It used to be that the most exciting (and expensive) tablet you could buy in South Africa was Apple’s iPad Pro series. That’s mostly changed, as of yesterday, as Microsoft has announced that it’ll have Surface hardware in stores before month’s end.
We’ve been waiting for a long time to lay hands on Microsoft’s Surface kit so now’s a great time to take a first look at the Surface Pro 7, one of the two devices landing on our shores this July. The other, of course, being the Surface Laptop 3, which we’ll get to soon enough.
Design: What exactly is this thing?
Long story short, there’s the Surface Pro itself — a hardware-stuffed 12.3-inch IPS LCD touchscreen (2,736 x 1,824) with a magnesium alloy chassis that has to be felt to be believed. But it’s not really as useful as you’d like it to be without the associated Type Cover.
Which is basically a fancy, Alcantara-covered case with an entire keyboard in it. The cover feels good (which is why they use it in luxury vehicles) but the Type Cover also elevates the Surface Pro 7 from ‘overpowered tablet you probably won’t utilise fully’ to ‘throw away your PC, this thing is all you need’. It’s that useful.
Magnets: How do they work?
There’s also a metal kickstand, used to prop up the Surface Pro 7 so that you can actually use it like a laptop computer. The angle is very forgiving, so you can choose your orientation and mostly have it do what you want, but you’re going to want to use it on a desk rather than an actual lap. It’s less safe to use than a laptop across the board but it’ll set up just about anywhere there’s enough space (as long as you keep it on the desk — that’s on you).
Mostly, though, it’ll feel as good as an actual laptop. Even the trackpad feels good.
Looking inward
The Surface Pro 7 rivals full-sized notebooks like the Dell XPS for power — to get any faster you’ll need a dedicated GPU in your machine and that’s… something the Pro 7 doesn’t have space for. Which is okay.
You’ll find there are enough ports to be getting on with as well — some traditional, some a little newer. Like the USB-C port, for those of you (most of you) who’ve started switching over to the newer standard. But you’re likely still using an older mouse, dongle, or USB stick or seventeen so there’s also support for older standard connectors.