Surface Pro 2 has just been announced and, surprisingly, Microsoft haven’t chosen to go with a Y-Series low-TDP Haswell CPU for a thinner design. For the time being the Tap 11 remains the thinnest and lightest Haswel-based tablet. What Microsoft have done is gone for processing power and lots more battery life, largely enabled by a keyboard cover with a 30Wh battery inside. There’s a brand new docking station too which seals its position as a professional tablet. Size and weight doesn’t change and price starts at $899.
Specifications…
Our Surface Pro 2 information page is now live and updating here.
- Haswell Core i5 at 1.6Ghz (Early reports say Core i5 4200U with HD4400)
- Weight: 2lb / 907 gram
- Battery Life: Estimated 7hrs WiFi-On, Web working
- Connected Standby – Confirmed NO.
- Fan inside – Yes
- Size: 27.45×17.29×1.34cm (As thick as previous: 0.53inches)
- US Price starting at $899 (Euro pricing below)
- 10.6” 1080p Display 1920×1080
- 4GB or 8GB RAM
- Storage: 64GB (37GB free) to 256GB
- USB 3.0 on board
- WiFI a/b/g/n. BT 4.0
- Cams: 720p front and rear. (Not the same low-light cam as on Surface 2)
- Dual channel LPDDR3 RAM supported
- Microsoft noted that there are now 100,000 apps in the Windows Store
- Flipboard and Facebook coming (still!)
- Touch Cover 2 is Backlit, costs $119.99 and there’s a version with a 30Wh inside. (Power Cover, early 2014 for $199.9, will work with original Surface Pro- Microsoft: “We expect around 50% improvement in battery life for 1st gen Surface Pro with Surface Power Cover.”)
- The new docking station contains the following ports…
3X USB 2.0
1 x USB 3.0
MiniDisplay Port (for 2x chained displays)
Ethernet
Audio In
Audio Out
Power - Docking station coming in “early 2014” (Will work with original Surface Pro. Ref. )
- Pro 2 has 75% more battery life. (possibly only under certain conditions or with the battery cover.)
- Speed increased by 20% (Microsoft)
- Dual position kickstand
- Graphics performance increased by 50% (Say Microsoft, it’s a HD 4400 which in my opion won’t be much more powerfull the HD 4000)
- Dolby added to audio
- 46% more color accuracy on screen
- Internal battery size: 46Wh
- 1-year of unlimited free calling to landlines on Skype. Free Skype WiFi.
- 200GB of storage, free for 2 years on SkyDrive.
- The active pen on Pro will work on Pro2
- Surface 2 will be launching with LTE early in 2014 (not Surface 2 Pro? Unconfirmed.)
- Surface 2 Pro supports Miracast
- Storage on Surface Pro 2 is via ” low-power MSATA”
- Display Brightness: 400 nits
- No WIfi AC, No NFC
Pricing Germany. Euro
- 4 GB, 64 GB: 879,- €
- 4 GB, 128 GB: 979,- €
- 8 GB, 256 GB: 1279,- €
- 8 GB, 512 GB: 1779,- €
Pricing US, $
- 64 GB + Surface pen $899
- 128 GB + Surface pen $999
- 256 GB + Surface pen $1,299
- 512 GB + Surface pen $1,799
- The 256GB and 512GB models have 8GB of RAM, the 64GB and 128GB models have 4GB of RAM
Update: Microsoft announced a Surface Remix Project.
Does it have two soundcards inside?
Via Microsoft ,Mobilegeeks and others.
Great to see them address ram & battery runtimes..and the dock makes this a much more versatile desktop replacement.
…especially with DisplayPort!
I question the 50% GPU performance increase. I haven’t seen that much in 4400 over 4000 in Ivy Bridge.
The 4400 isn’t THAT much better than the 4000, did the Surface Pro throttle GPU due to heat? Its possible the upgrades let the performance que up a bit better without throttling. They may also be taking into account the new round of intel drivers that make the whole 4000 line faster than the original surface pro was out of the box. If so thats kinda cheesey.
I like all of the improvements, many of them were talked about last year so I thought we would see them before now, not 2014. It seems they are doing very apple like release cycles with the surface.
I LOVE having a 1080p screen on the surface 2, but I think they are missing a huge opportunity here. I would be all over a baytrail equipped surface 2 in a heartbeat. no fan, long battery, legacy app support. It would be my ideal machine, especially if you add a backlit keyboard cover.
Something tells me they had a commitment to a second ARM/RT device. A Baytrail version would have been so much better than RT. Perhaps the timing was wrong. It seems like MS spent a lot of time optimising on Rt and Core.
There’s still a space for it though so I hope it comes in the future.
If the 8″ Surface does not have Baytrail then MS truly has no idea what they are doing anymore.
This whole coming late to the market, with an inferior ecosystem, at higher prices than competitors, is not a winning formula.
@Resier,
Correct.
In the living rooms too Microsoft is losing out to Apple and Google. I have an out-dated Logitech Revue Google TV bought used for only about $90 doing the half-good job of a media center (Google Chrome with Flash; DLNA player) but the much more expensive Xbox won’t do any of this for me because I did not renew my Gold membership. A few of my friends have bought Apple TVs and iPhones, iPads because they wanted to project their screens to the TVs. Where is Microsoft in that space?
That company is doomed unless something drastic happens. Sad to say but that’s how it looks like right now.
Where is a 7″ Windows 8 x86 tablet? With so many OEMs surely someone could have come up with that. And don’t get me started on the idea of Windows RT…
@resier
I’m guessing OEMs are a bit wary about the UMPC space since their last attempts with the old Atoms and non-touch friendly Windows pretty much failed. I’m still hoping that Bay Trail and Windows 8 will encourage OEMs to build 7″ – 8″ UMPCs though. I particularly want USB Power Delivery charging, optical mouse and full sized USB 3.0 port and SDXC slot.
…just added a lot of spec’s above.
Chippy
Is there a slot for stowing the pen? That was my biggest annoyance from the last model. The magnetic holder doesn’t cut it.
Nope as as before
Between the increased battery (42wh > 46Whr) and the haswell chipset, I feel pretty confident youll get 8hrs of office work with it.
I am surprised it doesn’t support connected standby though, although whilst it holds a lot of promise, I look at other forums and connected standby has been more of a battery drain (due to oem driver issues it seems) than a huge benefit for most at this point.
In the absence of a worthy clovertrail successor and with all day battery life (I define that as the 8hr mark, eg work day) and specs you know are going to provide a silky smooth ride, I am thinking of pre-ordered a SP2 and saying good by to the trust Samsung 500T.
Where’s the Mini Pro with Windows 8 on Bay Trail? At least that’s what I was hoping.
Looks nice, but they didn’t address the weight/thin issue. I was hoping Haswell would result in a lighter product. Closer to 1.5lbs. Perhaps even without a fan. too bad. soo close.
The backlit keyboard cover and stationary dock, I like it. Overall it seems they’ve done a pretty nice job on improving the previous one. But I wish there was a memory card reader on this thing. Well it’s not a huge thing that I would miss on, but still…
I know that I’m repeating myself but i would take a surface pro 2 with a removable battery.
I also understand that they have to go i5 to get better battery life promised with Hanswell but would love to see benchmarks comparing it to the i7 3517u from a trusted source. Some sites give a slight performance edge to the 3517u due to the higher clock speed and larger cache but I’m not sold on the testing methodology.
Since my device has a removable battery, Hanswell battery life though very good has no impact on my decision when purchasing a win 8 slate and the integrated gpu is about equal to 3rd gen hd4000. Baytrail on the other hand is making things interesting. An 8 inch with removable battery could have been a good replacement for my viliv x70. Anyways, these specs just reassure me that i made the right purchase (based on my needs).
A Hanswell refresh of my device might be an option but they would need to show me considerable performance improvements along with better battery life. 2 to 10 percent performance advantage at the same clock rate is not enough to justify making the jump especially since my i7 has the same edge due to the higher clock rate.
I’m tired and rambling but thanks again for the great work Mr. Paine, your passion for umpc’s ensures that we have all the data to make wise purchases.