These Surface Pro X probably the most unusual surface of all.
I'm gonna tell you why this year the world might actually be ready for it.
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So last year we saw a handful of interesting Microsoft computer designs.
The Surface Pro X what was unique about the Surface Pro X is that like the Surface Pro, it was a Windows tablet that had a clip-on keyboard, an addon- stylus that you could use with it.
But unlike the Surface Pro, the Pro X did not use it, intel processor or even an AMD 1.
It used in arm processor, one that Microsoft called the SQ1 and it was a collaboration between Microsoft and Qualcomm, similar to the Snapdragon processors in a lot of mobile phones and now other devices.
So at the time and this continues arm based windows systems are a bit of an odd bird.
We've seen a handful of them, usually on the lower end of the price scale where they promised that by losing some of the raw processing power of using an Intel Chip.
You get much better battery life and you get a thinner, lighter machine that feels more like a smartphone brain inside a laptop body.
But we have not been very impressed with the first generation of two of those arm based Windows PCs.
But the Surface Pro X was something different, it was an ambitious, very upscale machine, either was even nicer than the regular Surface Pro.
It had a really big screen, but a very thin body.
It had the same clever style of keyboard, the clip on magnetic keyboard that you find on the Surface Pro.
But I love that there was a special flat stylus for the Surface Pro X that even fit into a little recharging dot built into the keyboard.
But of course machine was kind of on the slow side, especially considering it was like $1000 laptop basically.
And there were a lot of software compatibility issues, something you still get with arm based windows machines, some there's still slowly being worked through.
You'll still run into some problems here and there.
And on top of that, the battery life on the Surface Pro X it was all right, it was about nine hours.
It wasn't really anything to write home about, so we thought it was an interesting experiment.
And it wasn't quite ready for the times and maybe the times we're not quite ready for it.
So one year later, there's a new version of these Surface Pro Act still called Surface Pro X and frankly, the only real difference is a color option and a new processor inside.
Now they called the SQ2 instead of the SQ1, and they say it's faster and has better battery life.
Even though that sounds like a very minor upgrade, idea has made a big difference and now I feel like we are more ready for something like the Surface Pro X.
One of the major reasons is because Apple has now said that future Macs are gonna use Apple's own.
They call Apple Silicon chips instead of Intel chips, but it's basically a version of the same thing.
It's basically an arm chip inside a Mac book or a Mac Desktop.
It's very similar to frankly what's happening in iPhones and iPads and those are definitely powerful enough to be your all day everyday computer, if you have the right software hardware combination.
So just a year later, Apple is made everyone very open to the idea of spending a couple $1000 or more on in arm powered computer, whereas last year and the Surface Pro experts came out.
That was a bit of a tough sell.
I'm not saying it's not gonna be a tough sell for Apple, but if they're putting their muscle behind it, a lot of people will go.
Of course I don't need an Intel Chip whatever, so having tested the new Surface Pro X, I do like it better than last years model.
I ran a couple of benchmarks, it was a little bit faster, not incredibly faster and perhaps most importantly in the battery life test, this new version did better.
I got a little more than 10 hours of battery life out of it in our streaming video battery test and you know what?
That's nice jump to have.
So I like the design of the Surface Pro X, I like the keyboard clip-on keyboard accessory.
That's great, the little flat silence is fantastic and you're having fewer and fewer compatibility problems between typical windows software and these arm based systems.
It's not completely solved yet, but I bet within six months or a year a lot of the big issues people have will be gone.
Now, here's the problem with the Surface Pro ads number one.
It still may be kind of early for a lot of people to make that switch away from Intel or AMD chips.
Number two, it's suffers from the same kerf of almost every other surface product, which is that the most interesting thing about it is that clip on keyboard.
And frankly, in this case also the custom stylists and you have to buy them separately and they're expensive.
I think it's probably about 150 bucks or so for the keyboard, there's a couple different options with a flock, fabric in without it's almost 150 I think for the Stylus as well.
I think there's a combo package looking at both of them together for like $270 from Microsoft right now, but that's on top of the 1299 you're paying for a new model with that SQ2 processor.
And these prices, they should kind of throw the keyboard in with the box.
And I've been saying that since the very first surface product all those years ago.
