Microsoft

Great storage and a fancy AI chip, but the rest of the package is painfully average. Buy it for Copilot+, not for performance.

The storage is the one place this thing shines, sitting at the 89th percentile. That 512GB SSD is quick and roomy for a tablet. But the CPU and GPU are both hovering around the 35th percentile, which is a letdown for a device billed as 'the fastest Windows PC ever.' The Snapdragon X Plus handles everyday tasks fine, but don't expect it to blow past a modern iPad Pro in raw grunt. The NPU is cool for AI tricks like Recall and Live Captions, but that's a narrow use case.

The Apple iPad Pro M5 absolutely demolishes this in raw performance and battery life. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra has a bigger, better screen and stronger connectivity. Even the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus offers more features for the money. The Surface Pro's only real edge is running full Windows with Copilot+ AI, and that's a niche advantage. For most people, the iPad Pro is the better tablet, and a mid-range Windows laptop is the better PC.

There's no price listed, which makes value hard to judge. But based on the scores, this is a tough sell unless you specifically need Windows with AI features. The storage is great, but you're paying for a Copilot+ experience that most people won't use daily. If this comes in under $800, it's worth a look. Any higher and you're better off with an iPad Pro or a solid Windows laptop.

Microsoft is pushing the Surface Pro as a Copilot+ PC, and the Snapdragon X Plus chip is the star of the show. It's got 45 TOPS of NPU power, which is genuinely impressive for AI tasks. But here's the thing: the overall score lands at 23.6 out of 100, and that tells a story the marketing doesn't. The 512GB SSD is a bright spot, but the rest of the package feels like it's coasting on the AI hype.

If you want a tablet for media, reading, or drawing, this isn't it. The screen and battery are average, and the feature set is thin. Go get an iPad Pro M5 or a Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra instead. If you need a workhorse laptop, skip this and grab a mid-range Windows machine with a real GPU.

The Surface Pro with Snapdragon X Plus is a device with one great trick and a lot of average parts. If you're all-in on Windows AI features and want a tablet that can replace a laptop, it works. But the weak battery, poor connectivity, and bare-bones feature set make it hard to recommend over the competition. This feels like a first draft of a good idea, not the finished product.