Shane
Microsoft has recently unveiled the new Surface Pro to us here at StG, the next generation of their iconic product line and the most versatile laptop on the planet.
The new Surface Pro delivers the most performance and battery life in a laptop that is this thin, light and quiet. Surface took the category it created and pushed it a step further with the new Surface Pro by bringing up to 13.5 hours of battery life, making it more than 2.5 times faster than Surface Pro 3, and providing unmatched versatility and mobility in a lighter, more refined design.
Surface Pro is not only a powerhouse laptop, but also a mobile creative studio with a vibrant 12.3” PixelSense touch display that supports the new Surface Pen, the fastest pen ever, and Surface Dial both on- and off-screen. Twice as accurate as the previous version and enhanced by our PixelSense Accelerator custom silicon, the new Surface Pen and new Surface Pro together set the industry standard for faster, more fluid writing and drawing, and Surface Pen now supports tilt for more natural shading. Inking in applications across Windows 10 and Microsoft Office 365 including the new Microsoft Whiteboard app, will unlock ways for people to use digital ink to be more creative, collaborative and productive.
“People’s expectations for what their devices should help them accomplish are high – and the Surface team works to exceed those expectations,” said Carol Glidden, Microsoft New Zealand Windows and Surface business group lead. “People want beautiful and powerful devices, with all-day battery life and amazing digital inking experiences. They want to better express their ideas creatively while being able to work whenever, wherever and however they choose.
The new Surface Pro delivers all that and more, building on our heritage of pushing the idea of a ‘computer’ forward while harnessing all the innovation of Windows 10 and Microsoft Office 365 to empower people to do their best creative work.”
Having been redesigned from the inside out to give people more performance and 50 percent more battery life than the Surface Pro 4, everything has been streamlined and refined — from softer, rounded edges to cameras built to fade into the bezel. At just 8.5mm thin and starting at 1.69 pounds the new Surface Pro is lighter than the bag it will be carried in, and packs the power of a 7th generation Intel Core processor into a new fanless, whisper-quiet design.
The new Surface Pro Signature Type Cover delivers a high-quality scissor mechanism and 1.3 mm of key travel for faster and more accurate typing. A full-size glass trackpad with five finger multi-touch capabilities allows for ultimate precision and the entire keyboard is wrapped in soft yet durable Alcantara material, creating a comfortable palm rest and beautiful aesthetic.
The new Surface Pro will also be available with LTE Advanced (4G Connectivity) later this year to provide even greater mobility to let people work, collaborate and create from anywhere.
Take in the immersive experience of creating on Surface Studio and brings it to life in a highly portable form factor. With a new hinge that adjusts to 165 degrees, people can now put Surface Pro into Studio Mode, creating the optimal position to write or sketch.
The high-resolution 12.3” PixelSense Display is engineered to work with the new Surface Pen, the fastest digital pen ever, to deliver an amazing inking experience. The new Surface Pen is twice as responsive as the previous version with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity for increased accuracy and responsiveness. New tilt functionality detects the angle of the Surface Pen to enable more natural shading. The Surface Dial also works on-screen with the new Surface Pro, unlocking a set of unique experiences pioneered by Surface Studio. Placing Dial on the screen brings up app-specific digital tools, allowing people to quickly access shortcuts and move seamlessly through their workflow.
With the new Surface Pro and Surface Pen, digital inking comes to life for artists and inspires creativity worldwide. But people use pens not just to sketch or paint, but also to be productive — write and share comments in documents, notes in notebooks, and sketches on whiteboards. We are making the creative power of the new Surface Pen available in the world’s most powerful productivity suite: Microsoft Office.
New inking features in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint include a customizable gallery of your favourite pens, pencils and highlighters that roam with you as a personalized setting across Office apps and devices, along with support for tilt and shading with the new Surface Pen. These capabilities will begin to release to Office 365 subscribers in June, including the more than 100 million monthly active commercial users and 26 million consumer subscribers.
Additional inking experiences will continue to roll out in the future, including the new Microsoft Whiteboard app, which offers a limitless canvas for creativity and collaboration with simultaneous inking between multiple people across the world. With Microsoft Whiteboard, people will be able to collaborate on ideas and projects across an expanded set of ink-enabled Windows 10 devices later this year, with exclusive capabilities for Office 365 subscribers.
Starting at $1,349 NZD (RRP), the new Surface Pro allows people to customize their experiences with an array of colourful options for the new Surface Pro Signature Type Cover, the new Surface Pen and the Microsoft Surface Arc Mouse. Each comes in rich tone-on-tone colours to match your personal style: Platinum, Burgundy and Cobalt Blue.
The new Surface Pro will launch in New Zealand on June 15th, 2017. Preorder for the new Surface Pro and Surface Pro Signature Type Cover begins later today in select markets at Microsoft Store and select retailers. The new Surface Pen will be available in the coming weeks.