Just over three years since the launch of the surprisingly good Surface 3, Microsoft has finally refreshed this category with a new device, now called the Surface Go. The Surface Pro series has been very successful for the company, and they’ve decided it’s time to offer an entry level Surface again. The Redmond company has been working on trying to win back the education market, so a smaller, lighter, and most importantly, less expensive Surface makes a lot of sense.
Initial leaks said it was a Pentium Silver N5000, which is an Atom CPU. Not the fastest thing in the world, but not horrible.
It actually has a Pentium Gold 4415Y, which is much faster. Less cores, but far more single core performance.
This should actually be pretty snappy for a $400 tablet…
I’d want to check one out in person (hopefully Costco will get some; there’s no MS store anywhere near me)… I bought my wife an Atom-based laptop for web browsing and email and it was nearly unusable due to the performance.
$400 if you want just the tablet. Add the keyboard and stylus and it’s $600. That still seems just a smidgen too high. I would like to see $399 with Keyboard, and $49 for stylus.
Oops, can’t edit title.
Edited 2018-07-11 13:30 UTC
I’d say $400 bare, $450-475 with keyboard and $500-520 with stylus added.
Be careful what you wish for. Would you pay $399 for everything if Microsoft included yet more ads and spying? Because you do know that the cheaper you demand things be, that is the direction Microsoft will take it.
Against all common (financial) sense I am seriously intrigued by this thing. I mean, around the same size and the price as an entry-level iPad, but with a kickass (even better than the iPad Pro) keyboard available *and* able to function as a no-holds-barred laptop for development or Photoshop or casual Steam gaming or whatever else I might want to throw at it… I can imagine wanting to use this thing way more than my iPad, to be honest, just because of the freedom that full Windows OS provides. But that’s just me, maybe.
Edited 2018-07-11 16:47 UTC
You want to throw development or gaming at this thing, with a Pentium Gold? I suppose it’d be an interesting benchmarking test, if nothing else.
If you are comfortable with the performance of any recent Intel Y series processor, this thing will not be significantly slower.
It even has some advantages if the device your using now is thermally limited (unfortunately many are because most are passively cooled). This core doesn’t have any turbo boost stuff, it runs at a fixed 1.6Gz. That is actually a higher base clock speed than the rest of the Y series. Assuming Microsoft did there job right, it really should run 100% of the time at 1.6Ghz.
Many existing Y series devices have difficultly maintaining their turbo boost speed for very long anyway. Its nice for short quick burst, but as soon as you start doing any heavy lifting your probably running at the base clockspeed anyway, and that is usually much lower (1Ghz to 1.3ghz for the rest of the Y series).
Other than that, and it missing some higher end features (AVX, TSX, etc.) it is exactly the same chip and should perform identically at the same clockspeeds.
I use a Macbook 12 with an i7 Y series (1.4Ghz/3.6Ghz TB) as a development machine and am quite happy with it. That is mostly on OSX, but it runs Windows 10 in bootcamp pretty damn well too. It does throttle a bit on a long compile though…
I honestly don’t think the processor is much of an issue, it is pretty damn fast for what it is. The real hiccup imo is the storage, eMMC flash generally sucks compared to PCIe SSDs, like pretty night and day really. If anything that is what is going to cripple this thing relative to a “real” laptop. I might be good enough in practice though, depends on how well Microsoft did on this part to be honest…
Edited 2018-07-12 00:07 UTC
If this thing performs anywhere near a MacBook 12″ it could be argued that this is one hell of a bargain! The cheapest MacBook is $1300, whereas the Surface Go with fast 128GB SSD plus keyboard comes to about $680, or around half the price.
Edited 2018-07-12 00:29 UTC
128GB SSD is a good entry point. They do need to ditch 32GB monkey models. I cannot really justify spending good money on a 64GB model. The problem is at $680.00 I could get a nice laptop with much better function in comparison.
At least the new tablet should be nicer to have for work purposes compared to an iPad Pro.
Not as my main system, mind you, but as a portable “do-everything” machine to take on trips, why not? Also for writing on-the-go I think the size and weight with that keyboard would be perfect.
Also note I said “casual” gaming. I play mostly indie titles, many (though admittedly not all) of which have quite modest graphics requirements.
Edited 2018-07-12 00:21 UTC