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It starts with the model’s hardware. The Surface Pro houses Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite, which, if the hype is to be believed, makes this laptop a “MacBook killer”. It certainly performs well enough. Browsers ran smoothly, even with multiple videos playing and a lot of open tabs. First-party software and some third-party apps also did pretty well.
I did, however, have some difficulty properly testing the hardware. The Snapdragon X Elite chips are so new that many of the usual benchmark tests we use at ZDNET don’t work as intended yet. Geekbench was among the few that did, earning a score of 14,564, placing the processor above the M3 MacBook Air but below the M3 MacBook Pro. While this suggests the new Surface Pro is better than Apple’s hardware, it’s hard to say without proper testing.
As a Copilot+ PC, its AI capabilities are a big part of the device’s draw. But in practice, I found most of the immediately available features a little disappointing. Content from the Cocreator AI image generator was low quality. Live Captions was slow and often inaccurate. Studio Effects, on the other hand, was pretty good. It enhances the already fantastic 1440p webcam by improving lighting in video calls, centering the camera, and blurring the background, among other things.
Speaking of work, professional users will love the gorgeous PixelSense Flow touchscreen. It’s a 13-inch OLED display that pumps out an image resolution of 2,880 x 1,920 pixels. The PixelSense even has a refresh rate of 120Hz for velvety-smooth visuals. And with all the software enhancers, image quality is nothing short of stunning.
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The speaker system on the Surface Pro was surprisingly good as well, as I was fully expecting tinny audio, but the output has a nice bass to it. The drivers won’t be filling the room, but you can watch a movie and feel like you’re a part of the action.
One of the best qualities of this laptop is its battery life, which is absolutely phenomenal. I performed our usual test of running a YouTube live stream at 720p and 50% brightness. At its peak, the Surface Pro lasted just under 13 hours on a single charge, just shy of Microsoft’s purported 14-hour battery life. In practical usage, this device will easily last multiple days on a single charge.
ZDNET’s buying advice
Source : ZDNet