The Surface Pro 11 is the latest in Microsoft’s line of hybrid 2-in-1 laptops, and it promises to pack a bunch of new and improved bells and whistles. Microsoft has dumped Intel CPUs for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips. While you could argue that Windows/Intel (Wintel) has a huge legacy, the reality is that moving to Snapdragon gives the Surface Pro 11 a sizeable bump in performance and battery life. New silicon aside, Microsoft has also updated its detachable keyboard with Bluetooth. They’ve also launched an upmarket OLED version alongside a more affordable LCD model.

Microsoft has stuck to its tried-and-true Surface design formula. This isn’t necessarily bad, as it has worked well to date. The 11th edition Surface Pro is designed as a hybrid 2-in-1 device that consists of a tablet with a 13-inch touchscreen and a detachable ultra-thin keyboard. Bizarrely, however, Microsoft still insists on selling the Surface while making its keyboard an optional extra cost. Given the not-so-small fact that the keyboard effectively makes the Surface Pro 11 useful as a PC replacement, this seriously detracts from the attractiveness of what is otherwise a stellar piece of hardware.

While old-school laptops have their battery and electronics under their keyboard, with the lighter screen on the hinged lid, the Surface Pro 11 flips that on its head with an ultra-lightweight detachable keyboard from which the heavier screen/electronics and battery flips up and makes use of a kickstand to stay upright. The kickstand opens to a wide range of angles, allowing the Surface Pro 11 to be usable on a lap, table/desk, or flat surface. The downside of this approach is that Surface devices aren’t always great for use on a lap or an airline tray table.

On the connectivity front, you’re well served. Microsoft has bundled two USB  4 C ports on the left-hand side and a Surface connector for charging on the right-hand side. The addition of these is a boon as it allows you to use high-wattage USB-C chargers or to connect an external monitor and a pile of other peripheral goodies.

“Hitting the new CoPilot AI assistant key has been handy for resolving social media arguments and coming up with a good recipe for rice pudding.”

Although it doesn’t have a keyboard by default, Microsoft bundled a type-cover keyboard with the review unit. I was pleasantly surprised by the key travel and the overall typing experience. Its trackpad is decent too, being of a good size with solid tactile feedback. It’s just such a shame that it costs extra to purchase.

A new keyboard addition is the CoPilot key. Hitting the new CoPilot AI assistant key has been handy for resolving social media arguments and coming up with a good recipe for rice pudding. A small indentation sits above the keys, which houses the optional Slim Pen. For signing onscreen paperwork, it proved to be quite useful, but again, it’s an optional extra that adds to the overall cost of the Surface 11.

The Surface Pro 11 can be bought with an LCD or an OLED display, the price point of both models reflected by which version of the Snapdragon X CPU is inside. The Snapdragon X Plus is built into the slightly more affordable LCD model, while the more powerful Snapdragon X Elite is baked into the model with an OLED display. The review unit I was supplied with had a gorgeous 2880 x 1290 OLED display that delivered super vivid colours, solid HDR performance, and brightness levels that made using it outside under direct sunlight effortless. A dynamic refresh rate of up to 120HZ also made for silky smooth scrolling while streamed UHD video looked great.

As good as the video looked, the audio was not great. I’m being unfair though, as that’s only to be expected from teensy speakers embedded in a device whose form factor is as thin as a single slice of toast bread. Because there’s no headphone socket, you’ll need to invest in a decent set of Bluetooth headphones or speakers if fidelity is a priority.

Snapdragon X Elite is a 12-core/24-thread beast powering the show. It might not be a gaming powerhouse, but everything felt super responsive and snappy. Apps opened quickly, and everything ran smoothly.  This was probably helped by the generous 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM (storage options range from 256GB to 1TB). Add a healthy dose of Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and you’ve also got a decent level of futureproofing. Unfortunately, there’s no benchmarking software for this new silicon, so I could not gather any quantitative data on its performance.

“You can even give the illusion that you’re maintaining eye contact, even if the video meeting you’re enduring is snore-worthy and your eyes have drifted shut. Personally, I can’t put a price on that feature.”

Because the Surface Pro 11 is technically a tablet, it comes with front and back cameras. The front camera did a great job with Windows Hello, allowing me to use my mug to quickly log in, which is crazily convenient. The rear 10MP shooter is not going to deliver photographic magic, and I have to question why it even needs to exist, given that most people are unlikely to ever use it when they have a far more capable smartphone shooter in their pockets/purses.

While there is a growing number of ARM silicon-compatible apps from major app makers, the sheer volume of Windows-Intel apps is massive. Thankfully, Microsoft baked a translation layer into Windows 11 that uses emulation to allow Wintel apps to run. Emulation does draw off a tiny amount of CPU horsepower, but I was amazed at just how smoothly everything ran. Printers and scanners connected effortlessly and worked. That said, your mileage may vary with legacy hardware using older drivers.

The dedicated CoPilot key makes accessing Microsoft’s AI Agent seamless, but Copilot seems to be a web app rather than a baked-in on-device app. That said, it Packs an NPU (neural processing unit), so there’s plenty of scope for Copilot to grow.

The Surface Pro 11 has useful AI tricks, which are especially evident in apps such Microsoft Paint, whose co-creator AI utility allows you to prompt and sketch to create impressive digital art. If video meetings are your thing, AI webcam smarts will keep you in the frame. You can even give the illusion that you’re maintaining eye contact, even if the video meeting you’re enduring is snore-worthy and your eyes have drifted shut. Personally, I can’t put a price on that feature. That said, I would have liked to have seen CoPilot baked more deeply in the OS to allow for better plain language integration. Sadly, most of the useful AI stuff in Office apps requires you to fork out an additional subscription on top of what you’re already paying for Office 365, which kind of sucks.

The move to Arm silicon has done wonders for battery life. Microsoft says the Surface Pro 11 will run for 14 hours, but I went just shy of 15 hours in a looped video battery run-down test. While I had dimmed the screen to usable levels to achieve this, close to 15 hours away from a power socket is nothing to sneeze at and makes the Surface Pro 11 a good device for long-haul travel. At a practical level, the Surface 11 will easily deliver a full day of work and have gas left in its tank. Charging is done via the bundled Surface Connect charger, but you can use a high-wattage USB-C power brick at a pinch.

The Surface Pro 11 is a capable piece of hardware. It excels as a laptop and tablet and, performance-wise, is plenty powerful for casual gaming and any productivity chores you’re ever likely to throw at it. Add its impressive battery life and super slim design, and there’s plenty to like. Where it falls down, however, is the frankly stingy policy of Microsoft to charge extra for its keyboard/pen/AI when all of these are central to it being usable as a productivity tool.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/surface/devices/surface-pro-11th-edition