Review: Microsoft Surface Pro 8
Price: £999 from fave.co/3awqGDd
Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 tablet arrives as Windows 11 goes out the door. Microsoft has already shipped one tablet this year, the Surface Pro 7+, which rose to the top of our round-up of the best Windows tablets of 2021. Can the Surface Pro 8 improve upon it?
Yes and no. The Surface Pro 8 boldly strides forward with a larger, higher resolution, faster screen, a revamped inking experience spearheaded by the optional Surface Slim Pen 2, and a pair of Thunderbolt ports that supplement the legacy Surface Connect charger. It’s a dramatic reworking of the iconic Surface Pro tablet line, and that’s enough to grab your attention.
If only we could leave it here. Put simply, we can’t be entirely certain how well the Surface Pro 8 performs because of some wildly varying results in our performance tests. Battery life varied wildly, too. We’re pretty sure that the Surface Pro 8 represents an upgrade to the Surface Pro 7+ and Surface Pro 7, but what we’ve seen doesn’t suggest that it will outperform the competition. You’ll have to look more closely at the intangibles to make your decision.
HARDWARE
For now, there’s one important change in configuration between the Surface Pro 7+ for Business and the latest Surface Pro 8: the Surface Pro 8 lacks an inexpensive Core i3 option, and thus its base price is £30 higher, at £999. The good news is that all of the Surface Pro 8 options Microsoft is selling should offer enough computational power and memory for any buyer. Our review unit also lacked cellular capabilities, so we didn’t test those. Microsoft continues to sell the Surface’s companion keyboard and the pen separately, though there’s an explicit keyboard/pen bundle that Microsoft will sell for an additional £259. The Surface Pro 8 has been designed with the new Surface Slim Pen 2 in mind, however, and Microsoft says you’ll experience reduced e-ink
