The Microsoft Surface Pro tablets have reached their seventh generation with again a number of upgrades this year compared to the previous model. The tablet gets a tenth generation Intel Core i5 processor and also finally a USB-C port, but is that enough to justify the high suggested retail price of the Microsoft Surface Pro 7?
Microsoft Surface Pro 7
Price: € 1349 (excluding € 110 pen and keyboard € 180)
Screen: 12.3-inch 2736×1824 ips touchscreen
CPU: Intel Core i5-1035G4
Memory: 8 GB ddr4
Storage: 256 GB NVMe SSD
Connections: USB-C, USB-A and 3.5mm headphones
Weight: 775 grams (excluding typecover and pen)
Included: Protective cover, 3.5mm cable, aircraft adapter, micro-usb cable
6 Score 60 
- Pros
- Good screen
- The correct execution
- Powerful tablet
- Negatives
- Small SSD
- Moderate as a laptop
- Expensive
The Surface Pro 7 is available from 900 euros for the basic model with an Intel Core i3 and a 128 GB SSD, but can increase in price to 2790 euros for a model with Intel Core i7, 1TB of storage space, a pen and a Type Cover . The model that we tested costs 1350 euros separately, but you really don’t want to order this tablet without a keyboard and pen, which brings the total price to 1630 euros.
Design
The latest generation Surface Pro looks the same as the previous generation and still has the excellent build quality. However, the extremely wide screen edges have also been added to the design. When the Pro 6 was introduced, they were already too large, but in 2019 the screen edges of the Pro 9 are no longer of this time. You put the tablet upright by folding out the kickstand at the back. This allows the tablet to be placed at almost any desired angle. You can also use this kickstand to use the tablet as a laptop. Note that you do not rest with your arms on the tablet when it is fully folded out, it will probably not hold full despite the good finish.
The separately available keyboard clicks onto the bottom of the tablet with a very strong magnet and turns it into a laptop. The magnet is strong enough to lift the laptop by the keyboard, but to be sure I would lift the laptop by the screen. The Alcantara finish feels surprisingly nice, but with intensive use this will undoubtedly wear out. The keyboard, by the way, carries a nasty smell of glue that was completely gone after two weeks.
Functionality
This keyboard is not suitable for typing long pieces of text. The bottom plate bends fairly easily and the travel is quite short. Yet it is fine for everyday use and it is therefore strange that Microsoft does not provide this as standard. The tablet thus changes into a fully-fledged laptop, so that the emotional value increases significantly. The touchpad is a lot less, but you don’t need this much because of the touchscreen.
The pen, which is also available separately, responds very quickly and works very intuitively. For creative people it is a great solution to be able to draw directly on your monitor with a pressure sensitive pen. The click button on the back also works very well like the button of a normal pen, so that the pen also functions as a surprisingly satisfying fidget.
The connectivity is excellent for a tablet. Where most tablets have to do with a single usb-c connector and a headphone connection, this tablet also has usb-a, a MicroSDXC card reader and a magnetic port for the power connector. If you mainly use the device as a laptop, then those connections will be a bit disappointing.
Sound and Vision
Like the other products in the Surface lineup, Microsoft has opted for a screen with a resolution that we don’t often encounter in this 15-inch laptop: 2736×1824. In practice, that is an excellent choice that also works well without scaling. The 3: 2 ratio works very well on a tablet and is also a pleasant ratio to work with in laptop mode. While watching black videos, black bars will be visible, but the extra vertical workspace is very welcome in office applications.
If you like a true-to-life image, set the colors in the display settings to sRGB instead of ‘Enhanced’. With these settings, the screen is also perfectly calibrated with a range of 2.2 and a color range of 109% of the sRGB spectrum. The brightness comes out at a maximum of 405 nits, which is sufficient for outdoor use with a lot of sunlight.
The sound reproduction is reasonably good for a tablet, but it is better to use headphones or separate speakers for music. Watching movies or series is a great experience because of the stereo speakers, but don’t expect too much from the bass reproduction.
Performance
The copy we tested is equipped with an Intel Core i5-1035G4 and 8GB memory. This is a new processor from Intel and is built on the 10 nanometer process. The processor scores an impressive 3211 points in PCMark 10 Extended with 8517 and 6350 points for the Essentials test and Productivity test respectively. With the Intel Iris Plus 940-GPU you should not expect to be able to play the latest games at the highest settings, but simple or older games are no problem.
The tablet comes in our version with a ssd of only 256GB. That is a normal amount for a tablet, but it is not enough for a laptop. Especially when we look at the suggested retail price, we expected at least 512GB. With sequential read and write speeds of 2018MB / s and 817MB / s respectively, the ssd is not slow, but. If you are looking for more (and faster) storage, then Microsoft offers variants with more storage space, but the price quickly gets out of hand.
Conclusion
The Microsoft Surface Pro 7 is a worthy successor to the Pro 6, but is just as expensive as the previous generation for many consumers. The model we tested costs more than 1600 euros for the complete package with keyboard and pen. For that money you also have an excellent 2-in-1 with more powerful hardware, although they are generally a bit heavier. The Surface Pro 7 should therefore be seen primarily as a luxury tablet that can also be used as a laptop.
View our Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 review here.
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