Now, Apple is a different ecosystem with a closed-access operating system dealing with a very limited footprint of device, so it was expected that its focus on performance would mean that it was going to improve on the Pro X with its focus on pure mobility. When the Pro X launched, it had a twelve-month head start over Apple as Tim Cook’s team ditched Intel and moved to the ARM-based Apple Silicon to the full Mac range. Windows Hello works swiftly and reliably to log you in, and thanks to the bundled fast charger a 30-minute charge will boost the battery by around 35% – just about enough for half a day’s work.The other lost advantage is with ARM. It offers an always-on, phone-like experience and LTE means you’ll get emails and notifications even when out of Wi-Fi range. If you don’t find any dealbreakers when checking through your app list, then the Surface Pro X could be exactly what you’re looking for. So, it will really depend upon what you want or need to do that will determine if a Surface Pro X is right for you. So you might want to use Microsoft’s latest Edge browser instead of Google Chrome. This means there’s also a penalty in battery life: run exclusively older x86 Windows apps and you’ll see around seven hours of battery life instead of the circa 10-12 hours you’ll get when running apps optimised for ARM.

But you will notice that traditional Windows apps aren’t as snappy as running native ARM64 apps because 32-bit x86 apps is done using an emulation mode.

You’d be right to expect great performance given what the Pro X costs, but this is another sticking point.

Microsoft surface pro x tablet