Surface Pro 8 vs $600 Slate

all right so the surface pro 8 came out recently and this is a really nice device it's been updated for this year new design 120 hertz display decent performance and it has usb4 thunderbolt 4 so a lot of the things that people are asking for have finally come onto this year's device and it's a it's a good one however this is a super expensive product so this thing starts at 1100 for the base product and the pen and the keyboard are an extra 280 or so it is a 1400 product once you have everything in there just for like the base model with 128 gigs of storage so for all that it's worth like as good as it is as updated as it's become it is super expensive now last week i was sent this device and when it came in the first comparison you draw is like okay this is a surface light product right the thing is this is 600 this is less than half the price of this one right here so okay in addition to the tablet that you get for the 600 bucks it includes the pen it includes the keyboard and i think it includes this case i don't know like it came in the box but it wasn't like the retail product so the review unit comes with that sleeve i don't know if it does in the real version but for this money 600 bucks the feature that is super special is the screen this is an oled panel it's the first product out there in this two-in-one form factor that is an oled panel and it is a visual treat dude this thing is super vibrant super colorful and it's so strange to see this type of display on a product like this so this screen is a 13 inch 16 by 9 oled panel and it's awesome for media consumption the thing that really separates this screen from this one is the contrast ratio right because it's an oled panel when the pixels are off they're just off they're black they're pure black so any kind of like dark scene looks dark the way it should be now this screen is also 13 inches but it's a different kind of screen it's an ips panel so the image doesn't look as vibrant but it's 120 hertz it's high resolution and it's a 3x2 aspect ratio so that kind of aspect ratio is nicer for productivity or any kind of like vertically oriented work and it's also nicer if you're holding the product in a vertical manner for a tablet there's just more room on the left and right for viewing your stuff but when it comes to viewing content there's invariably going to be black bars on the top and bottom it's not a huge deal but it just gives you a smaller viewing experience of the content that you're watching now if you compare these two screens side by side it just looks so much nicer on the slate it's just a better visual experience any kind of visual medium looks better on the slate it's so strange that this is half the price less than half the price of this thing and it's just a better screen for media consumption now in terms of keyboards on the surface pro 8 this is a newly designed keyboard for this year's model so if you had a previous pro keyboard you can't attach to this and there's also a little slot at the top of the keyboard that allows you to slip the pen in but the actual typing experience and the trackpad experience is very similar to pro products of the past this device is well the keyboard comes with it doesn't cost any extra this is not as premium of a feeling keyboard as this like this is a soft touch rubber material instead of the alcantara on the surface pro 8 but it's a really nice feeling keyboard the layout is nice there is however no backlighting so if that's something you do frequently like you type in the dark and need that backlighting this ain't got no lights now there is one other thing that i that might be an issue so on the pro product the surface pro products it has the option for like tilting the keyboard like if you want to you can type it on a flat surface but most people like to have some kind of tilt and they can attach it magnetically and it pops up this guy it's flat it only has the flat orientation now for me i don't like this as much and i know some people like the flat but for me i definitely like that slant and this does not have it you can easily use it still works but just for the people that like the slant it ain't there so in terms of the kickstands on the surface pro 8 it has a very similar kickstand to the devices of the past it goes pretty far back not quite 180 but it can lie pretty flat but it's built into the device and i like that on the asus slate this is a different kind of experience so it does tilt not all the way back but reasonably far back but it's a removable segment and i imagine that it helps to keep the cost down but it is a little inconvenient to have it like this like if you want to pop open the kickstand at one point you either have to go get it and attach it or you have to had it on the whole time and the other thing is because it attaches magnetically and it's not like a super strong magnet you have to hold on to a little bit if you're manipulating it in certain angles but i think overall it's a it's a good implementation of it it's just not nearly as convenient as one that's like built right into the product and it's invisible if you don't want to use the kickstand but overall i think they both do the job if you need it now in terms of the speakers the ones on the surface pro 8 they sound better they're not louder if anything they're actually a little bit quieter but they do sound a little bit cleaner and the lower frequencies are more present on the pro 8 the webcam as well this is just a better webcam the surface pro products have always had excellent webcams and this is no different this year the webcam on the slate is actually not bad as well i was expecting trash webcam especially for this price point but it's actually better than a lot of other devices out there now let's talk about performance so these two products have very different performance the asus slate is weaker than the surface pro 8. now in light tasks and content consumption you will barely notice the difference it's all hardware decoded or any kind of stream just comes in it's viewed perfectly fine on both devices but if you push these things a little bit harder if you're doing any kind of like cpu intensive task let's say photoshop for example you will notice that on the slate it starts to slow down quicker now if you're looking to play games most of them will run poorly on the asus device so i wouldn't really bother the surface pro 8 is a step up in terms of performance overall it is however not great for any kind of particularly demanding task either it's better but it's not like a regular performance laptop and also games they can run but i wouldn't use this as a gaming device but the thing that i find particularly strange is that with this screen it's a 120 hertz capable screen there are almost no games that will run at that kind of frame rate on this device the integrated graphics are decent but you'll rarely be able to hit 120 frames per second on any kind of game on surface devices however where you do get nice use of this high refresh screen is with the pen so any kind of digital illustration or artwork having a more fluid visual experience when you're laying down pen work or coloring is nice it feels consistent it's got great pressure sensitivity and i personally like this new flat style or flat shape that they have with the new surface pens and it also fits right into the case and it charges when it's in there which is a very convenient situation now on this one the slate this uses a more standard kind of barrel shaped pen i like this as well but it is definitely more like older style and it's not very slim it's a pretty chunky pen but this works surprisingly well to be honest i thought that the pen experience would be kind of lackluster because it's running a kind of lower end processor and because this pen is included in it but it's pressure sensitive i will say that the surface is a little more responsive with very light brush strokes like with the slate i do feel like it misses occasionally when you're just really light pressure just grazing the screen but overall there's absolutely nothing i would complain about this the digitizer on the screen is good and the pen is good the hardware is there if you are in photoshop and you have like a ton of layers you are going to be limited with the processor on this thing right you can't do super heavy projects on it but for light use it's perfectly good now to attach the pen to the device there is a magnetic kind of holster you can either attach it to the device in advance and then slip your pen through it or you can do it in the reverse order but it does attach now i don't think this is nearly as convenient as having it built into the case i think this was really cool this year but again for less than half the price i'm good with it now in terms of battery life on the surface pro 8 i was getting eight hours of use with my regular testing but that's with the screen at 60 hertz if i bumped it up to 120 hertz i got barely five hours of battery life which is it seems a little strange to me i think there's a software bug going on but i ran it a couple times if you bump it up to that high refresh rate the battery life is just destroyed on this machine seven hours of battery life it's okay it's definitely less than the surface pro 8 but because it's a cheaper product and i think the oled panel is just sucking more juice i think that's kind of expected but overall this product man for this kind of price point it's surprisingly good here's the thing when it comes to two-in-one devices the surface pro 8 or the surface pro product line has always been like the standard right i think it's the best iteration you can have of this type of product that detachable keyboard and like they just do a really good job with it but it's always super expensive and this year it's extra expensive like it's like two or three hundred dollars more than it was last year for the same kind of entry level model this thing at this point at this price point is like it's special it feels like it's a really cool product now for people that are looking at a device like this and the the reason why they want the tablet is the media consumption experience this is awesome that oled panel is like it's really really cool okay uh there you have it this is a surprising product it came at like near the end of the year maybe they brought it for like the holiday season because i think a lot of people were drawn to this that's it hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: Dave2D

Views: 851,237

Keywords: Dave2D, Review, surface pro 8, vivobook 13 slate, asus, oled, tablet, ipad, ipad pro, oled ipad, microsoft, best tablet

Id: A0qJahE3y7I

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021