This is the temporary nerve center of my blogging empire while the rest of our house is being torn apart and put back together again.Kevin Drum
I am now on my seventh tablet and my third Surface Pro. There are probably three or four of you who are interested in this, so here’s my review of my shiny new Surface Pro 7.
I finally caved in and bought the top-of-the-line model, for reasons that have little to do with performance but are too complicated to spend any time on. It’s got a Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of SSD hard drive. Performance is very snappy indeed, about as good as my desktop computer. It connects to WiFi networks quickly and reliably and download speeds are excellent.
The only physical change from previous models is the addition of a USB-C port, which is very handy. I transfer files from my camera to the tablet all the time, and the combination of high performance and the USB-C port makes transfers about 10-20x faster than with my previous Surface Pro 5.
Battery life is finally acceptable. I haven’t run the Pro 7 down to zero yet, but it looks to me like it gets a legit eight hours of battery life based on moderate, everyday use: mostly browsing, e-reading, and photoshopping. (I don’t do any gaming, so I have no idea how well it performs or how long it lasts for gamers.)
Everything else is about the same as before. The screen resolution is great; it weighs about a pound and a half; and it costs a fortune. My last two Surface Pros have both developed screen problems after about 18 months, so I highly recommend getting the 2-year extended warranty.
This is my first tablet that I truly have no complaints about—aside from the $2,000 price tag, that is. Here’s hoping that it lasts me a good long time.
