Microsoft’s accomplishments in styling its top tablet, not all has been peachy for end users lately. As of this writing, the latest firmware patch for the Surface Book and Pro 4 has all but rendered their webcams inert for many customers, according to posts to various forums. Furthermore, users have said and reported issues with the devices respective touchpads.
Microsoft managed to up the device’s screen size by a few hairs, from the 2014 model’s straight 12 inches to this year’s 12.3 inches, without affecting its footprint whatsoever. That is, until you count the Redmond firm shaving over half a millimeter off of its thickness, from 9.1-mm to 8.4-mm this year all while maintaining support for full fat mobile processors.
The idea here is to bring the sensor elements of the touchscreen as close to your finger or Surface Pen as possible, and it works incredibly well. The display is incredibly responsive to touch, and the further nuance it brings to the stylus experience is huge. In tandem with the new Surface Pen, the screen detects 1,024 levels of pressure, even during a single stroke.
Although it really did not have to, Microsoft went and upped the Surface Pro’s resolution from 2,160 x 1,440 in the old model to 2,736 x 1,824. That makes for a huge 267 ppi put forth by the Surface Pro 4, which blows its main rival, the MacBook Air, out of the water and narrowly edges out Apple’s new, 12.9-inch iPad Pro at 264 ppi. Smart iteration is actually what the Surface Pro 4 needed to finally make good on Microsoft’s mission that tablets can be laptops, too, and the firm delivered just that in spades.
Microsoft seems to have captured and applied the best definition of loop to almost every end of the Surface Pro 4 by making it well worth the wait for creative professionals, students and everyday folks similar.
