Surface Pro 5 (2017) – Review

The new Surface Pro 5 might be on to something or is it all hype? 

It boasts 50% more battery life than it's predecessor the Surface Pro 4 and 2.5x more computational power in comparison to the older Surface Pro 3. More importantly, we need to know, if the new Surface Pen which promises 4,096 pressure points is a good tool for artists?

In this Surface Pro review I'll cover the essentials and skip the meaningless. So you can make an educated decision fast.

Experience

The Surface Pen - The Biggest upgrade

•  + Latency unnoticable. It's not perfect but practically non-existant. Better than last iterations.
•  - You have to buy the pen separately but it's backwards compatible with older models.
•  + Tilt included! This is huge!
•  +- 4x the old pressure sensitivity (4096) which is nice but do you really need that on a small device?
• - Priced similar to the Apple Stylus

The Tablet - Meaningful upgrade

•  + Up to 13 hours of battery life which is twice of the older models
•  + Upgraded CPU but no GPU obviously, which means that it's still not as powerful as a desktop device would be with photoshop
•  + No fan! A more pleasant experience.
•  - They removed the keyboard and if you need you need to buy it separately
•  - 4GB of RAM on the cheapest model. This is not acceptable for artists or any kind of heavier computational work. 
• +- Surface Dial if you buy it. It's too big for the device

Verdict

This is only a tool for the artist who can afford to pay a lot of money for limited artistic potential. You might be better off buying a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 A for quarter of the price.

All the important functionality you might want as an artist you need to buy extra and even then such a small device, with still no native powerful GPU is still not a replacement for a proper drawing device or a personal computer.

It's not without it's merits. If you're stuck with Windows and you primarily need this for day to day stuff then it's a solid pick because of the amazing battery life, if you're a comic book artist or someone who wants to retouch photos then this might also be a good choice based on the battery life argument.

But if you're an artist who's looking for a high caliber device you might want to hold off for something better.​ Because I'm highly doubtful it has enough computational power to meet the long term demands of an artist.