iPad Air vs. Microsoft Surface Go: Better Laptop Replacement? By MacRumors

The iPad Air was updated a few months ago with new features like smart keyboard and Apple Pencil support, as well as updated internals. To make this a pretty powerful iPad, that's not named an iPad Pro. It comes with a starting price of $499. Now, on the flip side, there's Microsoft Surface Co, which starts at $399, and it's pretty much one of the few other worthy competitors to the iPad Air. Because of the price point, and so in this video I wanted to take a closer look at each product to figure out which device could be your on-the-go laptop replacement before we get started, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications. Whenever we share a video now, it is important to note that I am looking at both of these products as a laptop replacement, more so than a traditional tablet from a tablet standpoint, which is a true media consumption, easy to use device that you can watch Netflix play, games and browse the web with the iPad Air is clearly the gold standard for this.

As far as a main machine, laptop replacement goes, it's not as cut and dry. One last thing before we do move forward with this comparison, I think in order to get the full laptop like experience, the keyboard for each device is necessary, and so with that said, this would make the starting price for each device around five hundred and twenty-nine dollars for the surface go and six hundred and fifty-nine dollars for the iPad Air just something to keep in mind as we move forward. So in terms of design, there are different elements for each product that I like more than the other. For example the built-in kickstand on the surface, go it's fantastic. I wish Apple had something like this with all of its iPads, instead of relying on a case to make propping up the tablet a reality.

The rest of the design of the surface go at least on the back, and the size of the device is pretty sleek and modern I'm, not a huge fan of the proprietary connector to charge the surface co, but you do have the option to use USB-C, which is always a plus there's, also a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and a micro SD card slot for memory expansion, sort of hidden underneath the kickstand that's important, because if you're looking at either these 64 or 128 gig base model, it really doesn't matter because you can upgrade your storage with a much cheaper micros card in the future. The iPad Air is a traditional looking iPad. Nothing has changed in terms of design in quite some time. It's very familiar yet also a clean and minimal. Look there really isn't a lot.

You can do with it, though. In terms of connectivity. You do get apples, lightning, port for charging and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, and that's about it. There's no SD card expansion or USB-C available. Both devices do have a pin connector on the sides, however, which is used for connecting keyboard accessories, which we'll get into more in just a minute.

Now, if you flip the tablet over- and you take a look at the front, this is where the display is obviously located and for the iPad Air. You do get a home button and on the surface, go it's just a display, and this is where things get a little interesting. The iPad Air sports, a 10.5 inch 20 to 24 by 16 68 right in a display with these surface Co offering a 10-inch 1800 by 1200, display it's not a huge difference in terms of everyday use. But what makes the surface go a bit disappointing, in my opinion, is the large bezels that carry all the way around the display. Now Apple is just as guilty of this, as well with the chin and the forehead being just as large, but they sort of make up for this with significantly reduced bezels on the side.

This is more of a personal, aesthetic preference. For me, it has no impact on the actual usage of the device, but it just doesn't look as great having such large bezels and uniformly around the display. With the surface go even though the iPad Air has a better display in terms of resolution, the difference between them, it's relatively minor in everyday use. They are both perfectly fine displays for their intended use cases, and neither device has a drastically better looking display than the other. In my opinion, so some main differences between these two tablets really come in performance and features as far as features go from a hardware standpoint.

Both companies offer accessories that help make each device feel like a traditional, laptop experience. Microsoft offers the keyboard to connect easily to your surface CO and the iPad Air offers a similar experience, there's also a stylus available for both tablets, the surface pen and the Apple Pencil. In my opinion, I give the edge to Microsoft, with these accessories I find them to be a much more enjoyable and intuitive experience. The keyboard offers a few different typing positions. It's very well-made.

The Alc?ntara fabric is one of my favorite things to type and the keys are enjoyable to type on to and nothing feels overly crammed or too small. You also get a built-in trackpad, which definitely offers more of a natural laptop like experience overall I. Just really like the look and feel of this keyboard. The same applies to the surface pen. It feels more like a traditional pen.

It writes very well with very little latency. The pen runs off of one of those weird quadruple a batterie, but battery life has been tremendous. I have not had to replace the battery once in well over three months of use, there's also custom pen settings like single or double tapping the top button to open applications or perform actions using the top as an eraser, etc. While Apple does have a much better Apple Pencil available. The original Apple Pencil is the only one that's compatible with this iPad Air and even though I actually do like using the pencil, it's not a bad experience.

The ridiculous charging process and lack of any extra features whatsoever makes this a bit of a dud in comparison. The ability to magnetically stick it to your iPad is also a feature that does not exist with this version of the Apple, pencil and iPad, and so this means figuring out what to do with it. When you're done in order to not lose or break it is also a hassle. Unfortunately, for the surface go when we head into the performance aspect of this device, this is where the good kind of stops- the hardware specs, might seem strange to compare, since they both run different types of processors, and there is quite a drastic difference in RAM, depending on which model surface go, you might have, but Geek bench test showed that the iPad Air is much more powerful in comparison and in my everyday use, that's actually been the case, and it's been quite a noticeable difference. I'm, assuming this mostly boils down to the way these software takes advantage of these internals and while I really love the idea of a full-fledged operating system running on a tablet like Windows 10 on the surface.

Go it just really isn't that great of an experience when the hardware can't handle it writing emails browsing the web writing up documents. Yes, these are all things that each device can absolutely handle, but when you try to do one or two or three or all of these things at one time, this is where things become sort of an issue, and it gets kind of clunky, regardless of how much RAM your device has. It's still not the best experience. Now. On the flip side, the iPad is certainly limited at this moment in terms of software.

What it can do, it does very well-being able to multitask and run multiple apps at the same time as Pages, Numbers, Safari messages, notes, etc. With very little to absolutely no performance issues is quite impressive and, while you might not get a full-fledged operating system like you would, on the surface, go with the iPad Air. Its performance is more than capable of replacing your laptop for these specific use cases. Assuming that you don't need to do any sort of graphic design, 3d, rendering or video editing in a few months, iPadOS will be available as a free upgrade, and it does offer a much more laptop like experience, but it's still not quite there, but you will get better file management, improved, multitasking, etc. , which is only going to make the experience much more enjoyable.

In conclusion, this was a really hard comparison to make, simply because it's kind of difficult for me to make a recommendation to someone on which device to buy without knowing their needs or usage. Now, this theory can be applied to all devices into all comparisons. But if someone came up to me and asked me which device they should get between these two without knowing any other information about how they're going to use it, I would probably still recommend the iPad Air. No, it's not because I'm an Apple, fanboy or whatever I do really like what Microsoft is doing with their devices and I do like in theory what the surface co stands for and what it could do if it has better hardware, but I just found the iPad Air being a more enjoyable experience when using it as a laptop like replacement. What makes this so challenging for me is if someone came up to me and said, I want something that can replace basic laptop functionality at this price point like 7, $600, I, probably point them in a different direction, maybe a Chromebook or a cheaper traditional Windows laptop.

What makes the iPad Air so appealing is that you do get the two and one experience because, like I said before it's a much better tablet than anything you can get out of the market, I, don't think anybody's going to argue that Apple makes the best tablet that you can possibly get I'm, just not sure if it's a great laptop replacement over something like a traditional Windows laptop for $700. In fact, there are a lot of machines out there that you can get for $700. That would be better as a strict laptop. So that's where I stand. Those are my thoughts, I'd love to know your thoughts.

Let me know in the comments section down below what you think of each device and be sure to subscribe to the channel, so you don't miss more videos in the future. This is bananas. MacRumors thanks for watching, and I hope to see you around in the next video.

Source : MacRumors