The surface pro 8 also meets the new Intel Evo standard, meaning it boots up in less than a second. The integrated Iris Xe GPU won’t be running many AAA games, but there’s more than enough performance here for light gaming and video streaming. The 11th-generation core i7 CPU in the configuration we tested is powerful enough to tackle intensive workloads, even managing to handle photo and video editing. Those USB-C ports can also be used for charging, if you’re caught short. Whereas the surface pro 7 would be running on fumes by lunchtime, it’s possible to leave your charging brick at home and not suffer battery anxiety. Under the hood, Microsoft has given the specs a considerable boost, while also expanding the battery life so that the tablet reliably lasts a full working day with near-constant use. Here’s where the surface pro 8 really departs from older models. TrueTone-style automatic colour adjustment tweaks the brightness and warmth of the screen on the fly, depending on the ambient light of the room you’re in. The crisp, high-resolution display is 11 per cent larger, with deep contrast making it great for watching entertainment and a taller, 3:2 ratio suited to productivity. The thinner bezels make more room for screen real estate. Once you bump things up to 120Hz, it’s difficult to go back. This improved refresh rate also makes the stylus feel more responsive too, the faster response times cementing the illusion that your strokes are flowing out of the pen tip as you write. Scrolling feels buttery, more natural and silky, at the expense of a trivial amount of battery life. The new 13in screen can run at either 60Hz or 120Hz – double the refresh rate of the surface pro 7 – which creates a subtly smoother effect when things are moving around on-screen. One big improvement to the surface pro 8 is the screen’s faster refresh rate, which at the time of testing is switched off by default. The newly introduced thunderbolt 4 USB-C port makes connecting the tablet to multiple monitors a breeze too.
If you’ve recently switched to hybrid working or hot-desking, it’s the perfect device for moving seamlessly between home, the office, and different workstations. If you can’t stomach dropping £159 on an official cover, you can also pair a regular old Bluetooth keyboard and mouse with the surface pro 8. Keep that in mind as you read our review – most of our testing took place while using the keyboard attachment. The surface pro 8 is a great tablet, but a better laptop. As a pure tablet it’s pretty heavy and unwieldy when held with one hand, and because it runs on Windows – which makes plenty of concessions to touch controls, but is a desktop OS at heart – you inevitably feel like you’re missing out on practical features without a physical keyboard to type on. The surface pro 8 doesn’t come with the keyboard type cover accessory (£159, .uk), but we really can’t imagine using one without it.
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