Today's world makes many of us live eventful lives. There are those who get up in the morning to take public transport, those who constantly pass from one part of the city to another, those who use myriads of technological devices on the move and those who study and work simultaneously. Of course, the smartphone has now become an extension of our body and is always useful in these cases, but there are operations in which a laptop still has the upper hand.
However, always carrying a common notebook may not be the best solution, especially at the transport level. Here comes the market of 2-in-1, hybrids between laptops and tablets. Among the major exponents of this type of device we find the Surface Pro 7 range, which is sold at a price of about 1600 euros on the official website (16 / 256GB model with i5 processor). We remind you that the Signature keyboard must be purchased separately, at a cost of about 185 euros on the official website. If you want to take home the "complete product" used for this review, you have to shell out 1785 euros in total.
Design and connectivity
The packaging of the laptop is more classic than one might expect: we are talking about a white box with a render of the product in the front and information on the content in the back. Inside we find little else besides Surface Pro 7: there are the charging cable, the 65W charger and the inevitable manuals. Already this first contact makes it clear how much Microsoft wanted to go straight to the point, creating a no frills product. Still, the care taken in the 2 in 1 design is far from marginal. The Platinum coloration that has been given to us has its own reason and there are some nice touches of class.
On the back there is the classic logo of the Surface range, the frame is unibody in magnesium alloy and the lower part of the rear body can be used to hold the device upright, thus giving the user the possibility to use it in countless contexts. At both the front and the rear, a camera peeps out at the top.
We will not dwell too much on these aspects, given that little has changed compared to previous generations. Microsoft has managed to well characterize its Surface Pro, creating a convincing and reliable design and carrying it forward with care.
One thing to underline is the possibility of using the magnetic coupling present in the lower part of the device to connect an external keyboard. There are various official keyboard models and each one uses different materials and colors. We have been provided with the Signature Cover in Poppy Red color with alcantara coating. It is a refined and comfortable keyboard to use: we do not exaggerate when we say that it is one of the most beautiful that we have ever used. Equipped with backlit mechanical keys, the keyboard allowed us to type quickly both day and night. A perfect solution for those who, like us, have to deal with writing texts essentially at any time of the day.
The magnetic attack has never given us problems and it is also possible to use the keyboard in "extended" mode or in a more "compact" way, going to "hide" the lower edge of the Surface Pro 7. The trackpad precision is excellent and the Surface immediately detects automatically when you connect / disconnect the keyboard, also proposing a message on the screen that allows you to switch between desktop and tablet mode (with automatic rotation active) and vice versa.
The keyboard can be left connected and the device can be closed as if it were a normal notebook: Surface Pro 7 will take care of turning off the screen. Speaking of writing, it should be noted that, at the time of purchase through the Microsoft site, you can choose whether to add an annual subscription to Office 365 Home (79 euros) or Office 365 Personal (49 euros) to the package. Do not miss the opportunity to take advantage of a 30-day trial version, in case you want to get an idea first.
Focusing on its connectivity compartment, on the right we find the input for the Surface Connect power supply (proprietary technology), a USB 3.0 Type-A port and a USB Type-C port. At the top are the power button and the volume rocker, while the 3.5mm audio jack for headphones peeps out on the left. At the bottom there is the magnetic hook for the keyboard we were talking about earlier. Do not underestimate the presence of a USB port in the power supply, which allows you to use it to recharge, for example, smartphones and power banks. If you are wondering where the speakers are, you should take a look at the top right and left corners.
Microsoft has essentially "hidden" them in the black body and even from these small aspects the care taken in the construction of the device can be seen. Another touch of class is the positioning of the microSD slot, which is located by raising the rear that acts as a support. For the rest, Surface Pro 7 has dimensions equal to 292 x 201 x 8.5 mm without keyboard, for a weight of 775 grams. We are therefore talking about a light device, although using it as a tablet may not be very comfortable due to the large size. We assure you that it is a versatile solution that can be exploited essentially anywhere, but we believe that the magnetic docking keyboard is necessary to make the best use of the product.
Technical features
If the design, although iconic, has remained practically unchanged compared to the previous generations, so it is not for the components under the body. In fact, Intel's 10th generation processors have arrived. At this juncture, we will take into consideration the characteristics of the model that we have had the opportunity to try, even if, as mentioned above, it is possible to choose different configurations during the purchase phase. Well, our model mounts a quad-core Intel Core i5-1035G4 processor with a base frequency of 1.10 GHz and a maximum Turbo frequency equal to 3.70 GHz. The TDP is 15W and there is a good balance between performance and consumption.
Dissipation is passive: during "heavy" operations such as gaming or after recharging, the body on the back heats up, but always remains at normal temperatures. The processor is flanked, in our case, by 16GB of LPDD4x RAM and 256GB of SSD. The video card is the integrated Intel Iris Plus, while the operating system is Windows 10 64-bit.
This is an excellent configuration, which does not have any kind of performance problem during daily use. The Microsoft Office suite runs that is a marvel and all the classic "office" programs do not give any problems. In short, the Surface Pro 7 is great for working.
However, this is not the only use able to bring out the quality of the product, given that the laptop is also quite valid for viewing multimedia content. This thanks to 12.3-inch PixelSense touch screen with 3: 2 aspect ratio and 2736 x 1824 pixel resolution, which has a high sRGB coverage. The edges are pretty obvious and that's a bit of a shame, but it's not actually a big deal and fits in well with the design. There is no lack of support for the Surface Pen and, in general, the response of the touch screen has always been quick and precise during our test.
We are facing an excellent display with wide viewing angles and an overall visual quality among the best that can be found on the market with regard to these devices. The light sensor is good, which has always worked well in all contexts. It must be said that the step forward compared to the last generation was not very evident, but Surface Pro 7 starts from an excellent base and defends itself well in this respect.
The cameras, one front and one rear, are 5MP and 8MP respectively. Both record at a maximum resolution of 1080p. The front sensor can also be used for facial unlocking via Windows Hello.
The videos are of good quality, but nothing that makes a miracle cry. The sensors do what they have to do and allow, for example, to make video calls in serenity and at a higher resolution than that used by lower-end laptops, which usually stop at 720p webcams. The audio sector is excellent, implementing two far-field studio microphones and 1.6W stereo speakers with Dolby Audio. Both incoming and outgoing audio are of good caliber. To underline the support to the latest standards in terms of connectivity, from Wi-Fi 802.11 ax to Bluetooth 5.0.
Autonomy and user experience
In terms of autonomy, the 43.2 Wh battery allowed us to get to about 8 hours with standard use, where we alternated between different stages of writing, browsing the web through Google Chrome and playing multimedia content. This using the balanced preset that is set by default. However, by pressing on the battery icon on the bottom right you can go towards maximum performance or energy saving. Using the latter you can also do the 10 and a half hours declared by the manufacturer, but with a slightly more "advanced" use autonomy is around 6/7 hours. In general, the working day can usually be brought home with "standard" use, mainly made up of the Office package, viewing of multimedia content and web browsing. The autonomy of a laptop must always be contextualized and each user must find the right settings according to his routine.
A full charge via the proprietary standard takes just over an hour. Pulling the strings of the speech, Microsoft has worked well at the hardware level: the performance jump compared to the last generation has occurred and the Redmond company has still managed to keep consumption on good levels for a user that focuses on productivity .
Speaking of performance, Microsoft Surface Pro 7 runs Windows 10 flawlessly and we've never had a problem. However, we couldn't get away from testing gaming, despite knowing that Surface and video games are two very different worlds. Well, as you can imagine, in this area the results are not very exciting. By setting the laptop to maximum performance and choosing Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), Fortnite manages to shoot at about 30 average stable FPS only with Medium presets.
Moving to Basso, Epic Games' Battle Royale approaches 60 FPS, but the latter are not stable and during the most agitated situations there is some fluidity problem. Here the "bottleneck" is the integrated Intel Iris Plus card, known for not being exactly the best of the gaming side solutions. In short, it is possible to play a few games in not too expensive games, but Surface Pro 7 points to another type of user.
