Microsoft Surface Pro (11th Edition) Review: An Expensive 2-in-1

Ah, the Surface Pro. I had completely forgotten the epic journey you have taken to get to this point.

Microsoft’s convertible tablet is back, and the excitement is palpable — at least Microsoft’s excitement. This is reportedly the fastest, best, and most AI-rich Surface Pro computer yet, all thanks to Copilot+, a suite of artificial intelligence features built into the company’s Windows operating system, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X CPU, and a collective memory that has forgotten some of the errant Pros of the past.

This is my sixth review of the Surface Pro, including the 2015, 2019, and 2020 editions, and here are some highlights if you don’t want to take a trip down memory lane: All was well until Microsoft decided to abandon Intel and the x86 architecture in favor of ARM Qualcomm chips in 2019. Then, in 2020, they abandoned Qualcomm in favor of their own ARM silicon (developed with Qualcomm as a partner).

The TL;DR of the 2019 move to Qualcomm is pretty straight forward: ARM silicon meant computers couldn’t run anything (or at least, couldn’t run anything well). Windows had supported the x86 architecture for decades, but most of the apps from that time were incompatible with ARM-based Windows machines. None of the Adobe Creative Cloud apps ran on ARM. Users who didn’t want to use the Edge browser had to use an emulated 32-bit version of Chrome that was painfully slow. Oh, and it was twice as expensive as Microsoft’s other Surface products at the time. I predicted the Pro X would be discontinued in my review, and it was discontinued after just two iterations, but ARM CPUs became a configuration option for the Pro line in subsequent hardware.

With the 2024 Surface Pro (aka the 11th generation), Microsoft is back under Qualcomm’s wing, backing up the promise of the Snapdragon X, the “it chip” that will bring AI to the mainstream via Windows. Many other PC makers are on board too. I’ve already reviewed the Asus Vivobook S 15 Copilot+ PC and will be testing more Snapdragon-powered machines soon. Everyone wants a piece of the AI ​​pie.

It’s worth noting, however, that despite the return to Qualcomm preference, Intel’s “business” options are still there, albeit unadvertised, but no one really cares, as you need the Qualcomm version to access the Copilot+ PC features, which aren’t currently supported by Intel. So, one point for Qualcomm: this is the first time their CPUs can do things on Windows that Intel and AMD can’t.