Review: Microsoft Surface

This is the Microsoft Surface RT.

It's Microsoft's new tablet made by Microsoft itself.

It's the first time they've made their own computer.

It's an ARM-based tablet.

That means it's running the same kinda processor

that you probably have in your phone right now

and it's running an operating system called Windows RT.

That's basically kind of a stripped down version

of Windows 8.

As you can see, it has a keyboard

which is pretty neat for a tablet.

It has two different kinds you can buy.

One is the type cover which I've got hooked on right here

and the other is the touch cover which is next to me

to swap 'em out.

Easy as that.

Couldn't be easier.

And it also you'll notice it's standing up right on its own.

That's 'cause it's got this groovy little

built in kickstand.

Whole thing still folds down

like you'd expect a tablet to though.

How does the keyboard work?

It's pretty great.

When I'm typing on the touch cover

which is this little three millimeter thick keyboard,

I'm not getting full speed but I'm doing pretty well.

Still making some typos.

But when I hook up the type cover,

this has actual physical keys.

It's thicker but not noticeably so.

It still folds down nicely, fits in your bag nicely

but you can really blaze away at this.

I can type at basically the same speed on this

that I do on my regular laptop.

So this is running basically a version of Windows 8.

It's new hardware and new software

and what you're gonna find

is that it does some things really well

and some things not as well.

I really love it, I love it for mobile computing.

Where I don't love it so much

is that the apps are pretty limited.

You're not gonna have a lot of stuff in there

that you probably use every day

and you can only get them through the Windows store.

It's the same thing Apple does with their iTunes store

but there's a lot more in Apple store

than there is in this one

but there's also a lot to love.

It's a beautifully designed product.

It feels great.

It works well.

I love watching movies on it

'cause it's got this 16:9 aspect ratio

which means it's basically like a real Hollywood style movie

without those black bars taking up your screen real estate

like you get on most other tablet screens.

You can't run traditional Windows programs on this.

It's got a desktop

but it's almost just there to confuse you

because the only programs that you're gonna find on there

are a handful of Microsoft Office programs

that are optimized for Windows RT.

If you've got all kinds of legacy programs

that you think you're gonna be running on this,

you are gonna be disappointed.

One of the things that's pretty neat

is if you're multitasking.

You can really go back and forth between apps very quickly.

So let's say, okay, well, now I'm in my desktop

but I wanna listen to Lil Wayne.

I wanna do some email.

Hey, it's Lil Wayne, okay, I'm gonna play Lil Wayne now.

Yeah, alright but actually,

I kinda wanna maybe get something done too

so I'm gonna go back to my email

and run Lil Wayne in the sidebar here.

That's pretty neat.

This is a great device.

If you think you're getting Windows 8, you're not

and you should know that.

You'll be disappointed.

But if you think you're getting a great tablet

that works well as a laptop and it's something totally new,

you're probably gonna love this.