INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The 12-inch Surface Pro.
Credit:
Microsoft
The design looks pretty
similar to the existing 13-inch Surface Pro overall but with some significant tweaks
The 12-inch Surface still supports the Slim Pen and other Surface styluses, but there's now a magnet on the back of the tablet that the pen
can be stuck to for storage, rather than a divot on the keyboard
The tablet still has a pair of USB-C ports, each of which supports 10 Gbps USB 3.2 speeds rather than full USB 4
But the Surface Connect port is gone, and because it's physically smaller, the new Surface Pro isn't compatible with any of the keyboard
accessories made for past Surface Pro or Surface Go tablets.But the biggest downgrade is a fundamental change to the tablet's design
The 12-inch Surface Pro's keyboard case (still a separate purchase, frustratingly) lies flat against whatever you have the tablet sitting
on, whether that's a desk, a table, or your lap
If the surface your Surface is resting on is level and stable, that's mostly fine
If the surface is soft or uneven, like a lap or a couch, this introduces extra instability and floppiness, and your keyboard will wobble
around more as you type on it.
Both of the new Surface devices being announced today
Note that the Surface Pro's keyboard sits flat against the table, rather than folding up against the bottom of the screen.
Credit:
Microsoft
This is the same approach used as the first two generations of Surface
Pro (and the ill-starred Surface RT), and it was also a perennial complaint about those designs from reviewers and users
In 2014, the Surface Pro 3 tweaked the keyboard design so that the top of it would fold flat against the bottom of the device's screen,
giving the keyboard some rigidity and stability that persisted no matter what it was resting on
All subsequent Surface keyboards, including those for the tiny 10.5-inch Surface Go, used the same design, until this one.The iPad keyboard
hasn't been the end of the world
But solving this problem was a major turning point in the evolution of the Surface Pro, and it's frustrating to see that signature
