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Review on πŸ’» Microsoft Surface Pro 6 | Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD by Victor Kakaruk

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Great hybrid with a few flaws

To give context I bought a Surface Pro 6 to replace my Surface Pro 4 which I traded in at my university hardware store. Display: The display on the Surface Pro 6 is significantly better than the Surface Pro 4 for one reason: the contrast ratio. Blacks are blacker and everything is just lighter. There's also an sRGB color mode for those of you who are into photo or video editing. There's also virtually no backlight blur, which was a bit of an issue on my SP4. The display also gets a bit brighter than the SP4, which is very helpful for outdoor use. Performance: SP6's performance is significantly better than SP4's for everyday tasks, mainly due to the doubling of cores and threads (4 and 8 versus 2 and 4). Bouncing through PowerPoint, Excel, Word, multiple tabs, and even Skype's infamous CPU usage was much faster. In a quick test, Geekbench SP6 is in the performance range of a non-overclocked desktop i5 3570k. SSD performance is also very strong, but still falls short of what Apple can achieve. Battery life: This is the main reason I wanted to upgrade as the SP4's battery life was its Achilles heel even when it was new. With my mixed workload of web browsing, MS-Office, YouTube, Onenote, etc., I would get around 4.5 hours of battery life with SP4. With SP6 it's about 8.5 hours. Of course, your mileage will depend on your individual use case, but of course the battery is no longer the weak point of the Surface Pro range. connectivity. To be honest, this is a shortcoming of SP6. The only ports are a headphone jack (thanks!), a surface mount port, a USB-A 3.0 port, and a mini display port. The lack of USB-C (preferably Thunderbolt 3) on a new device in 2018 will be an obstacle for some. For me personally, the interface behaves like a mobile machine with a desktop to work from home, so I almost never have to connect it to a display/peripheral. For those looking to use their Surface as their main engine, this can be a hurdle; it depends on your workflow. As far as Wi-Fi performance goes, I haven't had any issues. Keyboard and Pen: I am using the same keyboard and pen as SP4 as they are backwards compatible. The SP6 keyboard is almost identical to the SP4 keyboard, so my comment is still valid. The keys have plenty of spacing and travel, and the trackpad, while small, is smooth and precise. I can't comment on the latest generation Surface Pen, but those upgrading to the SP6 with an older pen will still benefit from the SP6's improved latency over the SP4 and older models. It was a pleasant surprise, and as a result, writing on SP6 became even more natural. Little things: Windows Hello is still great and faster than ever. With SP6 Instant Wake, I'm logged in within 2 seconds of pressing the power button. The build quality also remains exceptional. Overall, the Surface Pro 6 looks like a major upgrade for Surface Pro 4 and older users, with significantly better performance and battery life. The ability to use legacy accessories on the SP6 is just the icing on the cake.

Pros
  • Delivery was very quick
Cons
  • confusing