Microsoft Surface Pro 8 first impressions: worth the wait?

Key Takeaways

microsoft has just announced a whole slate of new surface devices and the most exciting one to me is the surface pro 8 which after like five years has finally gotten the redesign that we've been waiting for the bezels are thinner the keyboard is stiffer the processor is faster the screen is 120 hertz the pen is harder to lose i've gotten some hands-on time and a walk-through at microsoft's office here in san francisco and i got to tell you there's a lot to like the surface pro it has a new 13-inch display it's 2880 by 1920 and it has that 120 hertz refresh rate although it does still default to 60 hertz it keeps microsoft's very good 3x2 aspect ratio and it works with surface pens it also can't adjust its color temperature to match the room that you're in now because the screen is a bit bigger that means that the bezels around it are finally smaller it's the same basic design as the arm processor based surface pro x that we've been waiting for and the differences between these two computers are fairly subtle there are fan vents on the back of the pro 8 and the corners have been rounded off a bit so it's a little bit nicer to hold that's not the only thing we've been waiting for microsoft to do it is now finally supporting thunderbolt on surface devices with two thunderbolt 4 usb-c ports in addition to the standard surface connector the pro 8 also gets a new keyboard that has on-board storage for the pen and actually can i just geek out about the keyboard for just a second i mean i'm going to either way but the keyboard deck is made out of carbon fiber so it is a lot stiffer without getting thicker or heavier there's just less bounce when you're typing really hard on it by the way that is why i'm typing gibberish so furiously in the b-roll i wanted to see how loud it was and if it bounced and it's great and the little magnetic flip up that attaches it to the screen so it's more stable and it also hides the pen that's better too the fabric full doesn't cover the task bar like it did on the first version of the pro x and even the second one honestly the keyboard might be my favorite part of this whole thing the trackpad on it is bigger than it was on the old surface pro models but i still don't think it's quite big enough that's really my only problem with it now the stylus is also all new it's called the surface slim pen 2. it's more tapered at the point but it also has haptics built into it there's a little vibration when you start to draw or write it's really subtle though we're going to need to review it but in my hands on it really didn't seem that elegant or impressive microsoft did demo a bunch of stuff with the stylus and a little bit with windows 11 and of course the model that i was looking at ran super well through adobe fresco and microsoft edge it seemed fine now these things have been upgraded to intel's 11th gen processors for consumers you either get a core i5 or a core i7 on the enterprise size you can get a cheaper core i3 or you can get versions with lte ram starts at 8 gigs and goes all the way up to 32 and the ssd is user replaceable and that starts at 128 and goes all the way up to one terabyte graphics of course are you know standard intel xe stuff finally like round out the computer the camera has been updated to do a better job with backlighting and video calls windows hello is still here for logging in with your face it has microsoft studio microphones and of course the hinge is still very good it works at any angle the surface pro 8 starts at 10.99 for the bass spec but i really imagine people are going to want to upgrade the ram and the storage not to mention by the keyboard or maybe a pen so you should assume it's going to cost more than that oh by the way microsoft also made a small update for the tiny surface go computer there are new processor options and there's also a slightly cheaper way to get one of those things with lte i still love the tiny little surface go but it's clearly designed for like enterprise field work not to make tiny computers happen as for the arm processor based surface pro x the only update there is that there's a cheaper wi-fi only version that starts at 900 bucks but again the big news here and the thing i'm really excited about is the new surface pro 8 redesign we have been waiting a long time for this redesign and at least on a first look i don't think microsoft has screwed anything up here of course we're only going to know for sure after we've had a chance to do a full review but for now i'm just happy that the surface pro feels modern again it's about time hey everybody thanks so much for watching we also have a first look at the surface laptop studio which is a deeply weird laptop from microsoft check that out