For bigger things, I did a review for, I like to do a follow up after few months, to make an update on how it is to use them. And since it just has been two months I got the Surface Pro 4, today I will share with you how it is.

Stability & Reliability

For the whole time I was a part of the Windows Insider program. So the version of Windows 10 I used on the Surface Pro 4, was always the newest one from the fast ring. If you are a part of it, you know that Microsoft is releasing a new version of windows almost weekly now. I also always kept all software up to date.

In the two months, I had a blue-screen error once. I had no other errors, restarts or hiccups at all. The problem with the crashing video drivers was corrected few days after I posted my review. Actually, the only repeating problem I found is a bit strange one. When I use hibernate, after the Surface wakes up, I sometimes can’t stream video to it. It’s just crazy choppy and slow. Not sure if this is caused by the wifi driver, but a restart always solves it. But this is more of an annoyance than a real problem.

Keyboard & Pen

I thought I would not like the keyboard. I write with all 10 fingers and my normal keyboard is a MS natural ergonomic keyboard, so much bigger, angled and split in the middle. But to my surprise I really like the keyboard. It’s big enough for me to work it, it is not that bouncy and it’s very responsive. I did write quite a few articles for the blog while laying in bed with the surface on my knees and it was still fine :). The touch-pad works OK, but I got a mouse for the surface, so I prefer not to use it.

I have not used the pen for editing at all. But I did use it for taking quick notes, to mark up web pages (it was great when I was preparing the page update, just loading a work in progress version into edge and then use the pen to note needed changes right there) and I tried a bit of drawing, not that I really know how to. I got a program called Mischief, which is an endless drawing/note taking canvas, and that is a great companion to the pen. All the time I had 0 issues with it.

Both keyboard and pen magnets are strong enough to hold them in place and not even when putting surface in the bag either of them ever got loose.

Performance & Battery

I haven’t done much photo editing on it recently, but I did quite a lot of other Photoshop work, like creating flayers and similar. I was very pleasantly surprised by how it managed to keep up and even after hours of work I never heard the fan. Once I even forgot to plug in the power cord, and I haven’t noticed it at all for over three hours.

There were of course instance when it got taxed quite more. Especially when working in Ligthroom, the fans come on rather quickly. But in a more relaxed situation, having few Edge tabs open, video playing in the background, and few more apps, I never once noticed them on. Actually, mostly they turn on when you just leave the surface on and you do nothing. The system then starts to probably do some maintenance tasks and heats up for few minutes.

On average I was getting around 6 hours of battery in my use. Maybe not the best, but enough for me.

Durability & Software

In the two months I got no scratches or any other blemishes on the Surface. But since I’m always very careful with my things, that is not really a surprise :)

My favorite feature of the Surface has to be Windows Hello. It works for me 100% of the time and I have not needed to type my password once after the initial setup. This really should be standard on every single PC. Also Edge was the only browser I used, as it is great with scaling web pages on such high dpi screen.

The system boots up crazy fast, and I have not seen a real difference between full startup and hibernation.

Conclusion

I have not turned on my Nexus tablet once in the last two months. That on its own should tell you how satisfied I am with the surface as a tablet. Once one gets used to some different controls, it’s just great. On the other side, it’s also a really nice laptop. It’s so small when placed in a bag and still really powerful.