Microsoft only entered the PC hardware market in 2012, but its Suface series has become synonymous with the PC tablet two in one device. Microsoft has always had a clear "division of labor" with PC manufacturers such as Lenovo Hewlett Packard - Microsoft provides systems, while the latter provides hardware.

Faced with the pressure of iPad, perhaps Microsoft could not resist the "pig teammate" after all, and launched its first X86 tablet computer Suface Pro 1 in 2012. Microsoft has successfully put a super extreme version of its hardware into a tablet, but Suface Pro 1 still weighs up to 903g. With its long and narrow 16:9 screen, it is not perfect.

Surface 3 on the left, Surface Pro 4 in the middle, and Surface Pro 3 on the right

Suface Pro 3, launched in 2014, is a masterpiece of Suface series. Since this generation, Suface has become a device that can compete with MacBook Air/iPad. The most obvious difference between the Suface Pro 3 and its predecessor is that it uses a 3:2 screen, and has upgraded the screen size to 12 inches (10.6 inches before). Its weight has dropped to 800g, and its thickness is only 9.14mm. These improvements make the Suface Pro 3 more like a tablet than the previous two generations. The Type Cover keyboard and the original stylus make Suface a productivity tool that can replace a notebook.

In three years, Microsoft has upgraded Suface Pro to the fourth generation. Now let's see how the fourth generation Suface Pro performs.

PS： This is the evaluation of Anandtech, the most professional PC evaluation media in foreign countries. The test content covers countless scoring items and professional terms. If you have any questions, you can leave a message in the bottom comment area, and the translator will try his best to answer them one by one.

Parameter specification: the only difference is everywhere

Microsoft claims that more than 500 new parts are used in Suface Pro 4. The screen size of Suface Pro 4 has slightly increased from 12 inches of Suface Pro 3 to 12.3 inches while keeping the length and width of the body unchanged. The narrower border may increase the chance of mistakenly touching the screen, and squeeze out the original start menu touch key. After all, the start menu has returned in win10, and the touch button that used to be touched by mistake can finally be cancelled.

• The screen of the new machine still has a 3:2 ratio, and the resolution has increased from the third generation 2160 * 1440 (216 PPI) to 2736 * 1824 (267PPI), surpassing the iPad Pro that has not yet been sold.

• The CPU is upgraded directly from Intel's Hadwell architecture (the fourth generation of Core i) to the latest Skylake architecture (the sixth generation of Core i) over Broadwell architecture. Thanks to the 14nm process, the Skylake architecture has significantly improved its power consumption and performance.

• The Surface Pro4, like the previous generation, provides three versions of processors: Core M3-6Y30, i5-6300U and i7-6650U. For the lowest core M3, TDP thermal power consumption is only 4.5W, so there is no internal cooling fan (for comparison, i3 power consumption in Suface Pro 3 is 11.5W).

• The i7 integrated display is Iris Graphics 540 (48 EUs, L4 level cache 64 MB eDRAM, 300-1050 MHz), belongs to the GT3e system, and its performance is between GT825M and GT735M. With the addition of dual channel large memory, it is much better than the entry-level notebook graphics card.

• After the stylus was converted to N-Trig technology, Suface Pro 4 used Microsoft's own G5 chipset to integrate touch and stylus control chips. This is a specially customized solution by Microsoft to reduce the delay of stylus and touch. It also uses GPU acceleration to further reduce the delay. The pressure sense of the stylus has been upgraded from 256 to 1024, and the stylus tip can be changed.

• The new machine provides 4-16G memory version. The SSD is upgraded to the PCIe 3.0 interface of NVMe standard (used to replace the traditional AHCI). The capacity starts from 128G, and the 64G version is no longer available. The maximum version is 1TB (not yet available).

Industrial design: thin and light and hybrid heat dissipation

Suface Pro 4 also uses a magnesium alloy body, maintaining the same color and feel as the previous generation, and maintaining a 3:2 ratio screen. The "stepless angle change" folding bracket introduced in Surface Pro3 is very easy to use. It seems that Microsoft has no room for improvement, so it is directly used.

What was highlighted in the Surface Pro3 press conference that year was that it crammed the 15 watt processor of the Ultrabook into the 9.1 mm thick fuselage, but its price was performance stability. Although Pro3 can cope with short-term high-intensity operations, if it works under full load for a long time, Surface Pro3 will have obvious heating and frequency reduction, resulting in slightly weaker performance than Pro2 (the same CPU).

Surface Pro 3 on the left and Surface Pro 4 on the right

Surface Pro 4 on the left and Surface 3 on the right

Although the CPU has changed from a 22nm Haswell to a 14nm Skylake architecture, its thermal power consumption is still 15W. The new machine needs to transmit this huge heat, so Microsoft has introduced two-way hybrid heat dissipation in the Surface Pro4.

In fact, it is a mixture of traditional passive and active heat dissipation. The CPU is covered with two heat dissipation copper tubes. The former leads to the large copper plate between the screen and the battery to better transmit the heat of the CPU to the metal body. In addition to running points and games, in most cases, the machine is used for passive cooling. The fan will not start, so there will be no annoying fan sound on the Surface Pro3.

Once the heating exceeds the critical value, the machine will start active cooling - turn on the fan and send the heat from the cooling slot near the power key. However, the minimum core M3 version has no fan because the CPU has only 4.5W thermal power consumption.

Three piece accessory set: Type Cover keyboard cover/stylus/docking station

In addition to the "flat body ultra basic core" and folding bracket, the Type Cover keyboard and stylus accessories are also important features of Suface Pro. Since the Suface Pro2 generation, Microsoft has also provided expansion dock accessories. This year, Microsoft has updated these three accessories for Surface Pro4.

Type Cover

The earliest Suface also provided a Touch Cover keyboard cover, which is a touch keyboard. Although it is thin, its input feel is really poor. In the Suface Pro3 generation, there is only Type Cover using entity keys. For the latter, solid keys and touch pads are inserted into the 5mm thickness. The keyboard cover of this generation has greatly changed the keys and touch pad, and the touch even surpasses some super books (even the keyboard cover is inferior to the pig teammate).

Because the two generations of Suface Pro have the same length and width as the interface, the new keyboard is also fully compatible with the Surface Pro3, providing black, blue, bright blue, red and cyan.

Surface Pro 3 Keyboard Cover

Surface Pro 4 Keyboard Cover

The first change is to enlarge the key area to the edge of the keyboard. Secondly, the area of keys becomes smaller, increasing the interval between keys.

The key stroke that has a great impact on the touch of keys has also been increased to 1.3mm, which is already the key stroke size of most Ultrabooks. The keys are very solid, there are not many empty positions, and the sound of the keys is also reduced, making its input feel very similar to that of a formal notebook.

In order to replace notebooks, Suface series keyboards had touch pads at the beginning, but the previous keyboard cover touch pads did have a lot to improve. Although the touchpad of the Surface Pro3 is OK, its area is too small, and it will hurt when scrolling. However, this generation of touchpad has increased its area, changed to glass material, and added the precision touch function of win10. Now its use experience is close to the normal super book.

The magnetic folding block on the top of the keyboard cover has been added since the last generation, which can fold and absorb part of it to the lower part of the screen, so that the keyboard can be lifted in the air to improve the keyboard height and feel. However, the elasticity of the previous generation keyboard is too strong. After the keyboard is lifted in the air, there will be obvious jumping and bending deformation problems when typing, which affects the feel.

Comparison of the thickness of the 4th generation keyboard cover

This generation adopts the laminated design to improve the hardness, so as to improve the bending problem after suspension. This incidentally also makes the keyboard thinner, but it is too small for human beings to feel it.

In a word, the new keyboard is much better than the original in terms of both the touch pad and the feel of keys. In addition, this generation of keyboard covers also have a version equipped with fingerprint recognition function, which can support the fingerprint recognition function of Windows Hello, but it is not yet available.

Stylus with "eraser"

The stylus has been available since the first generation of Suface. Wacom's EMR technology was used in the first and second generations, while the Surface Pro3 began to turn to N-Trig technology. The latter moved the required digital circuit to the pen, and did not need to add another sensing glass layer on the screen, which could reduce the thickness of the screen cover. However, the price of the stylus was changed from 1024 to 256.

The pen of Surface Pro4 is still N-Trig technology, but the pressure level has returned to 1024, which may be good news for artists, but my personal experience is: I really can't feel the difference

The most practical change of the new pen is the addition of an "eraser" button at the end of the pen. It even feels like an eraser when rubbed on the screen. Since the eraser itself is a button, the button on the pen will be reduced to one (performing the right mouse button function).

This button is the highest performance of the combination of software and hardware on the PC platform. Press it once to call up onenote. Double click it to take a screenshot. At this time, after selecting the screenshot area with a pen, it will be automatically transferred to onenote. Long press it to wake up Cortana Voice Assistant.

The new pen tip is quite smooth, and the thinner screen can reduce parallax, making you feel like you are really writing on paper. The nibs can be replaced this time. The whole series of nibs are officially provided. The four nibs "2H, H, HB and B" have different shapes and hardness, and their tactility will be different from that of the screen when rubbing. Their box is a clip for changing the pen tip. The price of the Bank of China version is 99 yuan, which is a little expensive.

The shape of the pen has been slightly changed. The original circle has flattened on one side, and a button has been put down on it. The length has also been increased a bit and the magnetic adsorption function has been added. The magnetic force is very strong. It is unlikely that the pen will fly out when holding the machine, but it is difficult to guarantee when it is put in the bag. Although the new pen can be magnetically attached to the body, which is more convenient to store, there is still a certain probability that the pen will be lost.

The new pen is powered by a very hard to find AAAA battery. It is equipped with an acceleration sensor, which can automatically shut down when it is idle. It can last for 1-1.5 years in normal use. There is enough time for you to find a spare battery. But the pen itself has no power failure warning. If one day it is found that it is not working well, maybe it just has power failure

The stylus is still used out of the box without pairing. Long press the eraser button at the end of the pen for 5 seconds to enter the Bluetooth pairing mode. However, Bluetooth is purely used to control the function of the eraser button. Whether Bluetooth is connected or not does not affect the normal work of the pen tip. Because the same technology is used, the pen can be used on Suface 3 and Suface Pro 3 without pairing, but the rubber button function at the end of the pen can still be used after Bluetooth pairing.

Expansion dock

Suface Pro3 expansion dock

Starting from Suface Pro2, Microsoft has made an expansion dock for Suface. From the price point of view, it is obviously designed for business customers (the price of Bank of China is close to 1500). The expansion dock of Suface Pro3 allows you to connect the keyboard. It uses a special interface on the side (it is also used for charging). The interface is connected by magnetic force, and it is positive or negative.

Expansion dock of Suface Pro 4

The expansion dock of the previous generation has a fixed angle. Although handsome, it is not convenient to use. This generation has directly made the shape of a splitter, and the problem of angle control is returned to the adjustable bracket of the machine. Because Suface Pro's interface is universal and there is no fixed framework this time, the new docking station can be directly used on all models including Suface Book.

The interface adopts lightning interface specification. The expansion dock provides network cable, 3.5mm audio output, dual DP interface and dual USB3.0 interface while charging the equipment. USB and HDMI interfaces can be separated through the same way as the charging line, and the machine can be powered at the same time.

screen

Suface Pro 4 Enlarged Screen

The ratio of the two generations of screens is 3:2. In addition to being 0.3 inch larger, the parameters look very similar, but the actual improvement is very obvious. First, the resolution jumped from 2160x1440 to 2736x1824. It looks small, but there are 2 million pixels missing, and the PPI of the latter has also risen to 267. This time, it is difficult to see pixels even if you paste your face on it.

In addition, the new Suface Pro debugs the screen itself when it leaves the factory, and the significance of factory color matching cannot be overemphasized. Although you can also use ICC files to modify the color accuracy of Windows devices, unless you adjust the color comparison table, it will only improve the gray scale accuracy, and many programs will not load ICC files when they are running. So the factory hardware color matching is the king.

This 8-bit panel of the new Suface Pro not only achieves the goal of 100% sRGB color gamut, but also improves color restoration to a certain extent. The most obvious difference is that when the default desktop of Win10 is displayed, the smoke on the 6-bit panel can be seen shaking, but the surface Pro4 screen will not.

While doing all this, Microsoft has again reduced the thickness of the display panel, making the user feel that the displayed content is under his finger when he touches it

Of course, there is a price. High split screen is the biggest drag on endurance. Higher pixel density will block more backlights. To achieve the same visual brightness, the backlight needs higher brightness. One solution to this problem is to make the circuit outside the pixel more transparent. The current mainstream practice is to use IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) transistors, whose light transmittance is higher than that of traditional amorphous polysilicon.

Generally, Sharp provides IGZO panels, but Microsoft uses Samsung panels this time. Samsung just reached an agreement with Sharp this year to start producing IGZO panels, and this piece on the new Suface Pro should be the first batch of mass production results.

test result

Highest brightness (the higher the better)

Black field (the lower the better)

Contrast (the higher the better)

Although the pixel density and resolution were improved, Microsoft still raised the maximum brightness to 377 nits, and the black field performance was even better. The highest contrast reached 1277:1, and the minimum brightness could be pressed to 12 nits. It would not be too dazzling if the lights were not turned on at night. This will improve significantly when watching movies with more dark scenes.

Gray scale and color standard

Gray scale accuracy (the lower the better)

Color temperature (standard point is 6500K, Asians prefer 7000-8000K)

Gray scale accuracy is the biggest improvement of this generation. Microsoft has made up for the shortcomings of color saturation in the Pro3 generation, but the accuracy of gray scale has declined as a result. The Surface Pro4 perfectly complements the shortcomings of the previous generation. The overall gray scale offset is only 1.5dE, and the highest project does not exceed 3dE. And 3DE is a gray scale offset line that is considered invisible to the human eye, and this parameter has exceeded 99% of mobile phones.

Chromatic alignment

Color accuracy, average DeltaE value (the lower the better)

The color accuracy was improved again on the basis of the previous year, and the color gamut performance was excellent.

GMB test

GMB test, average DeltaE value (the lower the better)

GMB test is the most comprehensive screen test, which includes skin color and many other complex colors. For many machines with an average value of about 3DE, there are several colors that exceed 3DE. For Surface Pro4, only two projects exceed 3DE, and the range is not large, one is 3.25, and the other is 3.5. Its performance is the best of the temporarily tested machines.

Color difference contrast, the color bar above is composed of the live color above and the original image below. Although the effect you see is directly related to the performance of your monitor, the less obvious the middle boundary is, the closer the color restoration is to reality.

In conclusion, Surface Pro4 is the latest achievement of Microsoft in display technology. The panel and PixelSense touch circuit (control touch screen and pen) have been improved, with better color accuracy and thinner outer cover (less parallax). In nonsense, white is whiter and black is blacker.

Microsoft has been clicking on the technology tree of the screen since the first generation of Suface (the first batch of fully fitted tablets). After several years of efforts, the Surface Pro4 has finally been successful.

CPU Performance Testing

Suface Pro4 is one of the first machines equipped with Intel Skylake U series processors, and we evaluated it as the most popular mid-level model. It uses i5-6300U, dual core hyper threading, basic frequency of 2.4GHz, can reach 3GHz, and thermal power consumption is 15W.

The first is the performance of web page JavaScript. The above is the results of four tests (the higher the better). This 15W CPU stands out in front of Android and iOS tablets.

The PCMark score is compared with the X86 architecture super book. The above is the results of four tests (the higher the better). Running score simulates the real working scene, which is very versatile. Some tests require explosive performance and some require sustained performance. In addition, GPU and resolution factors will be included in the test. Although the higher resolution screen will lower the score, the actual performance is still very good. Suface Pro4 of i5 version has even caught up with the i7 of Suface Pro3 in this project.

Single thread performance

Multi thread performance

Single thread performance

Multi thread performance

Cinebench tests force the CPU to render and keep it 100% occupied. In its multi-threaded testing, high frequency and multi-core will have more advantages. As a result, Skylake's score is pretty good, only a little weaker than Lenovo X1 Carbon with i7-5600U, and its multithreading performance even surpasses the latter. Compared with the previous generation Suface, the single core has increased by 21.4%, and the multi-core has increased by 22.7%. The results are impressive.

X264 Running Score mainly tests CPU performance. High frequency multi-core machines will have more advantages. The above test results are for the two scenarios (the higher the better). The Skylake core once again left the Broadwell core by a large margin, and successfully beat the old i7 with the new i5. In the notebook, high-intensity computing will cause a certain degree of frequency reduction, while the more efficient Skylake can maintain its full strength for a longer time, so the score will be better.

The higher the score of the last two tests, the better

The lower the test score, the better

The i5-6300U's performance in the web page test is still good. The performance of single thread and multi thread is very close to that of the i7-5600U, which raises the gap between the two generations of Suface.

GPU graphic test

Different versions of Suface Pro4 have different GPUs:

• The low configuration Core M3-6Y30 is equipped with Intel's HD 515 graphics card, which integrates 24 execution units with a maximum frequency of 850Mhz;

• The i5-6300U is equipped with an HD 520 graphics card, which also has 24 execution units, but the main frequency is increased to 1GHz;

• The i7-6650U is equipped with the Iris 540 integrated display of the GT3e core, with the highest frequency of 1.05GHz, 64M eDRAM, and 48 execution units (the i7 version of Suface Pro3 also uses Iris graphics cards, but the architecture is different, and there is no eDRAM, and only 40 execution units).

3DMark is a full platform scoring software. The above is the results of three test scenarios (the higher the better). There is a 27% performance gap between the two generations of Suface. However, it should be stated that even for devices with the same performance, the image accuracy of the Windows version is higher, so the score of Android and ios platforms seems to be higher.

But even so, the SoC of Android and iOS tablets is only 5-10W. It is expected that this generation of Suface will win a big victory. What I am more interested in is how the iPad Pro will behave.

In GFXBench's two scenario tests, the i5-6300U still hangs on Android and ios platforms.

The physical score of Ice Storm scenario

The graphic score of Ice Storm scene

Total score of Ice Storm scenario

Fire Strike Scene

Cloud Gate scene

Sky Diver Scene

3DMark11 test

In PC platform, this is basically the comparison between Intel's ninth generation graphics card and old products. Intel has been increasing the chip area of integrated display, which has significantly improved the GPUs of these two generations.

3DMark for PC is a highly versatile test, which contains many test items. The computing requirements of the Fire Strike, Sky Diver (for DX11 testing) and Cloud Gate (for DX10 testing) scenarios are gradually reduced, while the Ice Storm Unlimited scenario is a well-known cross platform testing scenario.

Compared with Broadwell's eighth generation graphics card, the improvement is obvious. But it depends on the workload. The lower the performance requirements of the test items, the smaller the gap between them. The gap between them can be widened by 30% in the performance tests of Sky Diver and 3DMark 11. Compared with the 7.5 generation graphics card of Surface Pro3, the difference of Fire Strike is 33.5%, There is a 44.9% gap in Cloud Gate scenarios, The gap in 3DMark 11 is even as high as 86.1%. Of course, in addition to algebraic differences, better heat dissipation is also an important reason for the obvious differences.

Manhattan Scene

Tyrannosaurus Rex scene

In the classic Manhattan and T-Rex scenarios of GFXBench, compare the Broadwell architecture processor of Dell XPS 13 with the Haswell architecture processor of Yoga 2 Pro. In the Manhattan scene, Skylake is 20.3% higher than the former and 54.8% higher than the latter. In the test of Tyrannosaurus Rex, it increased by 22.2% and 61.4% respectively.

Recently, Dota 2 has been modified from beginning to end and launched Dota 2 Reborn. The Source 2 engine brings many changes, which can be used to squeeze the performance of multi-core CPUs, 64 bit systems, and Direct3D 11. In this test, the new version increased by 14.6% and 31.8% respectively.

The results of the three test scenarios of Dota2 Reborn are as above. The higher the score, the better. Compared with the Surface Pro3, it is the integrated display improvement of the two generations of Intel CPUs, and it is also one of the biggest two years. Intel's efforts and achievements in the graphics card are very obvious, which makes people can't help looking forward to the performance of the GT3e GPU on the i7 version Por4.

storage

The Surface Pro4 uses the NVMe standard PCIe 3.0 interface instead. Compared with the Surface Pro3, which uses the SATA interface, the Surface Pro4 will improve greatly in reading and writing large files.

The read-write test of PCMark 8 simulates the load in real use. When storage loads of different sizes do not last too long, there is little difference between different products. When opening files in daily use, there will be no obvious difference between SSDs of the two specifications.

In the storage score test of CrystalDiskMark, perhaps because of the 256GB version, its sequential write is only 554MB/s (but much faster than the blackheart's Surface Book). The sequential read speed of 1500MB/s is good, and the random read and write performance is also good.

Random reading (the higher the better)

Random write (the higher the better)

Sequential reading (the higher the better)

Sequential writing (the higher the better)

The higher speed limit brought by the new interface will not always make you feel it, but when you copy and paste large files such as high-definition movies, the gap will be very obvious.

If it is compared with the eMMC on the tablet, then the gap is really sky to earth. Of course, the system is different, and the comparability is not strong. It can only be said that the mobile platform still has much room for progress.

Endurance

Microsoft's important compromise on the new machine is battery capacity. The battery of the original Suface is 42wh, but the battery capacity of the larger surface Pro4 is only 39wh. This is the price brought by the thinner fuselage and the large copper plate for hybrid heat dissipation. However, these two are very good changes. Microsoft cannot be blamed for sacrificing the endurance.

Low load test

High load test

Unify the brightness of 200 nits, and the browsing time of the surface Pro4 website is slightly shorter than 13 minutes. After using Skylake, the endurance has regressed, which is inevitably disappointing. The battery shrunk and the screen resolution was improved, which successfully drained the power saved by the new CPU.

In the CPU eating test, the CPU power consumption will be improved more significantly, and its endurance performance will also be improved more. Intel's video decoding performance has been improving from Haswell, and more power can be saved on the CPU. Even though the resolution is higher and the battery is smaller, the overall endurance has improved by 23%, and the results are almost catching up with those of arm core tablets.

In video playback, web browsing and 1MB/s downloading tasks with less pressure, the new machine also has a significant improvement. Of course, the battery is still needed for the endurance. The new Suface Pro still has a significant gap compared with devices with larger batteries.

Ranking of minutes per wh battery under light load

Ranking of minutes per wh battery under heavy load

In terms of energy efficiency, we use the high configuration XPS13 for comparison (resolution: 3200 * 1800). The result shows that the Surface Pro4 has the highest energy efficiency among the models with the same resolution, but it still cannot compete with the low split screen machines.

Charging time

The chargers of the two generations of Suface remain the same. They are charged through a special customized interface on the side. The interface has magnetic attraction, regardless of the positive or negative, and is very convenient to use. Because the charger is unchanged and the battery capacity is close, the charging time is almost the same as that of the previous generation.

0-100% charging takes 158 minutes. Because the interface is universal, Suface Book's 60W charger can also be used directly. But the measured result is that even if a higher power charger is used, the charging time is still 158 minutes. It seems that it is the machine itself and not the charger that limit the charging speed.

The good thing about this charger is that in addition to charging the Surface Pro4, it also provides a 5W output USB interface that can charge devices such as mobile phones. If you are on a business trip, you will burst into tears because of this small improvement.

External display and photography

Suface placed the dual speakers on the edge of the front panel, making them very concealed, with the maximum volume of about 80dB. Like other flat panels, the bass is weak and the sound is a bit thin. Compare Suface Book and Surface Pro4 with Star Wars test film. The sound field of Surface Pro4 will feel smaller. However, generally speaking, its sound quality is fairly good, and its stereo effect is obvious, but it is still a little inferior to Suface Book.

Tablets are different from mobile phones, and their cameras are usually used for self taking and temporary emergency use. We don't have high requirements for them. The Surface Pro4 uses front 5 million pixel cameras and rear 8 million pixel cameras. The front camera supports Windows Hello face recognition, but it has not been officially opened yet. Microsoft has used its own face recognition system instead of Intel's RealSense 3D solution. Previously, Intel's scheme had a surprisingly fast face recognition speed and a good experience. As long as Microsoft's scheme could also have a close experience, it would be impressive.

Actual proof sheet

The rear camera has a unit pixel of 1.4 μ m and an aperture of F2.0. Theoretically, the performance of low light scenes will not be too bad, but the CMOS size is only 1/3.2 inch, and there is no optical anti shake and special algorithm optimization, so don't expect too much of its performance.

The front camera is also 1.4 microns. Since it has only 5 million pixels, the cmos size is 1/4 inch. The same aperture is f2.0, but the wide angle is larger, which can provide better picture quality and vision for video calling software such as Skype.

Heating control

Microsoft claims that the design heat dissipation of the Surface Pro4 cooling system is higher than 15W, so the machine will not overheat and reduce frequency as the previous generation. But the muzzle gun is useless. Let's run a test first. The running results of PCMark 8's operating mode (moderate mixed load, intermittent high-intensity computing) show that the running of the machine is very stable, and there is no sign of overheating and frequency reduction. The performance of the previous generation has decreased by 8% in several runs.

The CPU frequency and temperature changes during the running are shown above. The most obvious difference between the two generations of machines is the temperature. The Surface Pro3 can reach 80 degrees, but the Surface Pro4 can press below 60 degrees. The 14nm process and hybrid heat dissipation are very obvious.

The x264 soft solution test can make the CPU run with 100% load. As a result, the Surface Pro4 runs with high frequency throughout the whole process, without hitting the critical line of frequency reduction temperature. The performance of the same 15W Skylake is much better.

The DOTA2 test (DOTA 2 Reborn) is adjusted to the maximum special effects run at 1080P resolution, which can enable both CPU and GPU to maintain the maximum load. After maintaining high frequency for a period of time, the heat dissipation system finally cannot withstand the full load squeezing of CPU+GPU, which reduces the frequency of GPU.

Although thinner and lighter, the two generations of machines look the same. The biggest improvements of the new Suface Pro are all in the body. In particular, this new hybrid cooling system can finally let an Intel core run heartily.

Software

Like Google's nexus device, the latter can provide the purest Android experience. For many users, Suface's important selling point is the pure Windows experience. Microsoft will not carry its own "junk" software like other OEMs/manufacturers. For Surface Pro4, it is the template of native win10.

Measured by the standard of tablet, win10 is a backward step compared with win8, but as a PC, it will be greatly improved. Microsoft has added a touchscreen optimized three piece set of word, excel and PowerPoint in win10, and the strongest note onenote has also been updated.

But apart from this office software, the number and quality of Windows tablet applications are several light years inferior to that of the iPad. Although it is unknown whether Microsoft can catch up later, win10 is much more popular than win8 and win RT in those years, and it has more capital to complete this work.

summary

A few months ago, people could not help wondering what Microsoft would do in Suface Pro4, which is to insert Core M to reduce weight and noise? Or stick to the U-series CPU to provide more abundant performance? Interestingly, both Surface Pro4 schemes are used.

The appearance of the Surface Pro4 is little changed, but its performance experience is better than that of the Surface Pro3. Their relationship is somewhat similar to that of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s. A lot of the latest technologies are concentrated here. The best and largest screens and new processors of Suface series have brought up to 50% performance improvement in some scenes, and they are thinner and lighter.

The changes in accessories are also obvious. The new pen has softer and more realistic strokes. The pen head can be changed, and it has magnetic adsorption. The keyboard cover has a touch pad and a touch pad that can catch up with the Ultrabook. The only defect is the absence of Tpye-C.

Despite its outstanding performance, Suface is a very expensive product in both the tablet and the Ultrabook fields. Microsoft does not intend to compete with its old teammates in the low-end market. The starting price is $899 (Bank of China version 6888 starts), but it can only buy the core M3 processor+4G memory+128G storage version. The highest version of i7+16G memory+512 storage sells for $2199, while the 1TB hard disk version has not been sold yet. The most popular i5+8G memory+256G storage version, $1299. The price is higher than that of the super product with low cost performance.

What's more, the machine only comes with a stylus, and the keyboard cover will cost an additional 129 dollars (998 yuan from the State Bank of China). One set will exceed 1000 US dollars (7888 yuan from the Bank of China). If it had been two months ago, we would have shouted that Microsoft was evil. However, in the past two months, both the iPad Pro and Google's Pixel C have refreshed the price ceiling of our hei disk (xin).

For Suface3, the keyboard may be an optional accessory, but for Surface Pro4, the keyboard is really a must. In addition, the price of this new keyboard is "conscience" compared with Apple and Google, and both old and new Suface Pro can be used. I still recommend that users who recently bought Suface Pro3 or Suface Pro4 should take down the new keyboard cover together.

If you need a productive tablet, Suface can be said to have no competition in terms of quality, performance and accessories. Although products similar to Suface began to appear, the Suface series has been honed for four generations, and has promoted itself to another dimension (soft powder: people do not buy?).

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