What is the Microsoft Surface Pro 7?
The Surface Pro 7 is the latest Windows 10 laptop-tablet from Microsoft, replacing last year’s excellent Surface Pro 6.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, the new Surface Pro 7 maintains the overall design and key attributes of the previous model – you get the same TypeCover keyboard dock, 12.3-in touch-sensitive display and support for Microsoft’s Surface Pen N-trig stylus – but comes with a smattering of new features and components.
I say “features”, but I should really say “feature” – the Surface Pro 7 includes a Type-C USB port, which is a very welcome addition. Aside from that, the main differences are under the hood. The new Surface Pro 7 models include Intel’s latest 10th-gen Ice Lake laptop processors.
We’re expecting great things from the Ice Lake chips – they feature smaller transistors, which means more components can be packed on to the chip, in theory allowing for far better performance.
Related: Hands on Surface Pro X review
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 release date – When is the new Surface Pro coming out?
The Surface Pro 7 is available to pre-order right now, and will be ship when it goes on general sale, on October 22.
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 price – How much will the Surface Pro 7 cost?
The base model Surface Pro 7 will cost £799 in the UK, where you can expect 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD.
Here are the configurations from which you can choose, and their UK and US prices:
- Intel Core i3, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage − £799/$749
- Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB storage − £899/$899
- Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage − £1169/$1199
- Intel Core i5, 16GB RAM, 256GB storage − £1399/$1399
- Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB storage − £1449/$1499
- Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB storage − £1849/$1899
- Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB storage − £2249/$2299
Related: Intel Ice Lake
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 design and features – What’s new and what’s not?
Like all of Microsoft’s 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrids, the Surface Pro 7 comprises a Windows 10 tablet with a kickstand. An uncommon six-pin port, which lets you attach the Type Cover keyboard dock (unfortunately, this is still sold separately for £100-150 a pop), sits on the south edge of the tablet.
Front-facing 1.6W stereo speakers boasting Dolby Audio Premium certification book-end the display. During my hands-on demo, I was able to stream only a handful of songs via Spotify. However, the stereo effect was immediately noticeable, not to mention impressive. Most laptops speakers blast music upwards or directly onto your desk or lap. Here, sound is projected directly at your face, which allowed for a more immersive stereo effect.
The design of this new Surface hasn’t strayed from the previous model. Put a Surface Pro 7 next to a Surface Pro 6, and you’d have to look super-close to tell them apart.
As I said above, Microsoft hasn’t seen fit to mess with its tried-and-tested formula, with only the mini-DisplayPort sacked off in favour of a Type-C USB connection. This means you’ll be able to connect to Full HD and 4K monitors, as well as make use of a wider range of docks than was previously possible. However, the absence of Thunderbolt 3 means that data transfer rates won’t be as swift as they could have been.
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Microsoft Surface Pro 7 keyboard – Type Cover keyboard dock remains unchanged
The classic Type Cover keyboard dock remains unchanged for the Surface Pro 7. This is largely great news, since it means Surface Pro 6 owners upgrading to the new model can simply snap off their existing Type Cover and plug straight in.
Magnetic strips mean that once the Type Cover is connected to the six-pin port, it’s locked securely into place. There’s virtually no chance of it coming free mid-sentence, no matter how heavy-handed or aggressively you type.
The Type Cover is shaped in such a way that when connected, the keys are angled towards your hands rather than being parallel to the desk. Given the Type Cover itself is wafer-thin – at barely 5mm thick – that’s a good thing. Microsoft says you get 1mm of key travel here, which doesn’t appear terribly deep, but on considering the actual dimensions of the unit, it makes sense. In general, I’m a fan of the typing experience with the Type Cover, although there’s no denying some will find it cramped.
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 display – Same as it ever was
One of the standout features of the Surface Pro 6 was its excellent display – a 12.3in touchscreen panel with a 2736 x 1824 resolution and 3:2 aspect ratio. This veers by most laptop standards, which tend to favour the more usual 16:9 ratio – but it’s par for the course for Microsoft’s Surface range. A taller display makes it better suited for working on long documents, although it does mean streamed content may suffer from letterboxing.
Microsoft personnel at the Surface Pro 7 event weren’t able to provide details regarding maximum brightness or colour space coverage, but it won’t be too long before we’re able to check out those figures for ourselves.
Support for Microsoft’s Surface Pen stylus returns as well. It felt nippy and responsive following a brief scribble in Photoshop. Being able to make small, precise adjustments to brushes with the stylus was effortless.
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Microsoft Surface Pro 7 performance and batter – Ice Lake won’t have a meltdown
Microsoft is claiming you’ll get around 11 hours of battery life following a single charge. Of course, we’re not aware of exactly how Microsoft arrived at that figure – we don’t have details regarding the level of brightness the display was set to, for example.
With the Surface Pro 6, Microsoft stated over 13 hours of battery life; on testing we found that it was closer to eight.
We expect that the Surface Pro 7’s battery will be sufficiently sized to see you through a typical working day – but based on experience, we’d take that 11-hour figure with a pinch of salt.
The presence of fast-charge technology means that with the supplied mains adapter, you should be able to get the Surface Pro 7 from empty to 80% in an hour. If this is the case, and you’re working on the move, away from the mains all day, keeping the device topped up shouldn’t prove an issue.
Processor options available to Surface Pro 7 buyers include entry-level Core i3, mid-tier Core i5, and high-performing Core i7s from Intel’s new Ice Lake range.
Although the full suite of Surface Pro 7s weren’t on display to road-test at the event, the model I reviewed for this hands-on featured a Core i5 processor (Intel i5-1035G4) and 8GB of RAM.
The i5-1035G4 is a quad-core processor with a base clock speed of 1.1GHz and the ability to turbo up to 3.7GHz. The “G4” part of the name indicates the presence of Intel Iris Plus Graphics G4. This integrated graphics processor won’t be sufficient for playing big triple A titles such as Control or Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. However, Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Fortnite should be fine following some graphics settings tweaking.
I was able to quickly run the trial version of the Geekbench 5 CPU stress test on the Surface Pro 7 and saw the following results:
- Single-core: 714
- Multi-core: 2798
Geekbench 5 is a relatively new benchmark tool, replacing the older Geekbench 4 used to bench the Surface Pro 6. According to developer Primate Labs, a Geekbench 5 score of 1000 should be considered the baseline. In this context, the Surface Pro 7 doesn’t look that great. But there’s more to product testing than simply running a bunch of benchmarks; further testing will give us a clearer picture.
Initial verdict
The Surface Pro 7 is shaping up to be a worthy successor to one of last year’s best-selling devices. There isn’t much that’s new here – the design is virtually the same – and, despite Core i3 options being available to buyers on a budget, prices remain high.
Then again, this is a premium-looking and premium-sounding device. The Surface Pro 7 was never going to be cheap. If the battery life is as good as Microsoft’s claims, and the Ice Lake processors live up to expectations, the price might well be justified.
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