I have always had a soft spot for the Surface Pro X. It was the thinner, lighter, and fanless Surface tablet that I had always wanted Microsoft to make, but when it came out nearly six years ago, Windows wasn’t ready to handle the Arm chip inside – and vice versa. Sluggish performance and app compatibility issues kept the Surface Pro X from living up to its beautiful design. It was a heartbreaker.
Microsoft is once again trying to perfect the Surface Pro design with a $799 12-inch version of its tablet and laptop hybrid that ditches the fan and uses Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X Plus chip. This time around, it’s warming my heart instead of breaking it, thanks to a redesign of the entire tablet and the performance and battery life to match.
The result of the overhaul is a tablet that combines some of the best design elements you’ll find on an iPad or Samsung’s tablets, with the versatility of Windows. While the competition has been trying to copy the Surface Pro for years, Microsoft has now borrowed from the best tablets to improve its own laptop and tablet hybrid even further.
Last year’s Surface Pro 11 (now the Surface Pro 13-inch) had the same basic design Microsoft had bee …
