Surface Devices

[Dave245]

Honestly, I wish I had delved into the Surface line much more deeply than I had in December of last year where I spent $3000AUD on one of the most over-hyped pieces of hardware ever.

- Cortana even worse than the much maligned Siri.

- Initial setup took me longer than 12hrs to complete. (Windows update issues - constant looping)

- Windows Hello is not the bees knees everyone makes it out to be.

- Exorbitant (read, extortionate) pricing on RAM and SSD (more on this later)

- Laggy pen

- Windows still bad at scaling especially for Remote Desktop client where one needs a magnifying glass to actually read anything. And it’s Microsoft’s own hardware!

- Poor at outputting to 4K monitor

I do like its screen and audio output, though. It’s keyboard is great too.

- The NVME is such a poor performer it’s made me feel I’ve paid top premium pricing of 3000AUD for what should be a 1500AUD laptop in terms of performance. And that’s even after with the supposed ‘fix’ for Samsung SSDs. Laggy pen is not restricted to just the pen but even to its trackpad (which I do actually like). Not sure why MS has not been called out for these issues, apart from a few disparate articles here and there. Honestly, the complicit non-focus on especially the SSD issue is so irksome form the likes of youtubers to magazine reviewers to even our own Macrumors (the article earlier this year) as to be wholly disempowering.

Apple would be crucified if it released a product with these sort of issues.

Wow that is not very encouraging, if Apple had done any of those things they would of been called out on it BIG time! Remember the i9 throttling earlier this year? people were raging about it, to Apples credit tho they did issue a fix pretty quickly.

Apple has gotten a lot of criticism over the last couple of years, the butterfly Keyboard, Touch Bar and so on. I don’t own one of the new MacBook Pro’s so I can’t say if they are genuine or overblown. However if Microsoft are doing what you have listed above and not being called out for it, then that’s just wrong, there can’t be one rule for one and not the other!

 

[maflynn]

Windows still bad at scaling especially for Remote Desktop client

I'm not on a Surface any longer, but I agree. While scaling has improved there is some really bad examples of where windows falls down completely RDP is one of those bad examples.

 

[Dave245]

I'm not on a Surface any longer, but I agree. While scaling has improved there is some really bad examples of where windows falls down completely RDP is one of those bad examples.

Did you go back to Apple? any particular reason why you left the Surface?

 

[Roadstar]

Honestly, I wish I had delved into the Surface line much more deeply than I had in December of last year where I spent $3000AUD on one of the most over-hyped pieces of hardware ever.

- Cortana even worse than the much maligned Siri.

- Initial setup took me longer than 12hrs to complete. (Windows update issues - constant looping)

- Windows Hello is not the bees knees everyone makes it out to be.

- Exorbitant (read, extortionate) pricing on RAM and SSD (more on this later)

- Laggy pen

- Windows still bad at scaling especially for Remote Desktop client where one needs a magnifying glass to actually read anything. And it’s Microsoft’s own hardware!

- Poor at outputting to 4K monitor

I do like its screen and audio output, though. It’s keyboard is great too.

- The NVME is such a poor performer it’s made me feel I’ve paid top premium pricing of 3000AUD for what should be a 1500AUD laptop in terms of performance. And that’s even after with the supposed ‘fix’ for Samsung SSDs. Laggy pen is not restricted to just the pen but even to its trackpad (which I do actually like). Not sure why MS has not been called out for these issues, apart from a few disparate articles here and there. Honestly, the complicit non-focus on especially the SSD issue is so irksome form the likes of youtubers to magazine reviewers to even our own Macrumors (the article earlier this year) as to be wholly disempowering.

Apple would be crucified if it released a product with these sort of issues.

Scaling is still rough on Windows, that’s for sure. What kinds of problems did you have with Windows Hello? Just interested as I haven’t had any issues during the short time I’ve had it this far.

 

[maflynn]

Did you go back to Apple? any particular reason why you left the Surface?

Partly 13" vs 15" laptops and partly the apple environment.

I'm running on a 15" MBP, though humorously I'm in windows 10 right now. There were some aspects of the apple environment that I missed but I frequently boot my MBP into windows. That was my major reasoning on the surface and and then its successor the Razer 15". After using the Razer 15" I felt a MBP was a better fit for my needs and I really don't have any buyers remorse. I think I have a solid machine. I'm not suffering from the some of the issues that others have with the MBP (T2 KPs, coil whine, etc).

 

[SteveJUAE]

Honestly, I wish I had delved into the Surface line much more deeply than I had in December of last year where I spent $3000AUD on one of the most over-hyped pieces of hardware ever.

- Cortana even worse than the much maligned Siri.

- Initial setup took me longer than 12hrs to complete. (Windows update issues - constant looping)

- Windows Hello is not the bees knees everyone makes it out to be.

- Exorbitant (read, extortionate) pricing on RAM and SSD (more on this later)

- Laggy pen

- Windows still bad at scaling especially for Remote Desktop client where one needs a magnifying glass to actually read anything. And it’s Microsoft’s own hardware!

- Poor at outputting to 4K monitor

I do like its screen and audio output, though. It’s keyboard is great too.

- The NVME is such a poor performer it’s made me feel I’ve paid top premium pricing of 3000AUD for what should be a 1500AUD laptop in terms of performance. And that’s even after with the supposed ‘fix’ for Samsung SSDs. Laggy pen is not restricted to just the pen but even to its trackpad (which I do actually like). Not sure why MS has not been called out for these issues, apart from a few disparate articles here and there. Honestly, the complicit non-focus on especially the SSD issue is so irksome form the likes of youtubers to magazine reviewers to even our own Macrumors (the article earlier this year) as to be wholly disempowering.

Apple would be crucified if it released a product with these sort of issues.

Whilst it seems you personally had a poor experience, which is a shame but not typical

Apple equally get knocked for many short comings or personal experience deficiencies as Maflynn notes yet does not experience himself

 

[cbautis2]

If anyone in this thread gets a Surface Pro 6, could you post a little review on here? just to let others know what you think of it

Ships with Windows 10 Home unless you order through a business channel. No more fanless design thus allowing accelerated dust accumulation and the fan noise of course. Glad I bought the 2017 pro on its release day which is the best Surface for me.

 

[SDColorado]

Whilst it seems you personally had a poor experience, which is a shame but not typical

Apple equally get knocked for many short comings or personal experience deficiencies as Maflynn notes yet does not experience himself

I have had absolutely zero problems with my Surface Pro and it is still my favorite “go to”
computer, especially for air travel due to its size.

That said I went through a string of 2018 MBP’s, each with a different problem. So I don’t know that there is any indication of Surface devices being any more or less reliable than Apple devices. I would guess they are of similar design and reliability and wouldn’t be surprised if they were manufactured by the same company.

 

[Dave245]

Ships with Windows 10 Home unless you order through a business channel. No more fanless design thus allowing accelerated dust accumulation and the fan noise of course. Glad I bought the 2017 pro on its release day which is the best Surface for me.

Windows 10 Home? Can it not be upgraded to Windows Pro for free?

 

[cbautis2]

Windows 10 Home? Can it not be upgraded to Windows Pro for free?

Nope. You pay the extra $100 for the pro. BTW, the business/enterprise version comes with the 10 Pro version and a faster i5-8350U chip instead of the i5-8250U version.

 

[SDColorado]

Nope. You pay the extra $100 for the pro. BTW, the business/enterprise version comes with the 10 Pro version and a faster i5-8350U chip instead of the i5-8250U version.

That’s interesting. I wonder why they started doing that with the 6?

Does the business/enterprise version also come with the longer warranty that you could buy when you had a business account (3 or 4 year option)?

 

[cbautis2]

That’s interesting. I wonder why they started doing that with the 6?

Does the business/enterprise version also come with the longer warranty that you could buy when you had a business account (3 or 4 year option)?

Per this article https://www.zdnet.com/article/micro...-business-versions-of-surface-pro-6-laptop-2/

Customers who purchase the business versions of Surface Pro 6 or Surface Laptop 2 will get Microsoft's "Advanced Exchange" warranty for no additional cost Advanced Exchange offers expedited device replacement, at no additional cost. Microsoft officials announced at last week's Ignite IT pro conference that Microsoft's Advanced Exchange warranty would be expanded to include new Surface devices.

This article, however, mentioned that both consumer and business version will come with the same hardware so one can purchase the 10 Pro upgrade and get the Intel VPro featured on the i5-8350U if that's true.

However, the article below mentioned about the consumer version getting the non-Vpro version, i5-8250U instead of the faster, more featured 8350U.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/surface-pro-6-surface-laptop-2-windows-10-home/

I don't know which one is right but hopefully both consumer and business version should have the same Vpro enabled chip, just like all of the previous surface pro generations that came before

 

[SDColorado]

Ships with Windows 10 Home unless you order through a business channel. No more fanless design thus allowing accelerated dust accumulation and the fan noise of course. Glad I bought the 2017 pro on its release day which is the best Surface for me.

Per this article https://www.zdnet.com/article/micro...-business-versions-of-surface-pro-6-laptop-2/


This article, however, mentioned that both consumer and business version will come with the same hardware so one can purchase the 10 Pro upgrade and get the Intel VPro featured on the i5-8350U if that's true.

However, the article below mentioned about the consumer version getting the non-Vpro version, i5-8250U instead of the faster, more featured 8350U.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/surface-pro-6-surface-laptop-2-windows-10-home/

I don't know which one is right but hopefully both consumer and business version should have the same Vpro enabled chip, just like all of the previous surface pro generations that came before

Agreed. Though I am still surprised that all Surface Pro models don't come with Windows Pro. That was a part of the Pro in the Surface Pro

 

[SteveJUAE]

Windows 10 Home? Can it not be upgraded to Windows Pro for free?

It can be upgraded for free if you have an old windows key when they handed out the free upgrades when W10 was first released

So if you had a Bootcamp W10 pro version from an upgrade you should be able to use that key
[doublepost=1539569030][/doublepost]

Ships with Windows 10 Home unless you order through a business channel. No more fanless design thus allowing accelerated dust accumulation and the fan noise of course. Glad I bought the 2017 pro on its release day which is the best Surface for me.

I think the dust issue is a lessor problem on the SP/SB/GO as the intakes are much higher up and not typically from flat surfaces

My kids MBP would soon fill up with perfect little rectangles of dust etc in the intakes simply by over use in their bedrooms probably sitting in bed using their laptops

Fan noise YMMV

 

[Bodie CI5]

Apologies, I note that my initial post neglected a proof read and never stated what machine I referred to. I refer to the Surface Book 2

Wow that is not very encouraging, if Apple had done any of those things they would of been called out on it BIG time! Remember the i9 throttling earlier this year? people were raging about it, to Apples credit tho they did issue a fix pretty quickly.

Apple has gotten a lot of criticism over the last couple of years, the butterfly Keyboard, Touch Bar and so on. I don’t own one of the new MacBook Pro’s so I can’t say if they are genuine or overblown. However if Microsoft are doing what you have listed above and not being called out for it, then that’s just wrong, there can’t be one rule for one and not the other!

Yep, totally remember the i9 throttling. I also have been following the T2 saga on the 2018 MBP. My own 2017 nTB MBP developed a kernel panic and I was issued with a new machine. I agree that the companies should be held to account for failings and Apple deserves it when there glaring issues. So does Microsoft, but they hardly get called out for it.

It must be noted, I don’t actuallly think the SB2 is a failure.

I'm not on a Surface any longer, but I agree. While scaling has improved there is some really bad examples of where windows falls down completely RDP is one of those bad examples.

Yes, and nothing has been done to rectify this situation. On the 3000*2000 resolution that the SB2 runs on, the text is positively minute. The EO at my workplace is about to return his SP because of this very issue.

Scaling is still rough on Windows, that’s for sure. What kinds of problems did you have with Windows Hello? Just interested as I haven’t had any issues during the short time I’ve had it this far.

I wouldn’t call it problematic, but if I set up Hello in a well lit room then going into a dimmer room renders it pretty much ineffective. I decided to retrain it so that the dimmer room became the default and all is well ever since then.

Whilst it seems you personally had a poor experience, which is a shame but not typical

Apple equally get knocked for many short comings or personal experience deficiencies as Maflynn notes yet does not experience himself

Not so.

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...-super-slow-write-speeds-you-arent-alone.html

And that’s just one article. There many threads on Microsoft support forums, there’s a thread or two on Windows Central, threads on reddit etc.

For me the two/three biggies on the SB2 are the SSD (especially this), its poor RDP support, and its woeful virtual machine performance (I could not get Ubuntu running on it properly... I’ve been using VM’s only on the MBP and my X1).

I could not get past the loading screen on No Man’s Sky even though it has a 1050 in it.

I am convinced the fault lies with the SSD lottery. I got the bad ones which are the Samsung SSDs. They cannot be improved upon. There was a supposed fix for the SSD variant, but it has done nothing for us with this particular SSD. The write speed with he SSD was some 3-400mbps. Without the fix it was at 150mbps. No matter how one spins it, for 3000AUD this is simply unacceptable.

Like I wrote above, I don’t consider the SB2 a failure. The concept is beautiful but some of the core parts chosen are very poor.

 

[SteveJUAE]

Not so.

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...-super-slow-write-speeds-you-arent-alone.html

And that’s just one article. There many threads on Microsoft support forums, there’s a thread or two on Windows Central, threads on reddit etc.

For me the two/three biggies on the SB2 are the SSD (especially this), its poor RDP support, and its woeful virtual machine performance (I could not get Ubuntu running on it properly... I’ve been using VM’s only on the MBP and my X1).

I could not get past the loading screen on No Man’s Sky even though it has a 1050 in it.

I am convinced the fault lies with the SSD lottery. I got the bad ones which are the Samsung SSDs. They cannot be improved upon. There was a supposed fix for the SSD variant, but it has done nothing for us with this particular SSD. The write speed with he SSD was some 3-400mbps. Without the fix it was at 150mbps. No matter how one spins it, for 3000AUD this is simply unacceptable.

Like I wrote above, I don’t consider the SB2 a failure. The concept is beautiful but some of the core parts chosen are very poor.

I do not think there is an SSD lottery unlike MBP KB if you cheap out on the budget SSD these have a slow write speed. The fix was for the larger SSD's generally.

Against the kerfuffle on MBP's this was storm in a tea cup but I agree a bit cheap of MS. Those buying 256GB SSD are probably not large data set writers and edging more to cloud solutions in the first instance hence the far less comments on the subject as most simply did not notice it

 

[Bodie CI5]

I do not think there is an SSD lottery unlike MBP KB if you cheap out on the budget SSD these have a slow write speed. The fix was for the larger SSD's generally.

Against the kerfuffle on MBP's this was storm in a tea cup but I agree a bit cheap of MS. Those buying 256GB SSD are probably not large data set writers and edging more to cloud solutions in the first instance hence the far less comments on the subject as most simply did not notice it

In your previous response you claimed my experience is not “typical”; yet now you state that the 256GB SSDs are affected because MS chose to employ under-performing parts (for a supposed premium device).

I didn’t buy the base version, I laid more on the table to buy the better product. So, form where I stand I can easily say with confidence that this is the most over-hyped device. I think I know which of the boxes I’ll be ticking in the poll above


-edit- Forgot to add. I did write above that the ‘fix’ did actually increase my write speeds from ca. 150 to around 350.

 

[SDColorado]

-edit- Forgot to add. I did write above that the ‘fix’ did actually increase my write speeds from ca. 150 to around 350.

These speeds don't sound even remotely typical to me. Though granted I have the 2017 Surface Pro with a 512gb drive vs the Surface Book 2 with 256. What are you using to test drive speed?

 

[Bodie CI5]

These speeds don't sound even remotely typical to me. Though granted I have the 2017 Surface Pro with a 512gb drive vs the Surface Book 2 with 256. What are you using to test drive speed?

Crystal mark. In fact I feel privileged- my write speed is a tad quicker than Anton’s in this thread:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...sd-write/b468e05b-bd12-4972-82f7-adae04910d50

 

[xraydoc]

Apologies, I note that my initial post neglected a proof read and never stated what machine I referred to. I refer to the Surface Book 2

Interesting. While I had a bad experience way back when with the Surface Pro 3, my Surface Book 2 has been solid. Config is 13.5", quad core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, nVidia 1050 2GB dGPU. Had it just under a month now.
Updates out of the box took about 1.5-2.0 hrs.
No trouble with my external 4K display or Surface Dock (Dock already had updated firmware, fwiw).
No unusual CPU throttling.
No crashes detaching or reattaching the display from the base.
It even updated to Win10 v. 1809 without any issues.
So far I've been very pleased with the machine in every way.

Addendum: Windows Hello has actually worked pretty well. There's a few times where it hasn't recognized me, but they've been in areas with strong backlighting or when for one reason or another I have the display upside down (like with the SB2 configured in "studio mode", etc). But otherwise it's fairly quick to work. Faster than typing in my password or PIN.

Addendum 2: SSD benchmark attached (bitlocker on).

 

[SDColorado]

My read speed is not as good as what Anton was getting, but the write speed much better...(also with BitLocker on)

 

[SteveJUAE]

In your previous response you claimed my experience is not “typical”; yet now you state that the 256GB SSDs are affected because MS chose to employ under-performing parts (for a supposed premium device).

I didn’t buy the base version, I laid more on the table to buy the better product. So, form where I stand I can easily say with confidence that this is the most over-hyped device. I think I know which of the boxes I’ll be ticking in the poll above


-edit- Forgot to add. I did write above that the ‘fix’ did actually increase my write speeds from ca. 150 to around 350.

Oh dear I'm sure we had a good guess already which way you would vote and if I recall correctly you had several personal issues with your SB2 which I noted was not typical (ie I was not specific)

There is a world of difference on highlighting that if certain criteria (write speed in this instance) is important to you then its advisable to select a different drive option than to imply its a affected so a defective part. I agreed with you that it seemed a bit cheap of MS and almost Apple like gouging to force upgrade options to be selected. Strange the highest read speed is reasonable circa 3000 and maybe why not many noticed.

All laptops have strengths and weakness it would be simple click bait hunting if I said eg all MBP are affected by it's lessor performing GPU capabilities vs others

You raised a valid point of concern for some where it may be preferable to select higher spec SSD and like with most OEM's this is the pro's and con's of various options you have to weigh up vs costs.

It's almost a given that higher capacity SSD will be faster but there certainly seems a wide variance with MS options that's a bit disappointing for some. At least the MS upgrade option is internal opposed to external EGPU and tablets to gain extra functionality for some other laptops

 

[cbautis2]

SP4 here with the 256GB model:

Still decent speeds despite me writing 5TBs already

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

Ships with Windows 10 Home unless you order through a business channel. No more fanless design thus allowing accelerated dust accumulation and the fan noise of course. Glad I bought the 2017 pro on its release day which is the best Surface for me.

The Surface Pro 6 i5 is still fanless.

 

[Bodie CI5]

SP4 here with the 256GB model:

Still decent speeds despite me writing 5TBs already

View attachment 795372

Hi cbautis2, not sure if this was in response to my benchmark discussion a few posts above, but it proves my point. SP4 with 256gb SSD costs (or did) around 2000AUD. My SB2 with 256 costs 3000AUD. Yet, my write speeds are 50% less than those of the SP4.

Steve, I’m very much aware that higher capacity SSDs will be faster. My qualm is not with that though. My issue is with the extremely slow speed of its writing capacity on my chosen model.

Oh well, expensive lesson learnt