Microsoft Surface Go 2 Review By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review, and this is the Microsoft Surface go-to, it's the best of tablets and the worst of tablets. I bet you Charles Dickens, never thought that his words would be commandeered to describing futuristic electronic device. Like a tablet, you have probably seen reviews and say some of each of these things, and some of each of these things probably are true. We're gonna, look at it now so surface. Go to, obviously, is the newer version of these surface go line. The original surface go it's an update, and why is it getting an update? The base model there's not a lot of difference.

We move up to a slightly faster Pentium, Gold, dual-core CPU in just a hundred megahertz faster, but what they're doing here is also adding it into eighth generation Core and the three option for those who really like the tiny form factor and having windows on the go, but you need a little more oomph, because a Pentium go has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. So there's that also they've managed to make the display a little bigger without making the tablet bigger. How'd they do this. Like other manufacturers, the bezels got smaller, there's still some bezel and, as a lot of people will tell you tablets kind of needs, some bezels, so you have some place to hold them without accidentally activating the screen so cool that pricing on the base model pretty much the same. Three $99.99 call it $400, so I for something in some ways that is so high quality in high spec. That seems like a bargain.

What's the high quality high spec stuff? Well the build? It's got that same magnesium casing that you see makes it a baby's surface, pro very nice. Looking nice kickstand design, good hinge mechanism on the kickstand, keeps it firm. So you can even write on it. When you have it recline aces there you're a very nice display, it might not be as high-end as what Microsoft has put in some of their most expensive products, which is fair. This is inexpensive, but you get full RGB coverage.

You get a nice bright display with good contrast and free buy two aspect ratios which I know many of you are fans of, so you get more height and then you normally would versus the usual widescreen display, and the resolution is pretty good at nineteen twenty by twelve, eighty, so good stuff again for $400, you get a USB-C port. At this price we don't expect Thunder ball, three plus we know Microsoft just will not do Thunderbolt 3, which is another point of discussion here and headphone jack and a micros card slot and optional LTE, which a lot of people on on-the-go products like this real they'd like to have, so that's the premium stuff, the not so premium stuff for your $400 tablet is the Pentium go. It is pretty slow now, if you're just using this for really light work, it's fine for something like Microsoft Office, actually, no surprise there, even Google Docs, which is largely based on the web, social media, streaming video all that sort of stuff. It's fine for that. Don't expect a lot of multitasking, though, because we have only four gigs a ram in that base model and a 64 gig e MMC storage, which is sort of like having a slow, embedded micro SD card in for your storage.

So you combine that with the only four gigs of ram, if you start doing too much multitasking, it's going to page out to disk the creation virtual memory, and it's going to be using a very slow, even C for that. Ah, so, if you don't want to deal with those problems, but you're, okay with the Pentium CPU, because your needs are not high, there is the eight gigs of RAM and 128 gig SSD mas, not a really fast SSD, but at least it's an SSD which is way faster than eMMC. The bad news is: that's going to be 550 hours, it's getting kind of expensive, and you still go out that Pentium, so maybe you're not feeling like guru with what I bought here. Hence, the core m3 models. So supposedly manufacturers say a lot of people just usually buy the base model of whatever their laptop / tablet or ever is so.

How many are going to buy this I? Don't know, but that's for those of you out there who see the value. Basically, it was surface to go and even to a certain extent. Products like Surface Pro have, which is your need Windows with you for whatever you're doing a tablet? Os isn't going to cut it because you need certain windows programs, then you know who you are, since it means anybody who relies on that stuff. So there's the core m3 for you. It's an Intel, 810 core m3, and it's a m3, not a core i5, obviously done, but that's woken up, and you get your inking ceramic hundred, 28, gig SSD as well, and there's a 256 gig business model available.

So then you're looking at 630 dollars. If you wanted with LTE it's lte-advanced for cheap, that is another $100 you're. Looking at 730 dollars, the price is getting kind of close to Surface Pro 7 our service pro 6, which you can still find and boy. Those are a good deal. I've seen Core i5 Surface Pro sixes with 8 gigs of RAM and a 256 gig SSD for around 750 dollars.

But there's no LTE there so who's the circus go for then well, it's for those of you who need Windows on the go, and you see the value in that proposition. This is not an iPad sort of product. So, if you're looking for something like an iPad, you just want to use it as a straight tablet. You want to consume media. Maybe you want to do some drawing with an Apple Pencil that sort of thing which even the base iPad can now.

Do you get the idea, a zoom, video conferencing and all that sort of thing you just want it easy? You might not even want a keyboard and something probably the iPad is for you. If you want a game because the iPads are great at gaming, yes, you're not gonna, be playing battlefield 1, but then again the surface go to can't handle that either. So you get the idea. So this is for people who need Windows and want Windows uh-huh, but if you need to want Windows, pretty much you're going to be tied to the keyboard where, with iPads for a lot of people, that's a totally optional accessory. Don't even need it they're, just consuming content on their tablets or doing some art or note-taking with the pencil.

Maybe well. You know the drill. The keyboard is another hundred dollars for the base black model, and if you want those pretty Alc?ntara ones and colors, then that's a hundred and thirty dollars and then the Microsoft hand isn't known the hundred dollars. So that takes your base model. $400 one brings it up to well, if you want it with the base keyboard.

Well, five hundred dollars. If you want that post a pencil six hundred dollars, if you want alike, can't, are you're talking six hundred and thirty dollars, and this is still just on the base model one. So you get the idea and the Surface Pro has that problem too. None of those things are included, so the initial price can be a little misleading for the windows crowd. Who should probably assuredly want that keyboard and pencil? Maybe yes, maybe not our pen.

In this case, Microsoft pen, speaking of a pen, is Microsoft intrigue technology, and it's very good because Microsoft works on a lot more than some other. Like a lot of HP laptops like the HP specter, x360 family, they have entering pens, but they do the bare minimum. It's not cutting-edge pen or digitizer. That's available for intrigue. This is pretty nice, it's not as nice as welcome EMR for those who don't really into tablet displays- and you know like we saw on the Samsung Galaxy flex, that sort of thing, and it's not as good as an iPad Pro pencil to be sure in terms of the smoothness of the lines, the pressure sensitivity being really, really good, but as entry goes, this is pretty good.

You can create good artwork on this. It is a bit more work, it's great for comic style illustration, if you're, a natural media artist where the nuances of the pen are important to you might not be your first choice, but it's pretty decent I mean I did create a nice painting on it. It took me more time. Maybe then it would have with something that is, and I can't pro or walking me Ammar base, but it's pretty good for note-taking, it's fantastic, and it's a very manageable size. Other niceties include the usual stuff and windows, hello, IR camera.

You know over front 5, megapixel camera. They can do 1080p, video and an 8 megapixel rear camera that can do 1080p, video, so better quality than you would see with most laptops, which these days, thanks to a lot of video conferencing, are important. We have Intel y5 6 is a 200, so that's good, not any of the weird Wi-Fi that Microsoft used to put it in their products. Their keyboard is the same old type cover I'm not going to go into in detail. I like type covers I get along with them.

This one is pretty small, so it depends on the size of your hands. It's backlit. It has a Microsoft. Precision trackpad, it's pretty rigid I mean, but there is some flex if you type like boom boom. You know not so much if you type like a pianist thumbs up for that.

One thing I do want to mention the Alc?ntara keyboard covers is I, don't know if the first run is a little defective or this is by design, but there is usually with surface keyboards a magnet here and metal strip, and it usually latches on pretty well, so you can use it and propped up hook except for a no-go. But if you put it more upright the surface itself, then the magnets too not real strongly, but they do it here and then this might not really just be the byproduct of having really teeny bezels, and it just needs more contact. I, don't know, but it's not a deal-breaker, but something to keep in mind. Much like the last year, Microsoft claims 10 hours of battery life on this and yeah. If you're using the Pentium, probably if you're using the court m3 you might get less.

It also depends on how hard you work. The CPU remember, don't overtax this thing. If you have the CPU running at 50% or a hundred percent utilization, that means shorter battery life too, but realistically specs 7 to 8, while we're speaking of things that are small here well, the display is pretty small too, for those of you who are over the age of 20 and remember, netbooks, it's sort of like that experience, 10.5, inches sort of small which can be okay with the tablet centric operating system. But when you're talking about Windows the default scaling they set it to is one hundred and fifty percent. Now a display wearing glasses and being a woman of a certain age I.

Actually, you should reduce the scaling or turn it off on most displays: I'm, okay with teeny text and small icons, but even at 150% I feel like this is a little hard to see. So those of you who are 40 and over do keep that in mind. I mean you can raise this counting, but when you get up to something like 200% scaling, that windows start to run across the entire page, taking up more space than you would like in yeah. But you do have that. USB C port you can plug in an external monitor when you need more screen real estate, which is kind of cool for something this teeny so really in the end, with the surface go to you're.

Looking at this versus the Surface Pro six or seven, even the surface, pro five stone, which was a dual-core, and you can still find a core i5 with eight gigs of ram and a 128 gig SSD or four gigs of ram with LTE for a not bad price like around 500, maybe even 600 bucks as a competitor of the surface, pro six who's a largely liked Surface Pro 7 no LTE for either those two. But if you need powerful, Windows or more powerful Windows and you don't need the tiniest possible thing. It's also worth considering those and then there's Surface Pro X, which is pretty expensive and bigger and 13.3 inches. It's the most modern. But it's actually in some ways less versatile than the surface go to because it's running on an arm CPU.

So you get 32-bit emulation which is slower than true running of windows, 32-bit apps and sixty-four of it still and no driver compatibility. So your standard Windows drivers for your printer and all that might not work so in a way surface go to, and it may make some more sense because at least you can run anything that was meant for Windows, and they said for mobile tech review, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more cool tech, videos and thumbs up. If you like this vid.

Source : MobileTechReview