We recommend that you consider buying the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (5G) Windows tablet, with an Arm chip—not an Intel or AMD chip—inside. That’s a first for us, and we hope it’s not the last.
Read reviews of the Surface Pro 9 with a large grain of salt, because there are two significantly different products hiding under the same brand name. The Surface Pro 9 is built on an Intel 12th-gen Core chip (Alder Lake), while the Surface Pro 9 (5G) uses a separate SQ3 chip co-developed by Qualcomm to Microsoft’s specifications. We’re reviewing the Surface Pro 9 (5G) here.
The Surface Pro 9 (5G) is essentially the Surface Pro X, now renamed and brought under the Surface Pro 9 brand umbrella. Inside it is the SQ3, an Arm chip that’s technically incompatible with the X86 architecture of Intel’s Core and AMD’s Ryzen processors, but can run most Windows apps via both a special Arm-optimized version of Windows 11 and a special code interpreter.
What it boils down to is this: The Surface Pro 9 (5G) should offer somewhat more battery life and somewhat less performance than the Core version of the tablet, based on our tests. But it’s not that much less, and that’s the surprise. Nevertheless, there are still application compatibility issues if you wander too far from its mission: handling day-to-day Office tasks and browsing via Microsoft Edge.
The Surface Pro 9 (5G) is also the only SP9 to include a 5G radio inside, meaning you’ll enjoy always-on connectivity once you leave the range of the nearest Wi-Fi router. We’re also told that Microsoft does not plan to sell a 5G version of the Surface Pro 9 with a Core chip inside, either—if you want an always-connected Surface Pro 9, the Surface Pro 9 (5G) is it.
Unlike the Surface Pro 9, the Surface Pro 9 (5G) does not include a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, which usually requires an Intel processor. Instead, the Surface Pro 9 (5G) includes standard USB-C ports rated at the vanilla 10Gbps spec instead. This matters in two ways: First, you won’t be able to use a Thunderbolt dock to expand this tablet’s I/O capabilities. You also won’t be able to use a powered to charge the tablet, and you will have to depend on the 39W charger to charge the tablet through the Surface
