Microsoft Surface Pro 6 review

It goes without saying that the Surface Pro 6 is more capable and powerful than 2017’s model. Much of this newfound power comes through the introduction of quad-core processing, thanks to Intel’s 8th-generation Kaby Lake Refresh processors released earlier this year.

We’ve also recorded some substantial gains in battery life as well as multi-core performance, which should obviously see better longevity out of the tablet as well as faster video encoding and other processor-hungry tasks.

Unfortunately, visual performance doesn’t improve much, if at all, in the Surface Pro 6 over the previous model, with the same graphics subsystem as before in this specification.

As a general rule, the Surface Pro 6 is most ideal for creative professionals and even students. You’ll get some decent mileage out of this laptop when playing casual games like Hearthstone or Candy Crush. Just don’t expect this Windows tablet to churn through complex media rendering and encoding or complicated spreadsheet functions with reams of data.

In contrast, the iPad Pro 2017 with the Apple A10X Fusion chip scored 9,343 points in the Geekbench 4 multi-core test. This is up there alongside many laptop processors from 2017, though a lot has changed since then. Still, the new iPad Pro 2018 changes things a bit.

To be fair, the iPad Pro and Surface Pro will forever be a bit of an apples to oranges comparison considering how the two are built on entirely different operating systems with different levels of overhead on their respective processors. With no true multitasking or open-ended app management on iPad Pro, it will always have less overhead – but also less versatility – than the Surface Pro.

Battery life

Microsoft has gone and beefed up the lasting power of Surface Pro 6 by a big margin, particularly when it comes to video playback. 

Battery life through simulated general use, represented by the PCMark 8 test, remains largely the same as before. However, we have witnessed a gain of one hour and 47 minutes – nearly a two-hour increase – in our video rundown test on Surface Pro 6. That’s a welcome improvement. Between the two figures, you should see a considerable increase in time away from the outlet from last year’s model.

Now, we’ve witnessed the iPad Pro 12.9 reach its rated 10 hours of battery life on a regular basis – not just in video playback, but also general use. So, the Surface Pro 6 isn’t quite up to par yet, which isn’t surprising. The version of iOS on the iPad Pro was expressly designed and developed for the device, whereas Windows 10 was designed for countless devices and therefore has no way of being quite as optimized.

Software and features

Like the Surface Laptop 2, the Surface Pro 6 doesn’t have many unique pieces of software and features to speak of, which is a bit of a double-edged sword. The good? There’s no bloatware on this device at all, as it comes directly from Microsoft.

Another thing that’s good is the Windows Hello facial recognition, which utilizes the tablet’s infrared camera next to its webcam, and is very fast and accurate. We can barely open the tablet from its Type Cover before it’s already logged us into Windows 10.

The bad? There is basically nothing else in the way of unique software and features. If it’s on this tablet, you can basically get it on any other Windows 10 tablet.

Final verdict

The Surface Pro 6 is, without a doubt, Microsoft’s best tablet yet. However, we’re honestly left wondering why this one was given a number considering it improves on fewer aspects of the device compared to last year’s. Microsoft hard-lined against giving last year’s model a ‘5’ at the end of its name, essentially saying it wasn’t worthy of the moniker.

This time, though the device only has fewer improvements and unique features, Microsoft skips the ‘5’ entirely. In almost any other case, this would just be marketing blather, but because of Microsoft’s previous, on-the-record statements, it’s difficult to ignore.

To be worthy of a number, much less skipping one in the sequence entirely, we would have expected some substantial improvements to the design – an even sharper screen, perhaps; hardwired connections that are up-to-date and not proprietary, maybe; probably even a drastic pricing move that includes every essential accessory in the box would have sufficed.

Instead, the Surface Pro 6 is faster, longer lasting and now comes in a sleek, new black shell – which, by the way, doesn’t have the 128GB and 1TB storage options – and that’s pretty much it. Make no mistake; it’s certainly a better product than last year, but only barely for it to be worthy of being numbered ‘6’, much less ‘5’.

If you already own a Surface Pro 2017, we’d say that this upgrade isn’t worth the cost. Otherwise, it’s still the best Windows tablet.

Images Credit: TechRadar