Review: Microsoft Surface Pro (11th Edition, 2024)

Ah, Surface Pro, how I’d forgotten all about your epic journey to get to this point.

Microsoft’s converti-tablet is back, again, and the excitement is palpable. Microsoft’s excitement, at least. This is the fastest, bestest, most AI-est Surface Pro computer ever, we’re told, all thanks to Copilot+—the company's suite of artificial intelligence features baked into its Windows operating system—Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X CPU, and a collective memory that has forgotten some of the misguided Pros of yesteryear.

This is my sixth round reviewing the Surface Pro, which includes editions from 2015, 2019, and 2020, to highlight a few. If you don’t want to slog down memory lane, I’ll give you the highlights: Everything was fine until Microsoft decided to abandon Intel and the x86 architecture for an ARM Qualcomm chip in 2019, and then abandoned Qualcomm in 2020 for its own ARM silicon (which was developed with Qualcomm as a partner).

The TL;DR on the shift to Qualcomm in 2019 is pretty straightforward: Thanks to the ARM silicon, the computer couldn’t run anything, at least not very well. Windows has supported the x86 architecture for decades, but hardly any apps at the time were compatible with ARM-based Windows machines. None of the Adobe Creative Cloud apps would run on it. Users unwilling to work with the Edge browser had to use a dog-slow, emulated 32-bit version of Chrome. Oh, and it was twice the price of Microsoft’s other Surface product at the time. I predicted in my review that the Pro X would be discontinued, and after just two iterations it was, though ARM CPUs became a configuration option on the Pro line in the hardware that followed.

With the 2024 Surface Pro (aka 11th edition), Microsoft has returned to Qualcomm’s arms in full, having bought into the promises of the Snapdragon X, the “It Chip” that will bring AI into the mainstream via Windows. Plenty of other PC manufacturers are on board too—I’ve already reviewed the Asus Vivobook S 15 Copilot+ PC and will be testing more of these Snapdragon-powered machines soon. Everyone wants their piece of that AI pie.

Note, however, that even though we’re back to Qualcomm-first, an Intel option “for business” is out there, unpromoted. No one much cares, though, because you’ll need the Qualcomm version if you want to access Copilot+ PC features, since for the time being they aren’t supported on Intel. So score one for Qualcomm: This is the first time the company’s CPU can run something on Windows that Intel and AMD can’t.

Photograph: Christopher Null

So let’s see where that gets us.

Externally, the Surface Pro formula hasn’t much changed in years. A 13-inch slate-like tablet with a metal kickstand is the beating heart of the device, offering the same old two USB-C connectors plus Microsoft’s magnetically attached charger by way of ports. (You can still charge via USB-C if you don’t care for the proprietary adapter.) A slim keyboard with a soft, fabric-like palm rest attaches to the base of the upright Surface Pro, also magnetically, and it features a thin slot that holds a flattened stylus.

All of this is a little awkward to use in a lap, as it has always been, but it’s nice on a desk, as you can separate the keyboard from the Surface and spread it out a little. My test unit was the higher-end of two available models, featuring the Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512-GB solid-state drive. In addition to a faster CPU, it also features an OLED screen running at 2,880 X 1,920 pixels of resolution. (You can even connect three 4K external monitors to the device if you need more real estate.) Lastly, a pair of cameras—a front-facing 12-megapixel camera with Windows Studio Effects and a rear-facing 10-megapixel camera—are probably the best you’ll find on the laptop market.

Photograph: Christopher Null

The unit has crept heavier over the years, gaining a few ounces to its current weight of 1.9 pounds without the keyboard, 2.6 pounds with it, and a thickness of 15 millimeters with the keyboard attached. It’s still very svelte, though you’ll find lighter 13-inch standard laptops out there.

Let’s talk performance. Qualcomm has been blowing the Snapdragon X Elite’s horn to a fault, touting that the “super-charged” chip would double performance over the competition at a third of the power. That’s proving to be wildly exaggerated: Head to head against recent-edition laptops with Intel Core Ultra 7 CPUs, the Pro was only marginally faster on mainstream tests like Geekbench, where I saw a 6 percent performance improvement on average. That’s nothing to sniff at, but the upgrade isn’t significant.

As has widely been noted elsewhere, the Elite isn’t tuned for graphics or gaming, and even Microsoft says that the Pro shouldn’t be relied upon for such uses. (One public relations representative recently said it's great for Solitaire.) On many graphics-based benchmarks I ran, results were in line with units featuring year-old, pre-Ultra Intel processors and integrated graphics.

And compatibility issues remain. While you can now run Chrome and Adobe apps natively on Qualcomm silicon in Windows, native support is still far from ubiquitous. Microsoft’s Prism emulator fills in some of the gaps, but we’re a long way from 100 percent. Reports of what does and doesn’t work will likely trickle in over the following weeks, but for now, users need to be prepared for the occasional hiccup and headache—and possibly larger issues. All of this is no longer just a Microsoft problem; it’s an everyone problem, since every major PC manufacturer has a Snapdragon X machine out now.

Photograph: Christopher Null

I do want to focus on the many great things about this machine, including its jaw-dropping OLED display—one of the brightest and most vivid I’ve ever seen—and outstanding audio quality. The Flex Keyboard doesn’t look like much, but the typing experience is surprisingly crisp, and the gentle clicks provided by the haptic touchpad make for a soothing and intuitive pointing scenario—especially when the keyboard is detached. The included stylus is a game changer if you interact with new Copilot+ features like Cocreator. Throughout all of this, the machine stays quiet with largely passive cooling (it has a fan but it was never audible in my testing), yet the machine never got hot to the touch.

Battery life is simply phenomenal. I got over 15 hours on a full-screen, full-brightness YouTube video playback test, which is far beyond Microsoft’s own specification, and more than double the battery life of the old Surface Pro X.

Photograph: Christopher Null

Aside from incompatibility issues, I only encountered one problem with the device: The touchpad would frequently stop working after the laptop woke up from sleep. This would correct itself after I detached and reattached the keyboard from the screen or when I used the touchscreen to select a field into which I could type something; that'd wake the touchpad up. Ultimately, it’s a tiny issue and one that will probably be resolved with standard firmware updates.

Pricing is a much thornier issue. Surface devices have never been cheap, and the 11th Edition Surface Pro remains at a premium, with my test configuration set at a jaw-dropping $1,950 (with the Flex Keyboard). For comparison, Asus’s new Copilot+ PC runs just $1,300 and has better performance and nearly as good battery life. The entry-level Surface Pro is only $1,000 without a keyboard, but the pricey upgrades like that OLED screen ($500) and the fancy keyboard (up to $450) make the unit so appealing. Even changing the color from the default will run you an extra $200, though it does bump up the storage. Still, ouch.

Ultimately, the Surface Pro remains a machine with a certain audience—someone who isn’t sure if they want a tablet or a laptop, but who has the money, time, and patience to invest in figuring it out. That doesn’t describe me, but I presume that for those whom it does, you already know who you are.

Correction July 1, 2024: A previous version of this story noted our test configuration as the 1-terabyte model, but our review unit was the 512-GB model.