Microsoft Surface Pro 8

The Microsoft Surface Pro 8 isn’t a huge step forward for Microsoft’s tablet line, but it’s a definite move in the right direction. The device fixes a number of niggling flaws in past Surface Pro’s designs and offers key performance upgrades thanks to the inclusion of Thunderbolt connectivity, an Intel 11th Gen CPU and 120Hz refresh rate screen. This makes it a better option for buyers that want a laptop first and tablet second, if you invest in the optional keyboard cover. But it’s desktop-focussed Windows 11 software makes it a poor choice for anyone that just wants a tablet first and foremost.

Introduction

The Microsoft Surface Pro 8 is Microsoft’s latest convertible tablet-come-laptop, letting buyers use it as a Windows tablet or portable laptop/sketch station when paired with the optional Signature Cover case and Slim Pen 2.

This puts it in direct competition with Apple’s iPad Pro line of tablets. Microsoft has refined its design and added upgrades like more powerful components and a 120Hz screen. But niggling issues with its software make it feel a little difficult to use as a standalone tablet.

But the flipside, when paired with a Type Cover, and the Slim Pen 2 its Windows 11 software lets it function much better as a full fat laptop replacement than its Apple rival, making it better for office use.

Design

• The design is a refinement rather than rethink
• The Type Cover and Slim Pen 2 are sold separately
• Features Thunderbolt connectivity

Surface devices traditionally have fairly utilitarian designs, with Microsoft tending to make minor refinements, rather than outright changes year-on-year. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 looks very similar to the Surface Pro 7 I tested back in 2019.

The black tablet section is all but identical to its predecessor at first glance, being a simple slate with slightly round edges and a flat back. It also comes with a built-in kickstand, which can be used to prop the tablet up at varying angles, including an artist’s easel. The only big visible difference is that the new Surface Pro 8 has a smaller, but still noticeable, bezel around its screen.

The smaller bezel is welcome, and like past Surfaces, there is plenty to like about the design. The tablet’s metal frame feels well built and offers next to no flex when pressed. The matte finish looks nice, despite being prone to picking up fingerprint marks and scratches a little too easily, and the tablet is light enough to carry and use on the go without breaking your back.

One of the Surface Pro 8’s side-facing USB-C connections is a Thunderbolt 4 port. The lack of a Thunderbolt connector has been an ongoing gripe of mine with Surface devices, so it’s great to see Microsoft finally embrace the technology. Thunderbolt 4 brings a number of key benefits including faster data transfer speeds and the ability to connect to multiple 4K displays via the USB C port.

It can also be used for charging, though Microsoft has opted to load the Surface Pro 8 with a proprietary cable for this. The cable works fine, it’s just a faff having to remember to pack it every time you take the device out and about. USB-C charging is infinitely more convenient.

But even with Thunderbolt, the port offering feels a little light. The only other connectors you get are a headphone jack on the short left side. There’s no SD or Micro SD card slot here, but there is a swappable SSD inside.

The Surface’s rear camera has also been given a spruce, with Microsoft loading it with the same 10MP sensor seen on the Surface Pro X. Up front it has the same 5-megapixel front-facing camera seen on its predecessor.

I wouldn’t recommend using the 10MP rear camera to take stills as your phone will almost certainly capture better images. But the ability to capture video in 4K with the rear camera is useful, especially if you’re recording a presentation for work.

The front camera told a similar story. It was able to capture great 1080p footage for work Zoom calls, with the image looking crisp and clear to people on the other end. The two far-field studio microphones also never had any issue picking up my voice.

The biggest, and most positive, changes relate to the Surface Pro 8’s Signature Keyboard and Slim Pen 2 active stylus. The keys are moderately more comfortable to type on than their iPad rivals and have reliable track pads, but in the past they’ve had a tendency to flex when met with even moderate force. Past Surface’s have also offered no way to easily dock their optional active styluses.

Thankfully these two issues have been, for the most part, fixed with the new Signature keyboard and Slim Pen 2. The new keyboard has a carbon fibre layer, which makes it feel a lot sturdier to type on, removing the flex I experienced using past Type Covers. As an added perk, the keyboard also has a dock for the Slim Pen. This sits on its top long side and has a clever magnetic mechanism that charges and hides the pen when the tablet section is attached.

The pen is slightly different to the older Surface Pen seen on past Pro tablets. It’s plastic, has flat sides and features a new built-in haptic motor that aims to replicate the feeling of drawing or writing on paper when interacting with the Pro 8’s screen. The feature works well enough, though it’s not quite as authentic as the experience I have using one of Remarkable’s tablets. But the flat sides did take some getting used to. For the first few days I felt the pen’s shape wasn’t quite as ergonomic, and occasionally I experienced hand cramps when using it for prolonged digital painting sessions.

The upgrades are very welcome and make the Surface Pro 8 feel like a much more competent laptop replacement than most competing convertibles, including the iPad Pro. My only quibble is that Microsoft’s still charging an arm and a leg to get them. The keyboard alone costs an extra £159.99. Considering the fact you really need this to make the most out of the device, I can’t help but think the keyboard should come bundled with the Surface Pro by default.

Screen

• The screen features a 120Hz refresh rate
• Uses LCD technology and has same resolution as older model
• Colours aren’t quite accurate enough for professionals

One of the biggest updates Microsoft has made to the Surface Pro 8 relates to its screen. It hasn’t updated the panel to use Mini LED tech, like the stuff seen on the new iPad Pro. It hasn’t even made the jump to OLED.

The 13-inch LCD screen has the same 3:2 aspect ratio, 2880 x 1920 resolution as the Surface Pro 7. The difference is that Microsoft has increased the screen’s max refresh rate to 120Hz.

This increases the maximum number of images per second the screen can display from 60 to 120. A higher refresh rate brings with it a number of benefits. The most noticeable is smoother scrolling and navigation, as there’s less of a gap between each image in an animation.

It can also help gamers for the same reason, reducing the gap between a command being input and it playing out on screen. That said, the Surface Pro 8 is not powerful enough for native AAA gaming, and the only cloud streaming service that supports a 120Hz refresh rate is the premium plan of GeForce Now which costs a whopping £89.89 every six months.

The downside to a higher refresh rate is that the increased pressure to push out more images per second puts a much bigger drain on a device’s battery. You also have to manually go into the Surface Pro 8’s settings and set the display to run in either 60Hz or 120Hz, although downloading an Intel driver will make the process automatic.

Elsewhere, the screen feels very similar to past Surfaces. This means the screen is great for productivity and basic things like Netflix binging, but not appropriate for hardcore creative work.

To the naked eye the screen looks vibrant. Netflix movies have nice deep blacks, despite the screen being LCD, and max brightness levels let content and text remain legible in everything but direct, bright sunlight. Content on Netflix looks great, despite the lack of formal HDR support and all in all I had no issues using the screen day-to-day during testing.

Cracking out a colorimeter, our test results backed up my real world findings. The device recorded a 0.36 nit black level, which is very good for a non OLED screen and above average 460.99 nit max brightness. The end result gives the screen a reliable 1279:1 contrast ratio. As a rule of thumb anything over 1000:1 on a laptop is good.

The only issues occurred after I started checking colour gamut coverage. Gamuts are ranges that inform how many colours a screen can accurately render. The higher the coverage the more accurate the colours are. The Surface Pro 8 covers 99.4% of the bog-standard sRGB gamut, which makes it a solid performer for day-to-day activity.

But it only covers 73.4% of the Adobe RGB and 75.7% of the DCI P3 gamuts favoured by creatives that work in physical media. As a rule I’d want a device being marketed for creatives to cover at least 80% of these gamuts out of the box.

Performance

• The device runs using an Intel 11th Gen CPU
• It works for most creative work, but it’s not for gaming
• Windows 11 isn’t suited to tablet mode

Under the hood, the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 is powered by one of Intel’s 11th Gen CPUs. The exact CPU and RAM configuration can be customised in the Microsoft Store. The version I tested features an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 CPU and 16GB of RAM.

The Surface Pro 8 is more than powerful enough for everyday use. Using it as my work laptop, I never had any issues, even when running a quite frankly ridiculous number of tabs in Chrome and doing some basic image retouch work in GIMP.

Intel’s integrated XE graphics aren’t a replacement for a dGPU, but the setup works well. True AAA gaming is beyond it, but during testing I was able to get popular games including Minecraft and Apex Legends to run at playable frame rates, albeit with their graphical settings lowered.

It also ran creative workloads okay. I’ve been able to digitally paint in Krita and do basic 3D modelling in Blender on the Surface Pro 8 without any real fuss. Though more hardcore workloads like large scale vector projects and video editing will give it pause.

I was also impressed how cool the tablet ran. The fan system works well and ensured the device ran cool and quietly in most instances. The only time I noticed any warming or noise was when running demanding processes for prolonged periods, but even then the noise and heat didn’t become real issues.

Putting the Surface Pro 8 through our standard suite of synthetic benchmarks, the figures matched my real world findings. You can see a breakdown of its scores and how they compare to competing devices in the table below.

The only real performance issues I suffered occurred when I tried to use the device as a tablet. Windows 11 is a great step forward for Microsoft, featuring a number of UI changes that make it feel significantly more user friendly than Windows 10, plus some awesome backend security, stability and performance improvements. But the fact is, no matter what Microsoft says, it’s not properly optimised for pure touch inputs.

You can navigate through Windows 11 using the on-screen keyboard and touchscreen, but compared to iPad OS the experience feels very cumbersome. The desktop view is also fiddly to navigate with even basic things, like changing display settings not feeling as quick and easy to do in a few clicks as it is on Android and iPad OS. This is why I would describe the Surface Pro as a hybrid that’s designed to be a laptop first and tablet second, despite the fact it doesn’t come with a keyboard.

Battery Life

• 16 hour regular use claim is a little optimistic
• But the tablet will last a full day’s use in the office

Microsoft quotes the Surface Pro 8 as offering 16 hours battery life, and during testing I found that it is possible to get that much use out of the device under certain conditions.

How long the battery will last is dependant on a variety of factors, chief of which is what processes you are running and what screen settings you’re using. I only got 16 hours when I completely shut down all superfluous settings and lowered the screen brightness to levels most people wouldn’t find comfortable using.

With the screen locked to 60Hz and regular brightness (around 150 nits) the Surface Pro 8 easily lasted a full work day’s use still. Logging on at 8.30am, running web apps and making and taking more Zoom calls than I care to admit, with a quick Game Pass session during lunch, the device still had around 10% of its charge come clocking off time at 5pm.

However, ramp the settings up and throw a few more demanding workloads at the Surface Pro 8 and it’ll drain its charge a lot faster. Playing graphically-intensive tasks, like 3D modelling in Blender, I managed to drain the battery in less than 3 hours. The 120Hz screen setting also sheds around 2-3 hours off the device’s life, even if you’re just doing basic office work and web browsing.

My real world findings rang true when I ran PCMark 10’s synthetic battery test. This is a benchmark that simulates every day office workloads, like video calling, web browsing and document editing, on a loop until the battery is completely drained.

Running the test the Surface Pro lasted 8 hours 44 minutes when docked to a Signature Keyboard cover, and 9 hours 52 when undocked. These figures aren’t groundbreaking by either tablet or laptop standards.

Thankfully the device is reasonably quick to charge. Using the included proprietary charger the Surface Pro took an average of 30-40 minutes to go from 0-100%.

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