling me I should get the, the i7? I'm surprised that Microsoft doesn't think you're running some kind of fraud. I am shocked that my credit card, like, kept working. Like, there's no way that they should have. Like, my credit card gets rejected all the time for just the most random reasons.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  But yeah, no, I haven't heard the fan. Like, I probably have, but it's not noticeable.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  All right.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  I will say the fans on the Laptop 3 are also very tame. Like, even when they crank up, when I was doing like video export tests, they were significantly quieter than what I'm used to from like a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, whereas previous models, I've definitely heard.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  I have a Surface Pro 4 at home that I bought a couple of years ago. Every time I turn that thing on, it's a hurricane in my office.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's why I just assumed it was that bad. That's why I didn't want it. Where do we start with the Surface Pro X? Like, I don't even know where to start. There's so much to talk about here.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  The design?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  Start with the simple stuff?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  The simple stuff. It's black. It picks the fingerprints, whatever. The screen is great. I think it could stand to get brighter, especially in sunlight. Like, it can't quite stand up to like direct sun. But they extended it out. So the thing is, like, I think it's just a little bit bigger, like, on the X and maybe Y axis than a Surface Pro 7, but it's thinner. The curves are a little bit gentler. The bezels on the left and the right are thinner. And I think they might be thinner on the top and the bottom, but not by much. And I actually am finding that I'm accidentally, like, touching the screen and it's not rejecting my touch when I'm like adjusting the kickstand. So I've had to use it. Like, I've had to learn how to, like, hold the thing in such a way that I don't actually accidentally touch the screen when I'm adjusting it.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, because the bezels on either side are pretty.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  They're really thin. Yeah. But I said this in the review, I actually want to expand on a little bit. I think this looks better than an iPad Pro.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's more of a tablet for the Surface Pro than they've ever done before. Like, it feels like a tablet first rather than a computer.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm curious as to why that is. Is it because it's thinner? Is it because they, you know, stretch the screen out? Is it because it's got the more rounded corners? It's not as angular?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  I think it's all three of those.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  It's just when you hold it, it just feels slightly, it just feels a lot different to the Pro.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  There's a subtle line where it being thinner and not having that extra ridge and like the sort of weight distribution that you expect from a tablet feels like a tablet. Whereas the Surface Pro 7 and all the Surface Pros before it, you can kind of tell that they're like fronting, you know? Like, it's not, it's a PC that they just happen to like put all the crap into one side, right? That's what a Surface Pro is. And this is the same thing, but for some reason, like, it crosses that subtle line of feeling like a tablet. And the reason I think it looks better than iPad Pros is because I think the iPad Pro looks... Okay, like the curved screen is impressive, but the whole thing looks like someone drew their ideal tablet in like a CAD, you know, program like, what if we, what if this tablet was possible? Wouldn't that be amazing?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  And then they're like, well, it's possible now, so they made it. But it doesn't have like a soul. It's just, it's very, very generic and very sort of, I don't know, whatever character it has is like, just the most like vanilla anodyne character I could imagine. Whereas this thing, like, it's not like beefy, powerful, but it like, it has like an identity in a way that I feel like the iPad doesn't.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think like from the keyboard side, it's still, I mean, I obviously had issues with the keyboard.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  We're gonna talk about this for like 45 minutes.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  But like, it's still the best two in one keyboard, right? Like, there's no, no one's really doing that because of that kickstand combination, like no one has really done that well.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  And certainly not on the iPad Pro, like that is, it's a kind of frustrating keyboard and it's just the one, the single angle stuff. It's just, it's just irritating. But yeah, like the design, yeah, I like the design. I like the hardware, but it's not really, the hardware isn't the thing.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  No. Before we jump into like the thing that we really want to talk about, uh, how does, how, you mentioned that it's like, it looks more like tablet, feels more like, how is it actually using as a tablet? Did you guys actually use it much ripping that keyboard off and like getting out of the Windows desktop world and like trying to use as a tablet? Is it any better?

• 29:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Not significantly.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  It's windows on a tablet, right?

• 29:59Speaker 02

  It's still big, um, and it's still like, yeah, you, man, like, like getting like Kindle to go on it is like a fiasco. Cause like the, the Windows Store version still like, and this happens on the Surface Pro 7, like, like just doesn't work. And so you need to go to like Amazon and download it directly and you have to like checkout, you have to like buy it, like purchase it through Amazon standard checkout workflow. And then download it like it, like you purchased like toilet paper. It's the most, anyway. But yeah, so carrying it, uh, like actually I almost, I was, I found myself using it in portrait mode as a tablet more so than I expected. Just because the bezels on the left and the right were so thin, it was more comfortable to carry in portrait mode. So it's like, like that clipboard mode sort of thing. So that's, that's how I was using it as a, as just a tablet.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  But yeah, like fundamentally, like you know how you use a Surface, you leave the keyboard on and that's, that's what you end up doing.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I guess, and then you're saying the Pro X does not change that paradigm. Not really. I mean, it is a little bit. It does. I think it's like about the same weight, but it feel, like I said, like the weight distribution feels more tablet-y, but it's not like a huge change. Like, if you buy this thing and you don't buy the keyboard, you're a ridiculous person.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's that thing between like the iPad and Windows tablets. It's always that, that sort of push and pull, right? Like, the iPad you go for it because it's great as a tablet, but it's not quite as good as a desktop, you know, laptop sort of thing.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  This comes down to like, Windows has the crutch of, there's always a touchpad, right? And so people don't, aren't forced to design stuff that's touch-friendly. And the touchpad on the keyboards on all surfaces are like, I'm happy that it's there, but I wish it was like, always 10% bigger all the time. I find that, maybe it's because I don't use Windows enough, but I find that I get way more like accidental drags on Windows than I ever do on a Mac. Like, I'll like, think I'm tapping on a window, and then all of a sudden, I'm like dragging it across the screen, and it's like screwed up my window snapping and everything is gone. It happens to me all the time. And I don't know if it's muscle memory or what.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  There is actually a way to stop that. So that's, there's two settings that they enable on the trackpad, on the Surface, and you should just disable them. I can't remember exactly what they are.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  There's like a three-finger thing. Oh, no, there's a, there's a, there's one in the, the top level, and then there's one where you like, need to go all the way back into classic Windows settings. I've like, poked around at it, and I, I forget what they're called too, but...

• 32:11Speaker 03

  There's, there's two that I go in and I just untick them.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  And then I never have those issues, but it, it just feels like, yeah, they should, they shouldn't really just off there. It's, it's something like two-fingered drag.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  Something like that, but that always, that always triggers badly.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

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• 33:30Speaker 02

  I guess before we get into ARM, because that's like the whole shoot and match here. I think that the Surface Slim Pen itself is pretty good. I think that people that really like Stylle are probably, might get a little tired using it because it isn't as, you know, it's thin, basically, slim. But in terms of like its overall performance, like I have zero complaints about it. And I love that it charges magnetically inside this little keyboard slot. I didn't realize this, but would you buy it separately? If you don't buy it in the bundle with the keyboard that charges it, it comes with like a little cradle that you plug in via USB-C.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  It's like a cot?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Like where it goes to sleep?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you buy this pen to use like a Surface Pro or whatever, you like have to make sure you don't lose the cradle, which is just nuts.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you can actually stick it to the side of the Pro 7.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  If you like it sort of, you know, falling off occasionally.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you like it to get knocked off in your bag. Well, I mean, that's how the old style works with the Pro 7.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  You're not really missing anything.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  It like just about hangs on in there.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  The magnet on the side of the Pro X is actually really strong for sticking the pen on the side of it. It's on the right side, which I prefer, because I'm right-handed. So then, Tom, you, so the way this pen works is it goes in this little slot that's above the keys. And then when you fold it up to magnetically attach to the screen, it like hides it. But you hate this keyboard.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Those were not my words.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  I'm just going off of what you said in Slack and we had a long argument about it.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  So I feel like it's a step back for sure. Like, so I think it was the, was it the Pro? It was the Pro four, right? Where they did the like sort of magnets where

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, where like that little onto the screen.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  And this has that, but it also has like a tiny, like I say, like five mil or something like that of like where it just flexes.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  And I think like if you're a super skinny individual, then it's probably fine. But if you have a beer belly like I do, then you will probably squidge that screen up against that keyboard up against the display more than you'd like to.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  And I think, and I think it also depends on how you're using it and where you're using it and stuff. But I found, I still find it like irritating. And I think that's because I like to see what apps are open.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, same.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  And I like to see the notifications and stuff.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the bar that shows you that the app is open, it's really easy to get hit. If you're like using it on a desk and you're looking down on it, you see it. And to be clear, I've got a little bit of a, little bit of a beer, beer belly too. But I didn't have this problem and I think it's because we sit differently. And so I think

• 36:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  The answer is that you're lapping it wrong.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Panels would tell me the, the lappability is fine and I'm sitting wrong.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. But that wobble, you do notice it a little bit like on your lap. Like it, it does shift just a little bit more than, um.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think the worst thing is you, you know how like you use the Pro, you, you kind of adjust yourself to it rather than it adjusts to you.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  And I think the worst thing is sometimes like you and you're sitting like maybe cross legged or, you know, whatever. You, you've got it like rested in a particular way.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Like the keyboard kind of goes a bit wonky at the screen. So like, like half of it gets cut off and the other half doesn't.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  The task, but it's just, I don't know. Like I, I haven't tried the other keyboard.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. I wish they had sent us the other keyboard because if the other keyboard's fine, we would be having a totally different conversation right now.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  And I can't buy it in the UK until like the 19th. So I'm like, okay. But yeah, like, I feel like that's probably, probably fine.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  But it's just, it's just one thing to like, keep in mind if you're used to Surface Pros at all. Cause I feel like this keyboard just feels like, you know, the same sort of two in one stuff that other people do. When they kind of rip the Surface off, like the, the other people, the other OEMs and stuff don't always get that like hook to the screen.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 04

  Basically, the, the takeaway from this is if you are like buying a Pro X and you're not interested in using the stylus, which is actually, I guess, the vast majority of Surface users, users don't actually use a stylus. Then just forget about the, the new stylus and the new keyboard and just go with the older, older design.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  And the older keyboard is cheaper anyway.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  You'd really need the, you'd really need to want the pen, so.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  The only thing keeping us from saying that definitively is we haven't tried it. It's possible that they screwed up that keyboard also. We just don't know. I'm assuming they haven't, because why would they? But they might have, because they're Microsoft.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  Well, the, the other thing to note, I guess, is if you are upgrading from an older Surface Pro, like a Pro 4 or newer, your keyboard will not work with the Pro 10.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Or Pro, Pro 10, the Pro X, so.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  The, the Pro, the older Pro keyboards have like two little plastic like tabs. And then there's like pogo pins and this keyboard has two fins. And then the connectors are on like one of the fins. So.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  So you're buying a new keyboard either way.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  They had to redesign that because they were obviously going for a Fina device, so.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  But you can still flip the thing like underneath and like back. And then like the pen sort of is like sitting there. So you might lose it if you do that, but it, it works. You can still flip it around and put it into tablet mode. And you can still like reverse the keyboard entirely for people that do that. I don't know many people that do, but you can if you want to. Okay, so this computer has a Microsoft SQ1, which is a modified version of the Qualcomm 8CX. There's only one other 8CX laptop that I know of, which is like that Samsung Surface Book, which hasn't even come out. So this is basically the first, as far as, this is the first one I've touched. And so the Microsoft's customization, Tom, what is the customization that they've done on top of the 8CX here? Like, what did they feel like they needed to do?

• 38:57Speaker 03

  So they clocked the, the cores slightly higher, I think up to three gigahertz. And then they did some GPU work to increase the GPU performance, essentially.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Why is it called SQ1?

• 39:09Speaker 03

  I guess Surface and Qualcomm SQ.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  Oh, so next year they have an SQ2, Surface Qualcomm 2.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  There it is. Okay, so that, that makes perfect sense. Why is this called the Surface Pro X?

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Why is the Xbox One? It's just what I tweeted you. Why is the Xbox One X called that? I don't know. Like, I don't know. They obviously like the X naming because they've used 10X on the Neo stuff.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but 10X, Neo, the 10X on Neo is a different kind of Windows that has nothing to do with ARM. It has to do with like dual screen. So Windows 10X means like it works on dual screen. And maybe it'll mean something else by the time it comes out, but that's what it means to me now. The Xbox One X means we are the super powerful Xbox. And the Surface Pro X means, I don't know. It's like, does Microsoft just think like X means like future?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Like, I think it does, yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  And if you view it that way, it kind of makes sense.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  What they're trying to say, but.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  I want to call it the Pro 10, though. What happens when we get to the, what do we have? The Pro 7 was released this year.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Next year is a Pro 8, then the Pro 9, and we're gonna have a Pro 10.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  That'll be fine.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  And we're also gonna have like an X3.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  But maybe that'll be once, you know, once they can finally get to this design on the Surface Pro.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  If you've got three years left.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  They'll call it the XI, and then everybody will call it the 11 by accident, you know, because it'll be the Intel version of the X. It'll be XI, anyway.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  All right, so the basics here is, Microsoft has made Windows work on ARM. And Windows itself is like designed for ARM now, like works fine as an ARM operating system, I think. We can get into that if you want a little bit. But then for the apps, there are three kinds of apps to think about, four maybe. There's apps that are directly compiled for ARM and they are few and far between. There are 32-bit Intel apps, or x86 apps, not Intel apps. And those can be run in an emulated mode, and I forget the name of the emulator now. It's like, it's not Wine, it's something else.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  I can't remember.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but for some.

• 41:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the system just runs them. You don't actually have to like open an emulator and then, yeah, it just runs them.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  And then it is unable to handle emulation for 64-bit x86 apps, which are the one that matters to me is Lightroom, but there's a bunch of them that just like, oh, you're not going to do it. And then the other category of apps, I guess we could talk about are, we're calling them UWP apps now, like basically Microsoft Store apps, which in theory, since they've been, they followed Microsoft's rules for existing in the store, will just work because they're 32 or their ARM, I think. And so in theory, the idea here is, absent a couple of wacky exceptions and then all video games, all games, except for Angry Birds, whatever you install here, it just works. You don't have to think about it.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Microsoft handled all of the problems of the transition from Intel to ARM. That's the theory. The practice that I found is, man, I don't even know where to start. The 32-bit Intel apps or x86 apps run much, much better than I expected, but I expected just it to be terrible. But it actually was like, okay, like iTunes ran, like Chrome ran. And like, it didn't feel like holaciously slow. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Apple made the Intel transition from Power PC, whatever it was, way back in the day. And you could definitely tell when something was running emulated. This doesn't feel like that. This feels like pretty good. But over the course of an entire day, there are like a thousand tiny cuts that like,

• 42:43Speaker 02

  it's fine when you're just using it. You're like, oh yeah, this is great. No problem. But then there's just like, huh, the, I just woke the computer up and everything's really slow and I don't know why. Or huh, this battery isn't as good as I expect it to be and I don't know why. There's just like little things that add up to, ugh, right? Like any individual thing, you look at it, you look at Chrome and like you've got 10 tabs open. You're like, huh, this works. But then you like, you just go back to like, you know, Edge and you're like, oh, this works way better.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had the same sort of thing. I think the problem was you'd load one emulated app and it'd be fine. You know, you'd use it on like Chrome. Load another one on. Yeah, fine. And then by the time you've got to like, you know, five or six going, then it all just starts to like grind in places where you're multitasking and stuff. And I think that is the problem is obviously the emulation layer, what they're using here is, is, you know, is very capable, but it's not designed so that every single damn app that you run on the thing is, you know, supposed to be emulated. So the idea is that hopefully these apps will go to ARM 64 and be natively running on the, on the thing. And so

• 43:51Speaker 03

  we installed Chrome because everyone uses Chrome. We just use Edge to get Chrome. That's the, that's the meme. So we, we did that. And yeah, like it, it was not great, but the Edge Chromium, we, we got a copy of that, the ARM 64 version. And Lord, it's like night and day.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. In terms of like both performance and battery life, right? Like, because using all the emulated apps really takes a hit on your battery.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it takes a hit and it just, it just slows everything down. Like you can try Photoshop on this thing. You, you'll literally like.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Oh God, it's so bad.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  You could just watch it almost frame by frame. It feels like, like just rendering to try and do a new document. And it's just try zooming in, try multiple layers, like try different font work. Like it's just, yeah, it's, it's not good. And that's just for basic editing. I can't imagine if you tried to load a gig PSD on it. Like, but yeah, just get a lot with that. But yeah, like, so, but a lot of the stuff that you will run on here or like the, a lot of the core and key stuff on desktop machines now is run through the browser. So I think a lot of the slowdowns and the problems we were seeing on Chrome and, and whatever is because, because it's emulated. So yeah, as soon as I started using the Edge Chromium, I was like, oh, like.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  Just to clarify, Tom, the, the Edge Chromium is, is not officially out. You were able to get a copy of it through some sources. Do we have any idea when that is, is going to be released? Is it coming out in January with the Edge final release?

• 45:17Speaker 03

  So Microsoft weren't say.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we asked them over and over and over again.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's definitely not coming out on January 15th publicly, like the final version of Chrome Edge Chromium is coming out then. But the ARM 64 version won't be released, like stable channel.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Won't be released then.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  And I don't think like Chromium itself, there's like, there's like a couple of builds that are 64 bit ARM working, but like there's, there's not like a stable build out there or even a beta build of just like straight up Chromium that you can go get.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  It's not quite right. There's, there's some sort of blocker bug apparently. But apparently it should, from what I know, it should be going to Canary soon. So there will be a build that you can officially download from Microsoft.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Rather than the ones that are sort of floating around and you'll be able to use that on the Pro X. But they should like, the builds are okay, like occasionally the tabs crash, but they should have had this ready, you know? Like everyone should be able to download this on the Pro X and get going right now. Cause it feels completely different with it.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  So my battery life, I characterize it as around six, maybe seven hours of active use. Microsoft's battery estimates, everybody does it differently, but now Microsoft is saying like, it'll last this long, like total, like if you know, when you're like at lunch and blah, blah, blah, blah, and they, they clock it at 13, which actually if you think about it, isn't that much? And I was not quite getting that. They're also doing it at very low screen brightnesses. Very low screen brightness. Yeah. So, uh, so I was like pretty disappointed with battery life and now maybe, I don't know, like I, I think actually I'm getting better battery life and even like the Surface Pro 7 than I am on this thing. But I was also just using it like a computer, but if you use it with the 64 bit version of Edge, um, apparently it gets way better battery life. I haven't done this as, as full time as you have, Tom, though.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  So I've tried to exclusively use native ARM 64 stuff, although that's not strictly true actually. I've, I've been using UWP stuff and the browser.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  But I've not, I've not used anything like, you know, Discord or Chrome or anything else that is, is running emulated. So I've run in stuff from the store or the browser. And yeah, like, what was it? Let me check my notes. I've like, it was draining probably about 10% an hour.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Right, which is incredible, which is what you expect.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  About 10 hours. Yeah, like 10 hours is what I expected.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  Of of real use. Yeah, 10 hours of like real solid use. Yeah.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  If it hits 10 hours, that's that's damn good.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's about what I get when I'm really truly using an iPad Pro, like my 11 inch. 12, the the 13 whatever inches probably lasts a little bit longer, but like the iPad Pro seems to last forever, but when you're actually like doing work, especially stuff like conference calls, which kills the iPad battery for some reason, it ends up running around 10 hours. So like, that's actually comparable.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I feel like 10 hours is is on the edge of like where I'd be like, you know, this is probably worth the compromises and some of the, you know, the slowdowns and the other apps, maybe.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, Dan, the point you keep bringing up is there's there's like you have different metrics for what's acceptable for battery life. So a battery life on like a pretty big chunky laptop that you know you're going to be walking around an office with is like, that's one thing. But a battery life in an ultra portable is something different.

• 48:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I think that actually the battery expectations for a device like the Pro X or the iPad Pro, or even a laptop that is very thin and light, that's designed to go with you everywhere you need to go are actually higher than say like your average run of the mill laptop that you are probably parking at a desk for a long time. Because these computers are meant to go wherever you are and always be accessible and be used. So like in the example of the Pro X, it's got built in LTE, which is like something I've wanted on every laptop for the past five years, which means that I can use it when I'm not in a wifi environment and I'm not near an outlet. So like I actually have higher demands of the battery for something like that than I do for say a MacBook Pro that's sitting on a desk all day long anyways.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  And so when when we're talking about these battery life expectations and when we're like getting disappointed by them and things like that, like sure, I can kill a MacBook Pro in seven hours, just like you can kill this Pro 10s or Pro X in seven hours. I keep saying Pro 10. But getting 10 hours out of the Pro 10 really. The Pro X really helps fulfill that dream of this computer that is always accessible, always with me, always on the go. It doesn't limit me to where I need to be to use it.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so if we're talking about categories, like when I talk to Microsoft about it, I'm like, this is like an executive computer, it's a CEO computer, it's not an engineer's computer. They're like, yep, that's exactly right. Like, this is a C-suite computer. And like, we felt, we sort of described like the very first MacBook MacBook that way, you know, like it's a little bit underpowered, but like, you're a cool guy if you have this super thin light computer, right?

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  And I want to feel that way about this, and I kind of do, especially if you like, live in office. But it's like, at what point are you like, well, it doesn't run this, but that's okay. It doesn't run this, but that's okay. It doesn't run this, but man, that just, what the hell, right? And if I could tell you where that line was on this thing for you, I would tell you, go ahead and buy it as long as you can stay within those limits. But because of that like ARM variable, you never really know if it's going to run the thing that you want with doing a ton of research. And then even if you do that research, so few people are going to have this, you won't really know if it runs that thing that you need well, until you spend the $1,800, because you shouldn't buy the $1,000 version, you should buy the

• 50:37Speaker 02

  $1,800 version. Until you spend 1,800 bucks, you just don't know. And that's nuts.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  That's the biggest problem with it.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  If they had done this as like the Surface Go, you know, tiny little computer, different kind of thing, it's going to be slow, but it's small, so you don't, aren't going to get mad at it if it doesn't run Photoshop or whatever. And it costs 800 bucks. I'd be like, huh, yeah, there's like, actually, a lot of people that like, even if it doesn't run the thing they need, for 800 bucks, they've got like, an ultra portable computer that has LTE, that's great. But 1,800? Man, that's just, I don't know.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  And when we're saying 1,800, we're including the cost of the keyboard.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Probably the pen, if you're buying that as well. We're upgrading to the more storage, because the base model has like, menial storage.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's the storage, but it's the RAM. The RAM is the main thing. And I think it's, I think it's like 1,600, 1,700 something to get the cheaper keyboard. So I'm like, I'm overstating it a little bit, but not much, man, because...

• 51:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, nobody's walking out the door paying 1,000 bucks, like,

• 51:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  Because you have to buy the keyboard.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:36Speaker 04

  So, the reality is, you're paying a lot.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  And if, it's just that, if there were no other computers in the world, we'd have one conversation. But think about the Windows computer, how much Windows computer you can get for like, 15, 1600 bucks.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  You can get so much.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Right?

• 51:49Speaker 04

  So I'm I'm gonna give a little teaser. I'm working on a review of the latest XPS 13, which has a six core Intel processor in it. It is like the most powerful 13 inch laptop I might have ever tested. And it has a 4K touchscreen. It's got 16 gigs RAM. It's got 512 gigs of storage, battery life of like seven, eight hours or what have you. And it's, I think, 1600 bucks.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Damn. I mean, Tom, the thing that's driving me crazy, though, is now that I've got this leak of this, you know, 64 bit thing, I use a Chromebook all the time. And so if I literally only use the 64 bit Edge and just make app versions of every single app that open up in separate windows, and just use this as a Chromebook that happens to have Office if I really need it, I'm like, kind of like, oh, this is, this is great.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  It's actually all right, right?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like they made, they made the, they made the Chrome OS tablet that that Google should have, right?

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's kind of, that's kind of what it is.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  It just costs you 17 or 1800 dollars.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, you should totally go buy this if you're willing to spend 1800 dollars and use leaked beta software and nothing else. Sure, go for it. Come on.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  So the other thing I've seen people say is like, oh, there's no apps. And, you know, it's like Windows RT and Windows Phone all over again. Like, that's one thing I've seen. But like, I think it's, I think that's fair to say. Definitely like, you know, it's like Windows RT again. But there's slight, there's slight difference in the only slight hope is that people don't have to create entirely new apps for this, right?

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  Like Microsoft's not saying you have to do this. And that's, you have to recompile your app to ARM 64, which, you know, is not, is not the, like, a simple task, but it's not as crazy as going and building a UWP app or Windows Phone app.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think that the key difference is that when people say there's no apps, and we discussed this already, but there's just the pro level apps that, you know, on a device that has pro in the name, that costs this price, and you can't run Lightroom on it, you're going to have a real hard time running Photoshop. I couldn't recommend this for a student in STEM classes, because they're not going to be able to run any.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  Code compiling software that they need to use, things like that. So like that pro level that puts the pro in this name is what's missing here. There is, as we've said, you know, you can use the browser for 95% of your things. You can, you know, use Office and things like that. There's a lot of like, you know, Twitters and utility apps or whatever.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but even Office is running 32 bit. Office is running in 32 bit.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  That's crazy.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Even Microsoft can't get this stuff recompiled to ARM. Like, come on. So for me, it's not necessarily the app availability. It's the app unpredictability. It's that you just never know what you're going to get when you click on an icon.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is, that is a problem. And I think that's also the problem is they've called it a pro, a Surface Pro. So you have expectations knowing what a Surface Pro is.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  And at this price point, like you have expectations.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  They called it an X. You have expectations of what an X is. I mean, Microsoft is so consistent in its use of the letter X in its products. Okay, just to wrap up, Microsoft did this whole big Ignite IT thing conference. And I was expecting it to be a snoozer, but then I woke up one morning and Tom had posted 35 things to the site.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  And it like, there's, there's a big shift happening. And I am trying to figure out what Microsoft's plan is for Windows apps, basically. And just for like, yeah, Windows apps and like its, its whole system for how it wants developers to interact with the stuff that it makes. Because, you know, we make fun of them, rightly so, for jumping from Metro to Windows Store to UWP to blah, blah, blah. And never, and nobody like every, like every time they do one of these shifts, they get like a couple of big companies to go along for the ride. And then they're like, well, that didn't work. And then they bail. Like S mode is another great example, like Dropbox is available at S mode on the Surface Pro X. But S mode isn't even a thing, but the name of Dropbox in the store is Dropbox for S mode.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  But like Microsoft doesn't even have S mode anymore.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  It's, it's also like fake Dropbox.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  But so there's this fluid framework, which we got to talk about a little bit. But is Microsoft trying to make UWP apps anymore? Are they trying to make 64 bit apps for ARM? Are they just like saying, screw it? We're only just going to do classic Windows apps because that seems to be what they decided with OneNote? Or are they making web apps? Are they doing all of the above? Tom, just please tell me the answer so I can stop wondering.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  God, if I knew.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Damn it.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  But as anything with Microsoft, it's far more complicated. But I think the overall thing is that the UWP stuff was for a different era. It was for when they were, you know, going off the phone. They wanted it to run on Xbox. They had this vision of an app that would run everywhere, hence universal part of that name.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the UWP, I'm sorry, if you don't know, it stands for, I think, Universal Windows Platform? Profile? Platform, yeah. And so the idea was you could write once, run anywhere. But it's you make an app, you put it in the in the Microsoft Store and it'll work on Windows tablets, Windows laptops and also Windows phones. And you can, you can.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  And Xbox and HoloLens.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  And Xbox and HoloLens. And it, you know, it has a consistent UI across all these things and it's a beautiful dream world. And they got, they got, you know, tens of developers to do it.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so the majority of that dream has gone away, right? The phone, the phone has gone away. That was the key bridge.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  And the Xbox stuff is just like, yeah, whatever. And HoloLens is still developing. We'll see what happens. And the other part of it is that these things only run on Windows 10. And they had, you know, millions of people still using Windows 7. So to convince even enterprise app developers to, you know, refactor their apps into this, it's just, this is not going to happen when it can't run on the vast majority of desktops.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  So I think that's kind of held, the legacy of the enterprise and stuff from Microsoft always holds them back on everything because they're always trying to appease everything for businesses. And that's just, you know, that's just the nature of their business. And I think that's what we're seeing now. So like the OneNote stuff they announced this week, they announced basically OneNote 2016, which is a desktop app, is coming back to life.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  And it's going to get a bunch of features.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're not familiar, there's, there's one on 2016 hanging around. And then they made the new like UWP, basically, version of OneNote. That was like the future. And like, if you had a Surface Pro and you like tapped the screen, it would open up that version of OneNote. And like, I think. Yeah, and so it was like

• 58:17Speaker 03

  And it's really nice. The UWP app is like one of the the better ones.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  It was, in fact, the app that I recommended as the best note-taking app on Windows and OneNote, general being the OneNote best note-taking app, especially if you're cross-platform. And so I was expecting them, okay, well, eventually what they're gonna do is they're gonna get all of Office onto this new platform. It's gonna be great. They just need to like add a few more features and maybe some stuff will like fall by the wayside when they make the transition and that's okay, because life moves on. But instead, they just totally like backtracked and retrenched. They said, yeah, that thing's done. We're just going back to the old 2016 version of OneNote to go along with the old, you know, versions of Office. It's very confusing.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they're going back to it, and I think what they're gonna do is they're merging the CoBase, underlying CoBase, and then I think they're gonna bring a bunch of those cool new features over to this old desktop app.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  But I don't really know what's gonna happen to, you know, the new app. Like, they say it's gonna still exist.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  You know, why? Microsoft loves having two apps for everything. There's Internet Explorer, there's Edge.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  On Windows 10, there's two Skype apps.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  There's like Windows Mail and Outlook, like proper Outlook.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  So it's just, I think it's gonna be another one of those scenarios. I don't know.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  But underlying all of this is that about a year ago, I think it was, they said they were gonna put their new touch-friendly UWP versions of Office, which are really nice as well. Those things launch in like less than a second. They're crazy basic. They just, yeah, you'd use them every day. It's not the word that you're used to. Those are on hold, and they were gonna focus on Win32, which is the desktop and web.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  And the only exception was OneNote until now. So I feel like they are gonna focus a hell, a heck of a lot on the web for the stuff that they were trying to achieve with UWP, like that original dream. And everything else, like, you know, the legacy and keeping their business customers happy, desktop, Win32, allowing devs to just kind of go wild, do what you want, you know? Like, that's, I think that's their thing now. Just do whatever you need to do to get your app in the store, whatever.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I do, I mentioned this on the, yesterday's Vergecast, or the Vergecast was recorded yesterday. It does seem like there's a little bit of Microsoft is trying to make sure that Google doesn't completely dominate everything on the web. They're actually like trying to like get back in there a little bit, which I like, I'm actually kind of excited about to have it like a little bit of competition in web apps and web stuff. It's just too bad that it's all based on Chromium, but, you know, whatever.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, the other part of their announcement is they're previewing the fluid fluid framework stuff, which is essentially just like modular version of like documents. So instead of having, you know, a word document, you'd have like a cloud space where everyone, you know, plugs into. And I think the idea is that they'll be able to have this stuff in all the different apps and services and AI and other apps can just plug into this cloud document. And, you know, do whatever they need to do on it. And I feel like that is an interesting concept for the for the future of the web in general, and whether they can pull it off. I don't know.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I just, I can't wait to live my entire life inside, you know, the Azure X because they're going to add X to the end of Azure at some point soon. Because, you know, Microsoft.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Windows in the cloud.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 04

  And I'm going to mispronounce it to Azure 10.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Of course. All right. We've run a little bit longer than I intended to. We've all got to get out of here. Final thoughts. Mine is I bought a Surface Pro 7 and I love, I love my life, except for the trackpad.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Mine is I'm so tempted by the Pro X, but I'm only tempted because I'm like hopeful that it'll get better.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  And that's, that's not a good temptation, right?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Yep, same, same exact vote. Yep.

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Mine is that the editorial I wrote in December of 2016 is still unfulfilled.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Wait, what was, nobody knows what you're talking about.

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  In 2016, December 2016 was when Microsoft first announced that ARM support would be coming to Windows. And I, at the time, I wrote that that gives them the opportunity to build the perfect Surface Pro with integrated LTE, great battery life and great performance.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Speaker 04

  And they had to have all of those things across the board. And they kind of did half the battery life. They did LTE and they missed on the performance. So I'm still waiting for that.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Dan, you're wrong. They, they, they built your dream Surface. It's here. It just like, it breaks if you install anything on it.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, you've, you've just got to test it for the next three years. Once the Surface Pro 3X or whatever is out, that'll be the one.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  I mean, this is why I called my review heartbreaker because like, This is, this is the right thing. They made the right thing. And they just, they don't have, it, it, it breaks if you run 32 bit, too many 32 bits on it.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  They left the Pro out. Like, at the end of that editorial I wrote, the most important thing that Microsoft has to do is keep the Pro in the Surface Pro. And that means it has to perform like a Pro computer. And it doesn't do that, so.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  All right. Well, everybody, Tom, Dan, thank you for doing this bonus episode with me. Where can people find you on Twitter?

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  I'm at D C Seifert.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  S E I?

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  S E I, yes.

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  And I am at Tom Warren.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  And I am at Backlon. And I'm really curious. We always leave review stuff on the cutting room floor, just we can't write 10,000 word reviews. So it was really fun to do this little bonus episode, just going really deep on all the stuff we couldn't talk about in the video or the written review. So let me know what you think of this. Please hit me up on Twitter. And actually, speaking of Twitter, on Twitter, you will find a link, I tweeted it, Dan tweeted it, to job posting. Dan, tell us about that.

• 1:03:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. So if you love these kind of discussions and having them about laptops and PCs and these kinds of debates and testing all this stuff, I'm looking for somebody who is a laptop PC expert to join my reviews team and really own this coverage of laptops, everything from reviews to how to's and buying guides and even the hot take and editorial. So if that's you, go please check out my Twitter. The link is there to apply. I look forward to seeing it.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  All right. Let's show there are a bunch of other great Vox Media Podcast, Empire Podcasts to talk about. There's too many, so I'm just going to plug Reset with Ariel Jam Ross. It is a wonderful show, which I actually might appear on relatively soon. So keep an eye out for that. Anywhere fine podcasts are found. We're also going to have, of course, standard Vergecast stuff. We've got the interview episode of Neelai. We're going to have the chat show again. And then over Thanksgiving, we're going to do some, some weird stuff. Pirate radio, there's going to be a zine. It's going to be wild. So stay tuned for all that. Thanks for listening, everybody. Rock and roll.

• 1:04:56Speaker 07

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