I bought a Surface Pro 4 last month when they went on sale. I previously had a Macbook laptop. I moved over to the Surface because I wanted to consolidate my laptop and iPad. And Apple's refusal to make a 2 in 1 device forced me to jump to the Surface Pro 4 despite my wishes for Apple to put OS X on a tablet.
I had an opportunity to spend some time with the iPad Pro, along with type cover and Apple Pencil. Here is my analysis between the two:
Surface Pro 4
The good:
I love the hybrid idea, it is very much a product for my market. I always hear everyone talking how no one uses their Surface Pro like a tablet, but I do and I love it. It is not as good as an iPad when it comes to intuition. But the fact I have access to an entire Windows machine and I can hold it like a tablet or prop it on my body or a table as a tablet is great. Plus I love the kickstand. The Surface Pro pen is fantastic, but I am not a career artist who needs all the qualities the Apple Pencil has. I use the pen for occasional sketching, and I LOVE the eraser. I also do a lot of note taking when I stage manage for theatre, and it is great to have access to One Drive by clicking the eraser top.
The bad:
I have been a Mac user for almost 10 years, and I'm only 29. So basically my entire adult life I have only used Windows for gaming. I like OS X a lot, but Windows 10 is not bad at all. I wish when you went into Tablet mode on the Surface the buttons got bigger and were more touch friendly. I currently use the Surface pen to tap around when using the tablet. The biggest travesty here, which may turn some off on the Surface, is the thing is buggy. Not as bad as the Surface Book I have heard. But the Surface Pro 4 display drive crashes every so often. The type cover sometimes won't connect or work, causing me to restart it. And in the past 3 weeks with the device, on two occasions the entire touch screen will just stop working, forcing me to to a hard reset. I would hope Microsoft takes care of these soon, but it doesn't happen enough to really bother me. But I can see some others being bothered. Oh yeah, if you have to do more than 5 hours of work you better plan on taking your charging cable and plan to live near an outlet for a couple of hours to charge it up. I can make due with Windows 10, but it really does make you love Apple all the better for how the devices hardly ever bug out.
iPad Pro
The good:
The tablet is gorgeous. Apple is so good at creating object lust. The display is a bit better than the Surface Pro 4, but both have great displays. I think the glare is better on the iPad Pro however. I like the quad speakers on the iPad Pro, but I don't like how they are not front facing. The Apple Pencil is awesome as well; I really like how it works every time you tap it, regardless of the angle you are using. The Surface Pro pen does not always work when hitting at a low angle. The battery kills the Surface here. While I have not used the iPad Pro for enough time to kill the whole battery, but reports are showing the iPad Pro battery doubling the battery of the Surface Pro 4. If you own a Surface Pro you will be a wall outlet slave quite a bit.
The bad:
There's not a lot of bad here, so it depends on your POV. I would say the operating system, but only because I want the product to be what it is not. So it is mostly unfair for me to peg the iPad Pro for not being a 2 in 1. But more honestly I do not like the type cover. The Surface Pro 4 along with the kickstand and type cover can easily be used in my lap. I tried with the iPad Pro type cover and it is lunky and does not work very well in the lap. The type cover kick stand not being adjustable kind of is annoying. But if you use it on a table primarily then that will not be an issue.
If iOS can truly be a great alternative to OS X (or blur the lines between the two eventually) I can jump back over to having an iPad truly replace my laptop. Plus I like having file access. Not having access to your iPad's files is so annoying. Anyway, cheers if you read all of this. Thanks so much!