With the new Surface Pro 11th Edition, Microsoft made some critical changes to the product, all of them good. The hero feature is the company's Copilot+ suite of features, but frankly, that's not what makes it good.

It comes with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chipset, giving it great battery life along with powerful performance, something we've really only seen from Apple's MacBooks over the last few years. And finally, the Redmond firm is offering an OLED display option.

That's not even the best part. The new Flex Keyboard is a game-changer because of one really simple new feature. You can detach it from the Surface Pro and continue to use it.

The one drawback is that Windows tablets still just don't make a lot of sense. Despite coming preinstalled on the product, the Windows Subsystem for Android doesn't work, and I'm told it's not going to. Unfortunately, WSA was the one avenue for a Windows device being great at being both a laptop and a tablet.

But as far as this form factor goes on Windows, you can't beat the Surface Pro 11.

Microsoft sent us the Surface Pro 11 for review. It had no input on the contents of this article.

Surface Pro 11 pricing and availability

The Surface Pro 11 was one of 14 products from seven companies to be announced on May 20, rounding out the first wave of Copilot+ PCs that are powered by the Snapdragon X series of processors. Aside from one of them, they all launched on June 18.

The Surface Pro starts at $999, packing a Snapdragon X Plus chipset, 16GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD. However, if you want the OLED display, you'll have to get the Snapdragon X Elite, which starts at $1,499, which comes with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. That's the model that Microsoft sent me for review.

Note that if you're good with a Snapdragon X Plus and don't need OLED, you can get 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD for $1,199. Storage is user-upgradeable too, so if you don't want to pay a premium for more storage, or you just want to upgrade down the line, you can do that.

Design and display

It looks the same, but everything else is different

Microsoft mostly kept the same design with this year's Surface Pro, with slightly curved edges, larger top and bottom bezels, and an all-aluminum chassis. The screen now has rounded corners, which is extremely important.

It comes in four colors: Platinum, Black, Dune, and Sapphire. Dune and Sapphire are the pretty ones, obviously, and I'm a bit partial to Dune, which is a little unfortunate since the Flex Keyboard isn't offered in that color.

Dune and Sapphire colors are as pretty as tablets get.

Ports haven't changed from the Surface Pro 9, except for the two USB Type-C ports not being considered Thunderbolt anymore. They're still USB4, so you still get most of the functionality. But given compatibility issues, don't expect to turn this into a gaming rig with an external GPU (I know you people are out there).

Under the kickstand, you'll find a compartment where you can access the 2230 SSD, where you can easily swap it out for another one. Microsoft has always said that this isn't meant for user upgrades that would easily bypass its storage premiums (you can absolutely do that though), but instead for being able to destroy an SSD with sensitive data when discarding the device. It's for repairs too, obviously.

It comes with a 13-inch 2880x1920 display, which offers a 120Hz refresh rate. The specs list it as a dynamic refresh rate, but there's no setting to automatically switch between 60Hz and 120Hz like I've seen in previous models.

OLED is optional, and the resolution and refresh rate are the same across both panels. The OLED option is...nice. That's the best way to describe a screen that you can't test because SpyderX Pro software throws an error when you try to run it. And yes, that's an issue I've come across on Arm64 PCs in the past, so I'm confident that this is an emulation issue. It did work on the Surface Laptop 7 though.

It's the best display on a Surface, ever.

Seriously though, this is the best display ever used on a Surface PC, and I'm confident in saying that without stats to back it up. It's the first OLED display that Microsoft has used on a PC, and it's not as glossy anymore. Personally, I think it's worth paying the $400 premium.

The webcam is 4032x3024, which is really impressive. That 12.2MP resolution is a big improvement over the 5MP sensor that was in the Surface Pro 9. It adds room for automatic framing, a feature included in Windows Studio Effects. This lets the camera automatically zoom in on you and follow you around if you move, keeping you centered. And with such a high resolution, you won't lose quality if it zooms in on you, being that a 1080p video only requires 2.1MP.

Flex Keyboard

It brings Surface Pro to a new level

When the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 were introduced, I felt like the Laptop was the star of the show. Indeed, it's a fine product, and it's probably the one I would buy given a choice between the two. But I was absolutely hyped when I saw the Flex Keyboard.

Finally, you can simply detach the keyboard and continue to use it. If you're a regular Surface Pro user, you may have already found a workaround for that by simply having a separate Bluetooth keyboard, but now, that Bluetooth keyboard comes with you wherever you go.

The Flex Keyboard is a game-changer that makes the Surface Pro viable in ways that it never was before.

Microsoft laid out use cases like being on a plane, or some other small space where a table might only have room for the tablet with its kickstand. I don't care about that at all. For me, it's all about being able to push the screen further away.

Using a laptop is not comfortable. You're constantly looking down at the screen, and it's too close to your eyes. For me personally, I use Gunnar blue light glasses to ease the eye strain, but it's still not comfortable to look down at a screen all day.

Being able to move the screen back is a game-changer for the Surface Pro. Suddenly, this is a comfortable and viable product for me.

There's no setup or charging either (I should note that battery life on the keyboard only seems to be a couple of days if you leave it disconnected). All you have to do is attach the Flex Keyboard, and when you disconnect it, it's automatically paired. It charges while it's connected and not in use.

Unfortunately, the Flex Keyboard only comes in Sapphire and Black colorways, which is really strange considering that Platinum has been the traditional Surface color. There's also a new Dune color for Surface this year, and the old Surface keyboard looks amazing in it. It's unfortunate that there's no Dune Flex Keyboard.

The touchpad is haptic now too, another amazing improvement that isn't found on the standard Surface Keyboard. For me, that means it's quieter, and I despised the old touchpad and how loud it was. It was embarassing to be in a quiet room and press it as lightly as possible, and still hear a loud click.

The Flex Keyboard is worth its price tag, even if you're using an older Surface Pro.

One other thing I want to note about the Flex Keyboard is that this is one of those rare cases where Bluetooth is just better. I had tons of connectivity issues on old Surface Keyboards, where it would just disconnect for a split second while typing. That doesn't happen with Bluetooth connectivity.

I know that the Flex Keyboard is expensive at $349, but I cannot stress how worth it it is if you buy a Surface Pro 11, or any compatible Surface for that matter.

Performance and battery life

Finally, tablet-like battery life from a Surface Pro

The model that Microsoft sent me for review includes the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100, which is the middle of the three tiers of X Elite chips. The base model comes with the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus, whereas the Elite has 12 cores.

First of all, performance is great, and that goes for whether you're connected to power or not. Indeed, when running benchmarks, the scores were pretty much identical whether running on AC or battery, which isn't usually the case on an x86 laptop (especially AMD).

There are two use cases where I wouldn't recommend the Surface Pro, and that's gaming and video editing. Qualcomm talked up casual gaming, meaning that you wouldn't buy this machine for gaming, but you could play games if you want to. The problem is that if you're a casual gamer, chances are you might just want to go and download a random game and play it. There's no guarantee that that game will work. The idea that it would work if it works on Intel integrated graphics does not apply here.

Video editing is a mixed bag, because I do have faith in the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite. It's just missing key software. Adobe only offers Photoshop, Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Acrobat on Arm64 PCs, not even offering non-native apps like Premiere Pro to run in emulation. The company is promising to ship Premiere Pro and Illustrator in July, but also, it's been promising to deliver the entire CC suite for Windows on Arm since 2019 when the Surface Pro X launched.

Almost all of the apps I use run natively on Arm, and they're so smooth. These include Google Chrome, Slack, Photoshop, OneNote, Microsoft To Do, and more. I use Lightroom Classic, which is not native, but it runs really well as long as you don't use the AI Denoise feature. On a side note, I'm told that Lightroom Classic isn't going to be compiled for Arm, as it's being sunsetted. At some point, I'm just going to have to move to the new Lightroom.

Microsoft thinks that you'll spend about 87% of your time in native apps, but since Slack was released recently, I'm spending almost all of my time in native apps. I'm extremely happy with the performance of the Snapdragon X Elite, and I think you will be too, unless you use some really old legacy apps that I wouldn't even be able to name.

A bunch of apps have come to Windows on Arm this year. Aside from things like Chrome and Slack, apps like Zoom, Teams, DaVinci Resolve, and more have gone native. Emulation is good, and the momentum is there.

The Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 in the Surface Pro 11 beats Intel Core Ultra by pretty much every metric, although there's the predictable dropoff in performance when it comes to tests running in emulation. I included tests like Cinebench R23 and CrossMark for that very reason.

I also included scores from the HP EliteBook Ultra, which uses the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, so you can see that the X1E-80-100 performs considerably better. Both chips have 12 Oryon cores clocked at 3.4GHz, but the X1E-80-100 can boost two cores up to 4GHz. The performance delta isn't as big jumping to the X1E-84-100, since the only difference there is that the dual-core boost goes to 4.2GHz.

Battery life is as great as you'd expect from an Arm tablet, and indeed, it's truly exciting to see a Windows tablet with...tablet battery life. We've seen iPads and Android tablets get all-day battery life for over a decade, but their Intel-powered Windows cousins have always fallen short.

There's one major caveat though. Microsoft's guidance for testing these products has been to set power settings at 'Best performance' for benchmarking and 'Recommended' for battery life testing, just like on an Intel PC. One thing I had hoped for was the same performance both connected and disconnected from power, while getting great battery life, much like we see from Apple Silicon MacBooks. That is not the case. You do need to turn down the performance if you want that great battery life, which is unfortunate.

Standby battery life and better power management mean you can leave your Surface Pro alone for days and it still instantly wakes up.

Predictably, battery life isn't as good as it is on the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7, thanks to the smaller 51WHr battery in the smaller product, compared to the 64WHr battery in the larger one. All of my tests came up short of 11 hours, whereas the Laptop hit 15 hours in some cases. On average, I got between 450 and 550 minutes of battery life, with a maximum of 652 minutes. It's still worth pointing out that certain things, like Google Meet in the browser, just suck down power and if you use them constantly, you'll only get a few hours.

All of my battery testing is done with my normal work flow, with Recommended power settings.

Copilot+

Don't buy a PC for this just yet

While Qualcomm would call May 20 its big Snapdragon X series launch, Microsoft would call it its Copilot+ launch. That's where it announced its AI PC initiative, which would run on Arm coming out of the gate. The only problem is that it's not super useful just yet.

That's start with the elephant in the room: Recall. Recall was the hero feature of Copilot+. Billed as your photographic memory, it was going to take screenshots of everything you do, every few seconds, and allow you to search for things. Let's say you're shoe shopping and you want to find something you liked but can't remember what it was called. Recall has your back. You can just type up a quick description of the product and it will find it.

While Microsoft baked user control into Recall, it wasn't enough. Right away, you'd be able to turn it off, pause it, choose apps that wouldn't be captured, and set storage maximums. However, it was an opt-out experience and people found some glaring security vulnerabilities right away.

Recall was delayed indefinitely about a week before launch. There are a bunch of other Copilot+ features, and while they're all fine, none of them are enough that you should run out to buy a new PC.

Cocreator is one of those features, and the Surface Pro is probably the only product where it actually makes sense. It lets you make a text prompt and sketch a drawing to generate an image that's along the lines of what you want.

Sounds cool, right? Well, have you ever wanted to draw something and then didn't because you didn't have the skill? No, me neither. If I was interested in drawing, I'd at least attempt to learn to draw. The whole idea is that AI is giving you a skill that you might wish you had. In real life, it feels like a really cool demo, but that's it.

Windows Studio Effects are fine. This suite of features debuted on the Surface Pro X, including background blur, gaze correction, auto reframing, and more. Exclusive to Copilot+ are new "creative filters" like animated, watercolor, and illustrated. There are also new portrait light and portrait blur features.

I'm fine with none of these. Background blur is great, except for the fact that it's already baked into every meeting platform that exists. The creative filters work fine, but they seem like they're more for play than anything else, so I'd never turn them on.

Live Captions is actually useful. You can toggle on a switch in Quick Settings, where you'll inexplicably be greeted with a pop-up every single time you use it, and it will give you captions for any audio coming through on your PC. It does live translation too.

The end of the Windows Subsystem for Android

Microsoft was so close to making Windows good on tablets

While most software will work just fine on the Surface Pro 11, one thing that won't is the Windows Subsystem for Android, despite the fact that it comes pre-installed. Android apps on Windows are on their way out to begin with, although Microsoft's official support page says they should be supported until March 2025; the company has confirmed to XDA that this issue is not going to be fixed on the Surface Pro 11.

It's a shame. While extremely poorly implemented, Android apps on Windows were a way to finally make tablets good. Microsoft has been attempting this for over a decade, back when Windows 8 was a failed attempt at full-screen, touch-optimized Windows apps. Windows is a desktop OS, and it has always been and always will be best for use with a mouse and keyboard.

Android apps in Windows 11 were the first time I felt like a Surface Pro was actually good at being both a laptop and a tablet. Being able to run apps like Kindle, DC Universe Infinite, Hoopla, Disney+, Netflix, and so on are great. And yes, Windows has some of these apps, but they are awful. Disney+ doesn't even let you download shows to watch offline. I guess I'll still be carrying my iPad on planes, something Surface was supposed to solve.

Like I said, it's always been poorly implemented. If you wanted an Android app like Kindle, you could navigate to it in the Microsoft Store, and the procedure to get it was to click to download, download the Windows Subsystem for Android, reboot, install the Amazon Appstore, sign in with an Amazon account, and then get the app from the Amazon Appstore. On top of that, starting up these apps was this clunky experience where the Windows Subsystem for Android took time to load.

Still, I had hoped it would get better, not get removed completely. And despite the fact that it's being retired, I expected it to work until then. So, the question is, if I still have to carry an iPad, why would I buy a Surface Pro (or any Windows tablet) instead of a proper laptop?

Should you buy the Surface Pro 11?

You should buy the Surface Pro 11th Edition if:

• You want a laptop that can fit into really compact spaces
• You're looking to draw on a tablet
• You have an older Surface Pro, you like it, and pain points include performance and battery life

You should NOT buy the Surface Pro 11th Edition if:

• You have no use for the specific instances where a Windows tablet makes sense
• You use Adobe Creative Cloud outside of Photoshop and Lightroom
• You're planning to play games, even casually

The Surface Pro 11 is an excellent PC and I absolutely love it. Like I've said, the Flex Keyboard is a game-changer that makes the product viable for me in a way that it never was before. It's so much more comfortable to use.

The Snapdragon chipset elevates the experience, with excellent performance and even better battery life. It's the little things too, like how you can put it away for a few days and it instantly wakes up with minimal battery drain. It's just better at power management than the Intel models were.

The biggest drawback is still that it's a Windows tablet. That's fine if you want to use the product in small spaces with the Flex Keyboard on your lap, you're drawing with something like Cocreator, or you're out in the world doing tablet things. But as far as touch-optimized apps go, Windows isn't there, and without the Windows Subsystem for Android, it's not going to be.

The point is this. If you're going to buy the new Surface Pro, make sure you want a Windows tablet. If you've got an aging model, this is an excellent upgrade, because it's the best it could possibly be for what it is. Just be sure that you want that. Otherwise, check out the Surface Laptop 7.

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  Surface Pro 11

  Operating System

  Windows 11

  CPU

  Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite

  GPU

  Qualcomm Adreno

  RAM

  16GB or 32GB LPDDR5x

  Storage

  256GB, 512GB, or 1TB SSD

  Battery

  Up to 14 hours of video playback (Wi-Fi model)

  $1000 at Best Buy $1000 at Amazon
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  Microsoft Flex Keyboard

  $349 at Best Buy