Monoprice 10 X 625 Graphics Drawing Tablet Review
Mark Hachman / IDG
At a Glance
Expert'south Rating
Pros
- Lightweight and sturdy
- Beautiful screen, as usual
- An fantabulous typing feel, though not on your lap
Cons
- App compatibility issues and some bugs
- Good, though not overly impressive battery life
- USB-C ports are late, and lack Thunderbolt
Our Verdict
Microsoft'south modernized Surface tablet can't overcome a rash of bugs and average bombardment life, though the integrated eSIM and cellular slot offer on-the-go connections.
All-time Prices Today
$971.49
Microsoft's Surface Pro Ten was supposed to signal a new affiliate for Qualcomm's foray into Windows PCs and tablets, 1 where battery life was no longer the sole selling bespeak. To its credit, the new, semi-custom Microsoft SQ1 chip (based on the Snapdragon 8cx) delivers improvements in graphics and operation. We also appreciate the advent of USB-C and a marvelously-engineered pen cubby.
Simply in a inexplainable turn of events, the Surface Pro X falls curt in battery life. Meanwhile, the app compatibility issues and bugs that are an unfortunate staple of Snapdragon-powered PCs remain. Perhaps it can be tolerated in a system like the Samsung Galaxy Volume 2, which delivered 18 hours of battery life. But not the Surface Pro X, with a mere 8 to 10 hours. The tired chant of "this is a new architecture, give it some time," doesn't wing anymore. When a bug or another issue pops upwardly—and it probably volition—it'southward painful.
Mark Hachman / IDG Pull the keyboard out a bit, and the Surface Pen is exposed in its charging cubby.
Microsoft Surface Pro X bones specs
- Brandish: 13-inch (2880×1920) PixelSense brandish, multi-bear on
- Processor: 3GHz Microsoft SQ1
- Graphics: Microsoft SQ1 Adreno 685
- Retentiveness: 8GB/16GB (8GB equally tested)
- Storage: 128GB/256GB/512GB SSD (128GB as tested)
- Ports: ii USB-C, i Surface Connect, ane nanoSIM, Surface keyboard connector
- Photographic camera: 5MP/1080p (user facing); 10MP autofocus with 1080p/4K video options
- Battery: 38.9Wh (reported)
- Wireless: Wi-Fi5/802.11ac; Bluetooth 5; Snapdragon X24 LTE modem with nanoSIM or eSIM
- Operating system: Windows 10 Home
- Dimensions (inches): 11.iii 10 viii.two x 0.28 in.
- Weight: one.72 pounds; 2.37 with keyboard and pen); two.99 with charger
- Color: Black
- Optional accessories: Surface Pro Ten Signature Keyboard with Slim Pen BundleRemove non-product link ($270)
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Price: $999 to $1,499; $971.49 at Amazon
Surface Pro X: Beautiful physical design
Little has inverse from our starting time impression of the Surface Pro Ten: It'southward a Surface Pro tablet, revved upward for a new generation of tablet users. Interest in tablets has apparently diminished somewhat, given the lack of third-party Windows tablets we've seen recently. But Microsoft's Surface tablets are known for their sleek, stylish physical designs, and the Surface Pro X lives up to its legacy.
Don't forget, however, that y'all'll be tacking on an outrageous $270 for only the keyboard (and pen), a virtual necessity. That'due south the price of a Chromebook or a cheap desktop.
The Slim Pen pen is a delight, though. In a few years, this design detail (first spied in January, in Dell'south Inspiron 13 and fifteen 7000 Black Edition laptops) may be duplicated plenty to get ubiquitous, much similar tablet kickstands today. But discovering the pen simply can't help elicit the thought:oh, they've finally solved it. It even has a modest charging lite. I have no thought what the pen'south bombardment life is, because information technology's substantially always being charged when not in employ.
Mark Hachman / IDG If you remove the Slim Pen, a popup offers to launch the Microsoft Whiteboard app.
The pen'due south cubby, in addition to charging the pen, magnetically flips it if you insert information technology incorrectly. The Windows logo should beupwards, and the Surface Pro X will rotate information technology if it'due south non properly oriented.
Microsoft describes the Surface Pro X chassis pattern every bit "signature anodized aluminum with carbon composite fanless thermal cooling," a fancy way of describing how light, sturdy, and cool information technology all is. I never detected more than than just a bit of warmth.
The kickstand reclines not quite to 180 degrees, with just a flake of flex in it for cartoon purposes. The kickstand is stiff and supportive across the entire range of motion, giving a lot more than ergonomic flexibility than a more traditional clamshell, which more often than not reclines to near 45 degrees off the horizontal.
Mark Hachman / IDG The Microsoft Surface Pro X in total recline. The kickstand is surprisingly resilient, providing a fairly steady inking surface with just a flake of bounce.
"Lappability" remains a matter of gustatory modality. I'm sort of over the "let's work with a tablet on your lap" charade. Yeah, it'due south possible. Yeah, the magnetic grip between the Surface Pro X keyboard and the tablet is terrific, and yous shouldn't accept to worry about cracking it if it tips over your knees. In reality, withal, the Surface Pro 10 works best on a hard table or desk-bound.
Surface Pro X: Display and ports
The Surface Pro X display pumps out a fantastic 448 nits of measured luminosity, pregnant it can be used even in the sunshine. (Call up, brandish brightness besides has an adverse result on battery life.) Two color profiles are supported: Enhanced and sRGB. The slimmed-downwardly bezels allow the Surface Pro 10 to shoehorn its 13-inch screen into a smaller overall profile. This is the kind of structural revision fans have been request for. If you're a Surface Punch user, it doesn't back up on-screen utilize, though you lot can use it as an off-screen, external peripheral.
Mark Hachman / IDG A piar of USB-C ports (and a volume rocker) adorn the left side of the Microsoft Surface Pro X…
The improver of a pair of USB-C ports brings the Surface Pro X in line with other modern tablet designs. They're not Thunderbolt-powered, however, so your options for connecting an external monitor remain limited. Because the Surface Pro X jettisons USB-A, miniDisplayPort, and microSD, you'll need a USB-C hub to connect legacy devices (a paltry investment subsequently spending over $250 on the keyboard).
Mark Hachman / IDG …while the Surface Connect connector and the ability button are on the right side.
I was able to connect to an external 4K display perfectly well using the Surface Dock, but when I added a 2d, 1080p brandish, the 4K display connection became unreliable. (A direct connectedness to an external display worked fine.) Yous would remember that a company similar Microsoft, which owns the operating systemand manufactures the hardware, would solve these problems.
On the rear of the Surface Pro 10 is a rather delightfully engineered console that can be popped off using a SIM tool. Within hides a SIM slot, every bit well as the user-accessible SSD. Microsoft says the removeable SSD is intended for data portability, and you'll have to look long and difficult to find compatible SSDs for this small infinite anyhow. A modest magnet helps guide the panel dorsum into identify, a thoughtful blueprint detail.
That's a good jumping-off point to talk about one of the Surface Pro X'south strengths: wireless.
Marker Hachman / IDG The Surface Pro X SIM slot hides beneath the kickstand, and underneath a removable metal comprehend.
Information technology's no hole-and-corner that we favor ever-on, e'er-connected PCs, simply because y'all can do more than with a device that can run all day and connect to the Internet. LTE-capable Surface Pro devices tended to follow the original introduction by about half dozen months, just Microsoft has yet to announce an LTE-capable Surface Pro 7. From a connectivity standpoint, the Surface Pro Ten is it.
The Surface Pro X uses Qualcomm's X24 LTE modem, supporting the major LTE bands used past all four U.South. carriers, besides as the bands used in Asia and Europe. You lot should be able to connect worldwide.
And information technology'due south here that the Surface Pro X shines. Using Microsoft Office or the Spider web while on the road, with all-day battery life, has been what the Surface lineup should have aspired to begin with. If you ignore the fact that your telephone does essentially the same thing, and you can likely tether it to your laptop as well—well, there'southward something amazingly freeing near carrying around a lightweight, all-day, e'er-connected device. Information technology'southward simply peace of mind.
Mark Hachman / IDG Working via cellular is terrific, merely trying to type on a swaying BART train isn't the best experience.
Surface Pro X: Keyboard, speakers and camera
I was surprised to notice that I most enjoyed typing on the Surface Pro X more than our recently-reviewed Surface Laptop three. Surface Pro keyboard keyboards accept e'er felt a fleck looser, dating back to 1 of my favorites, the Surface Pro 3. While the Surface Laptop three's keys were a bit on the stiff side, I liked the Surface Pro X keyboard's mix of resiliency and comfort. The precision touchpad is fantastic, clickable up to the very top of the brandish.
Mark Hachman / IDG The Surface Pro 10 keyboard holds no surprises…well, except for the Surface Pen beneath it, of form.
Microsoft has always believed in a bold audio feel. The Surface Pro X continues that tradition, with powerful speakers that belie the tablet's relatively small size. Dolby Audio Premium comes bundled, with its own options for stereo widening and audio equalization. The Surface Pro X falls into the small group of tablets and laptops who yous won't mind listening to audio without headphones.
Oh—about those headphones? Microsoft decided to eliminate the headphone jack. You'll take to utilise either Bluetooth-powered headphones or earbuds, or else buy a USB-C to 3.five-mm dongleRemove not-product link.
Mark Hachman / IDG Take a picture with the rear-facing camera with the Camera app and the Whiteboard button…
Normally, user-facing cameras are blank-bones 720p models for videoconferencing. Microsoft gives you a 5MP user-facing camera, good enough for 1080p, as well as a surprisingly good 10MP rear photographic camera with HDR and autofocus.
The camera app is integrated with the Microsoft Whiteboard app, which means you can snap a photo of a whiteboard, even at an bending, and the app volition translate it into an image which yous can edit and marking up. It'due south a adequacy that'southward unique to the tablet—Microsoft'due south Surface Laptops lack a rear-facing camera for doing this.
Mark Hachman / IDG …And Whiteboard outputs what it captures into an image that you tin can mark up.
All these features are nice, but what about performance? Proceed reading to acquire more.
Performance: Real-world employ
Living with the Qualcomm-based Surface Pro Ten is somewhat like living with a Windows 10 South machine: Inside the ecosystem of Microsoft apps—Edge, Office, the basic apps like Mail and Agenda—the Surface Pro X feels decently quick. Information technology performed the mainstream tasks that I demand to attain (web browsing, word processing, video playback, email, and so on) apace and responsively. Slack (though simply the 32-chip version) worked simply fine. It's almost immediately responsive every bit startup, which makes it feel fresh and perky. The beta version of Edge (or Edgeium) is very fast. Adobe's Creative Cloud is heading to the Surface Pro X, just isn't here quite yet.
Once you exit that safe room, though, it's a mixed purse. Pages loaded snappily with both Chrome and Firefox Nightly (supposedly optimized for ARM)—simply but after remaining totally bare for a second or 2 on a fast habitation broadband connection. Forget well-nigh playing games: The Microsoft Store app pushed games like Mah-Jongg at me, and wouldn't run the Xbox beta app. I resigned myself to testing Asphalt 8, nearly the simply game I could run when I've tested previous Qualcomm platforms, also.
Remember, fifty-fifty though the version of Windows 10 on the Surface Pro Ten is a 64-bit operating system, it won't run a 64-scrap app that'southward been written for the X64 architecture. In fact, there's a whole list of caveats that Microsoft itself has published: Some games won't work (anti-adulterous software won't run on ARM), some antivirus apps won't work, and and so on. It's a minefield that threatens to blow upwards what you want to do on an ARM-based car, and as such requires conscientious navigation.
In reviewing the Surface Pro X'south prices online, I also skimmed some of the Amazon reviews, and I have to agree with this statement: "Just a subset of Windows software will run on this computer, and only a subset of that subset volition run at full speed."
Performance: Benchmarks
Considering of the limitations of the ARM compages, we were able to run merely a few of our normal suite of benchmarks. We as well had to create a new, smaller group of comparable products. We were nevertheless able to subclass the Surface Pro 10's operation: It'south somewhat less than some of Microsoft'due south older products that are based on Intel's 7th-gen Core chips.
Our comparison products include the Lenovo Yoga C630, which uses the SQ1's predecessor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850; our Editor'due south Choice-laurels winning tablet, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet (tertiary Gen); the Microsoft Surface Go tablet; the first-generation Microsoft Surface Laptop, and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (Core i7). Nosotros didn't take a Surface Pro 7 tablet to test, just the Surface Laptop three (Cadre i7) uses the same Ice Lake processor.
For our test suite, nosotros offset chose the PCMark ten Apps benchmark, which restricts testing to the three master Part apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus the EdgeHTML version of Microsoft Edge.) It'due south about as real-world as yous can become. Recollect, Qualcomm claimed that it could perform besides as a Core i5 with its 8cx in this examination. Our results put it a notch lower on the totem pole.
Mark Hachman / IDG Qualcomm is delivering the same PCMark 10 Apps score equally information technology promised before this year. In general, nonetheless, other, older devices perform much improve.
The web-based complement to the PCMark benchmarking suite is WebXPRT 3 by Principled Technologies, which runs a series of JavaScript and HTML benchmarks to determine how well the Surface Pro X volition fare in web apps. Equally with the PCMark test, the Surface Pro X's scores are unremarkable.
Mark Hachman / IDG The Surface Pro 10 keeps upwards here, only notwithstanding can't top its crumbling competition.
To emphasize multimedia applications, including video editing, photograph manipulation, and calorie-free gaming, the PCMark 8 Artistic benchmark fills the bill. Here, again, the Surface Pro 10 is outpaced by older, supposedly slower machines.
Mark Hachman / IDG When the Surface Go outperforms you lot, that'south not a good sign.
Underwriter Labs made a special version of its 3DMark graphics criterion for ARM-powered machines, that can exist run on both x86 also as ARM-based systems. This allows u.s.a. to exercise some cross-platform benchmarking of the Surface Pro X'due south integrated Adreno GPU, and compare it to the integrated chips in the Core and Ryzen processors. Hither, the Surface Pro X does surprisingly well.
Marking Hachman / IDG Finally! Qualcomm's Adreno core shines. In graphics, the SQ1 performs quite well, insufficiently.
Performance: The battery life boondoggle
Distilling a product down into a single aspect can be a dangerous stereotype. On the other hand, Qualcomm'due south whole argument for the Snapdragon 8cx or the Microsoft SQ1 has been all-day bombardment life, with most ubiquitous connectivity. Unfortunately, the Surface Pro X'southward battery life was all over the map.
Manufacturers have been pushing hard for usa to test products in the real world and avoid synthesized use cases. Just they aren't repeatable. That's the kicker—we don't know if, or when, an update to Photoshop volition bear on performance, or past how much. With that said, nosotros do test each product under real-world scenarios, as well as with recorded benchmarks.
In this case, we took four split approaches. Typically, we loop a 4K video until the battery expires, with earbuds plugged in. This simulates one experience: watching downloaded movies on a transoceanic flying. In this case, considering the Surface Pro X lacks a headphone jack, we tried two things: We streamed sound over Bluetooth to a pair of headphones, and separately, we used a USB-C to 3.5-mm dongle to perform the aforementioned test.
We tested using PCMark 10's battery test, performing a scripted mix of Function apps and Web browsing. I also used the Surface Pro X in a day's work, working on the Bay Surface area's BART subway on the manner to piece of work, and and so on a desktop performing my twenty-four hours's work.
The Surface Pro 10'southward battery life is decent for a tablet or a laptop, but well short of the lofty promises of "25 hours." Yeah, the size of the battery matters. So does the fact that the SQ1 is a semi-custom chip that's been tweaked for performance.
Mark Hachman / IDG The Surface Pro X gets just but brusk of 9 hours on a USB-C dongle, which is sufficient but not particularly impressive.
Merely let's take a look at the numbers. We've used the dongle-streaming number as the most comparable to our other tests.
- Streaming over Bluetooth: 445 minutes, or 6 hours, 25 minutes.
- Streaming over a USB-C dongle: 521 minutes, or eight hours, 41 minutes.
- PCMark 10's bombardment test: 503 minutes, or 8 hours, 23 minutes.
- Existent-earth: 346 minutes, or 6 hours, 46 minutes.
That last number was a scrap of a shocker, as you would think that'd be the about accurate test of the Surface Pro X'due south battery life. But my tests simply reflected what I do during an average day: I drove to BART, found a seat on the train, connected via the Surface Pro 10's integrated cellular connection, and used Excel, Word, the Mail service app, and the built-in Edge client. At work, I remained on cellular.
Marking Hachman / IDG This is what Windows's powercfg service reported while using the Surface Pro 10 on the go.
It'due south worth noting that I had performed a battery rundown test the night before, so I had only managed to charge it to 72 percent by the fourth dimension I left. But that meant that I was at 4 percent battery by 12:49 PM, which extrapolated out to under seven hours of use. Unacceptable.
Surface Pro 10: Some of the glitches
Living with the Surface Pro Ten too forces you to acknowledging that not everything works—a deal-breaker correct away for some, especially where apps are concerned. But I was actually annoyed to pull out the Surface Pro Ten, connect information technology to the tried-and-true Surface Dock—and then discover that the mouse cursor showed up extremely intermittently. (It later fixed itself after an update.) We likewise apply a third-party VPN to connect to our domain, which refused to connect at all either over cellular or ethernet. Then the Microsoft Movies & Idiot box app (which we use for our video rundown battery examination) started glitching, starting and stopping over and over. What more than gotchas lie in wait?
Conclusion: This is not a Surface "Pro" anything
After years of cookie-cutter upgrades, the Surface Pro X delivers a well-idea-out concrete redesign. Again, notwithstanding—and this is getting tiring by at present—app compatibility, performance issues and bugs complicate Microsoft's effort. Calling it an "Edgebook" isn't quite right, because the Surface Pro X runs Office and other Microsoft apps well. But information technology still feels somewhat brusk of an bodily PC.
One redeeming factor that nosotros oasis't touched much upon is the price: $999 for our base model isn't bad…but it's nevertheless nigh $200 more than the Core i5/8GB/128GB model Microsoft Surface Pro 7Remove non-product link.
Nosotros reviewed Lenovo'southward ThinkPad X1 Tablet (3rd Gen)18 months ago, with a 13-inch 2K display, an 8th-gen Core processor, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3, and a nanoSIM slot—and a bundled pen and keyboard. These all match or exceed what the Surface Pro X delivers. The ThinkPad's big letdown was battery life, which the Surface Pro Ten hands surpasses by almost 90 minutes—but it's not even shut to the promises of truly all-day battery life, which Qualcomm previously delivered upon in earlier machines like the Asus NovaGo and Samsung Galaxy Book 2.
The question that I promise Microsoft is asking itself is: What compelling reason has it given for customers to buy the Surface Pro X? Always-on connectivity? It's not a unique argument, and one that Intel itself is gunning for. We haven't tested Microsoft's Surface Pro 7, simply nosotros'd assume that that's its best tablet, not the Surface Pro X. With this tablet, nosotros tin't see why Microsoft would employ the term "Pro" at all.
All-time Prices Today
$971.49
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Every bit PCWorld's senior editor, Marker focuses on Microsoft news and fleck technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398356/microsoft-surface-pro-x-review.html
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