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Microsoft Surface Pro 11 Review

MSRP $999.00

“Surface Pro 11th Edition isn’t just good. It’s spectacular.”

Professionals

• Beautiful OLED screen

• The keyboard now works offline

• Upgradable storage

• Excellent trackpad and keyboard

• A great webcam

• Great performance and battery life

cons

• It’s not a great tablet without a keyboard

• Missing headphone jack

Surface Pro 11 is the best Surface Pro ever made. It’s also the best Windows 2-in-1 ever made. Heck, I might even say it has some serious advantages over the new iPad Pro.

This is supported by the new Snapdragon X chip, above all. But there’s also a new webcam, an improved keyboard, and a killer OLED screen, all in a package that’s as refined as ever.

If you can’t tell, I thoroughly enjoyed my time reviewing the Surface Pro 11th Edition. It’s not perfect, but I have a lot to dislike about Microsoft’s flagship 2-in-1 — a real achievement for Microsoft and the Windows ecosystem as a whole.

Specifications and configurations

The Surface Pro 11 comes in two main configurations. The $999 entry-level configuration comes with a Snapdragon X Plus chip, an IPS panel, and a 256GB SSD. It starts with 16GB of RAM, but you can increase the RAM and storage from there.

The second option is the OLED model that comes with the Snapdragon X Elite. This one starts at $1,499, but comes with 512GB of storage. From there, configurations go up to 1TB of storage and 32GB of memory.

Neither configuration comes with a Type Cover or Surface Slim Pen in the box.

Design

The Surface Pro hasn’t changed much over the years, and I’m not sure it needs to. The robust 2-in-1 design still looks quite sophisticated, whether it’s the sturdy stand or the striking color options.

The latest version is almost identical to the previous one, but it doesn’t look outdated at all. The Surface Laptop 7th Edition is catching up in its latest model, but the Surface Pro remains confidently unchanged.

If there’s one area I’d like to see some changes, it’s in the dimensions. Now that it’s moved to an Arm-based chip, I’d love to see a thinner chassis. The thickness of the device is even more remarkable when you consider the cutouts made on the iPad Pro 2024, which is only 0.2 inches thick. That’s about half the thickness of the Surface Pro. Of course, when you include the corresponding keyboard covers, this difference is not as noticeable, since the Type Cover is not as thick as the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard. Still, it’s pretty important when you’re using the tablet as a tablet.

Speaking of the keyboard, the Type Cover has been improved again. The keyboard and trackpad are now perfectly in place. The surface of the tactile feedback trackpad is perfectly smooth and the keys are a joy to type on. I’m amazed at what a good keyboard Microsoft has developed this into – and for my money, it’s even better than the Magic Keyboard. It’s even sturdy enough to use on your lap, as long as you don’t mind the stand digging into your thighs. It even does a great job of covering the bottom panel when propped up.

One of the best changes (and benefits of getting one of the new Type Covers) is the ability to continue using the keyboard when you remove it from the tablet. It is huge improving usability, opening up many ways to feel comfortable while using the device.

Ports

The Surface Pro doesn’t have many ports, but I wouldn’t expect it to. There’s the two USB-C ports, the Surface Connect dock, and that’s about it. No headphone jack.

This is disappointing, even if it looks more reasonable on a tablet. But given that most people will want to use the Surface Pro 11 as a laptop replacement, the lack of a headphone jack is a bummer.

One huge advantage of the Surface Pro 11 is that it has a removable SSD. Using the simple magnetic slot on the back, you get quick and easy access to the storage, allowing you to upgrade it. This is highly recommended as Microsoft charges quite a lot to upgrade the storage up front.

Display

The Surface Pro 11th Edition has a fantastic screen. It’s really wonderful. It’s certainly one of the best displays on a Windows device I’ve ever tested — as long as we’re talking about the OLED model I reviewed. It’s the first OLED Surface Pro, and it’s exactly what this device needed.

There are two display modes that have very different functions. The default HDR mode gives you that high peak brightness, but sacrifices color accuracy and saturation. Vivid mode turns off HDR, but improves gamut to 100% sRGB (and 85% AdobeRGB) and accuracy to 0.74. Regardless of which mode you’re in, though, you get over 500 nits of SDR brightness (up to 533 nits in Vivid mode). Granted, that’s about half the brightness offered by the iPad Pro’s tandem OLED panel — so it’s not quite on the same level.

But within the Windows ecosystem, there are few displays that can compare to this. The new XPS 13, for example, has the option of a tandem OLED panel, but it maxes out at just 400 nits in SDR.

Either way, of course, you get a 120Hz refresh rate, which keeps things feeling responsive.

Speakers and webcam

Here’s a fact: Tablets generally have better speakers and webcams than laptops. Because of the way they’re designed, with the components behind the screen rather than under the keyboard, there’s all sorts of room for improvement. Take the webcam for example. It’s a 12-megapixel wide-angle lens that looks gorgeous. When was the last time you heard a webcam described like that?

The resolution is obviously off the charts and it handles exposure beautifully. When it comes to Windows devices, you won’t find a better video conferencing device. And, of course, you also get the benefit of having a 10-megapixel camera on the back, even if the use cases for that are much rarer.

The speakers aren’t such a big win, but they’re still pretty good. Although there is only a pair of 2-watt speakers on board, you get decent audio quality on this device. They get pretty loud without distortion and there’s a decent amount of bass. They have a fuller sound profile for music than even the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7, making it one of the better options in terms of audio quality.

productivity

Recent Surface Pro devices have always been powerful, but they get even better in this latest iteration. My review unit came with the Snapdragon X1E80100, a 12-core chip clocked at 3.4GHz. It also comes with the mandatory 16GB of RAM to qualify as a Copilot+ computer. The 10-core X Plus model comes in the base configuration, but you’ll always get 16GB of RAM.

The result is impressive. Admittedly, it’s near the bottom of other laptops with this chip we’ve reviewed so far, including the Surface Laptop, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, HP OmniBook X, and others. That’s to be expected, though, given that the Surface Pro is the only tablet in the mix, and it’s the thinnest device in the bunch. Still, performance is on par with modern Intel Core Ultra laptops in both single-core and multi-core performance.

What this device can do, however, is step up quite a bit in its performance mode. You get a 38% increase in multi-core performance and 15% more single-core performance. That’s a big jump, much more than what we usually see. The Surface Pro 11 is obviously quite limited thermally to keep it cool and quiet, which I think is a good decision.

As we’ve discussed in other Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite reviews, the integrated graphics are nothing to write home about. They’re not a huge disappointment, but they lag behind the current Intel Arc graphics and well behind Apple’s M3. Combine that with some gaming compatibility and you have a device that really shouldn’t be relied upon for PC gaming. This is perfectly fine for this device, but it’s something you should know before moving forward.

Battery life

I’ve always been disappointed with the battery life of Surface Pro devices. It just never felt good enough for a highly portable device of this type – which is another reason why Windows tablets never really took off.

This is no longer the case. The Surface Pro 11 finally has battery life worthy of a tablet, thanks to the Snapdragon X chip. In our light web browsing test, the Surface Pro 11 managed to last over 14.5 hours. It’s the longest-lasting Copilot+ computer to date, and while it’s not quite up to MacBook standards, it’s a huge upgrade over previous generations.

It’s never been so good

The Surface Pro 11th Edition is the culmination of a long journey for this line of devices. It was always a device that was more about what it could be than what it was. But now the Surface Pro isn’t just the best Windows 2-in-1 ever made, it makes a compelling case for the category as a whole. If that doesn’t inspire more movement in the ecosystem, nothing will.

The only real downside is the price. The $999 base configuration sounds great, but you’ll need to add at least a $140 keyboard. Most people might even opt for the $280 add-on, which includes both the keyboard and the Surface Slim Pen. That being said, Microsoft says it’s selling them separately to allow people to reuse older Type Cover keyboards.