Sony has gone and done it: this is the first ever 4K screen on a smartphone. That's the big headline for the largest of the Xperia Z5 family, and it's a truly remarkable feat from the company.
It's no secret that Sony has been struggling in the mobile phone game for quite some time, and the Japanese company has come back strongly with its new Xperia Z5 series.
The family includes theSony Xperia Z5, which has a 5.2-inch Full HD display, a new frosted glass design and a fingerprint scanner. Then there's the smaller sibling of theXperia Z5 Compactthat boasted a similar set up, but with a 720p 4.6-inch screen and a much smaller design.
And now the newest, and largest, member of the Z5 family is hitting the shelves: the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium. It's the first time we've seen a large-screen Sony phone since the Xperia Z Ultra, which came with a mammoth 6.4-inch display; the Xperia Z5 Premium is measly in comparison though, with a 5.5-inch offering.
You can pick up the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium for £599 / AU$1199 (about US$953). The phone had a last-minute price drop from Sony before the launch, and it's gradually dropped down a little bit extra on top as well.
It's certainly not the cheapest phone you can buy, but this top-end tech does cost money.
And this is the go-to Sony phone for those who love larger handsets, and those who want the latest and greatest thing. The Xperia Z5 Premium has received a lot of hype for its headline 4K display, but a lot of other features need to be present and correct if this phone is to live up to its high-end billing.
One problem is even though the phone has been out in the UK and Australia for a couple of months now, it's still not available in the US. Techradar has reached out to Sony to try and get comment on why this is, but even though you can now buy the Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Compact you still can't get its larger brother.
Design
Sony has its own particular design philosophy, and has generally stuck to it ever since the original Xperia Z, making only minor changes with each new iteration.
The Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Compact are especially notable for the way the rear design has switched from clear glass to frosted glass. Sadly, Sony hasn't seen fit to do the same for the Xperia Z5 Premium.
Instead, Sony has decided to keep the clear glass back of theXperia Z3+, and as before this picks up fingerprints as soon as you touch it.
The Xperia Z5 Premium is much heavier than you'd expect a phone to be in 2015, coming in at 180g but feeling even weightier in the hand – it was the first thing I noticed when I picked it up.
Weight isn't always a bad thing, of course – it's good to know your phone isn't going to fly off in a gust of wind. But the Xperia Z5 Premium is large all over, and sometimes it's difficult to use because of its sheer size – and I don't have particularly small hands, so anyone with smaller mitts is going to struggle.
The edges on the Xperia Z5 Premium are an aluminium with a high-gloss texture – but it's quite easy to mistake these for plastic. In fact, I did for quite some time. The edges feel a lot less premium with that high-gloss over the top and that's an issue when the edges of the Xperia Z5 really added to the design.
It means the Z5 Premium doesn't have a convincingly 'premium' look, and it also feels a little slippery in the hand – I sometimes found when holding the phone that I was nervous it was going to fall out of my hand.
Sony has included the reinforced corners also seen on the Xperia Z5, which are designed to prevent the phone from breaking if it lands on one of them.
On the right-hand side of the phone, about halfway down, is the fingerprint sensor, which doubles as the power button. It's a sensible placing, and makes it really easy to unlock the handset.
The volume rocker is just below this, and if you're right-handed it can be quite difficult to get used to it being so low down. I'd rather it was placed above the power button, where my fingers could reach it a little more easily.
Below the rocker is the camera button – again, this is well placed, as you won't accidentally hit it when you're using the phone, and it's in easy reach when you want to take a shot in landscape orientation.
Previous Sony phones have been covered in fiddly little flaps that are prone to breaking off, and thankfully the Z5 Premium has just one, on the top-left edge.
It's easier to use than previous examples – and the slot beneath houses the microSD and nanoSIM cards, so you won't need to play around with it very often anyway.
And it also means you won't be losing that really useful waterproofing technology. Being able to take your phone into the shower with you is one of the pure joys of owning a Sony handset.
Adobe trickles down 4K support to its consumer video editor
The most notable update in Adobe's consumer video-editing Premiere Elements 14 over its predecessor
is 4K support -- primarily targeted at the action-cam (GoPro) video
editor -- beyond that, there's not much to get excited about.
Upgrade
pricing for current users sits at $80 (£50 , AU$115), while new users
will pay the full $100 (£80, AU$100), or $150 (£100, AU$150) for the
bundle with Premiere Elements 14. Upgrade price for the bundle is $120
(£80, AU$170).
What's new
4K support: Yup,
it imported my videos with no problems, but Smart Fix didn't seem to
work with them. However, the automatic tools did a creditable job doing a
quick-and-dirty tonal adjustment on video that was shot with a flat
(very low contrast) profile. More prominent audio tools:
The audio features were somewhat buried in previous versions, so Adobe
has given them a dedicated way to access them, plus an Audio view in the
timeline. New Guided Edits: The first is Slow
or Fast Motion, which walks you through the program's time-remapping
feature to slow down or speed up segments of a video. The other, Black
and White with Color Pop, shows you how to convert your video to black
and white and then bring out a specific color. The great thing about the
guided edits in Premiere Elements (as opposed to Photoshop Elements) is
that it actually shows you what to do; after using it a few times, you
know how to produce the effect you want. Motion titles:
These include movement in and out of the frame, fades and the ability
to pull a frame from the video as the title background. You can select
from predefined graphics; text blocks, fonts and styles; and different
animations. Every time I tried to change the frame for the background
from the default, though, it expanded the video display and closed the
motion title panel; when I reopened the panel, it defaulted back to the
first frame of the video. And though you can customize the graphics it
uses to a certain extent, you can't delete any of the elements. The text
doesn't render very crisply, either. Aside from that, it's a nice
feature. New export and share workflow: Adobe
has tried to make the process of encoding video and uploading to common
sites -- YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo, at least to start -- more
straightforward by breaking your options out by target device or sharing
site. Updated Organizer: Adobe claims the
Organizer has faster, more accurate face-recognition capabilities, and
it is faster and more accurate, but still a little unsure of itself and
requires some confirmations. You can quickly scrub through stacks of
faces, and view all the photos attached to them. Map view displays
thumbnails that you can scrub though as well and the program will
automatically map photos taken on a mobile device and that are tagged.
Finally, it provides suggested Event groupings as well. All of these
updates are pretty much catch-up features.
My take
If
you already have the last version of Premiere Elements, the $80 price
is too high to justify upgrading -- except if you need the ability to
handle 4K video. If you're a first-timer, then this video editor offers a
lot of tools in a relatively easy-to-learn interface. However, aside
from the Shake Stabilizer introduced in the last version, there are no
easy or specific or beginner tools for working with action-cam video,
such as a Guided Edit for multicam editing.
he Brother MFC-J470DW is an easy-to-use multifunction inkjet printer
that also operates as a dedicated fax machine, copier and scanner. Its
list price is $100 (£108, AU$149), but it's widely available online for
up to 30 percent less. The MFC-J470DW offers faster than average output
speeds and business-friendly features like an auto-document feeder
(ADF), an auto-duplexer for printing on both sides of a single sheet of
paper, and a software suite that opens the door to cloud prints and
scans (including the ability to print from iOS and Android
devices). The ink costs are also lower than many name-brand printers in
the sub-$100 range, earning the MFC-J470DW a strong recommendation for
use in any office or home work space.
Brother advances the design of the MFC-J470DW beyond
that of its clunky older siblings with a compact footprint that measures
16.1 inches wide by 14.7 inches deep and 7.1 inches tall (that's 24.6
by 47.6 by 45.2 cm). It's not the smallest printer on the shelf, though
-- Epson still holds the bragging rights for its "Small-in-one" series
like the XP-420 , but the reason those are so tiny is because they don't have the productivity features of the MFC-J470DW.
Offices can save money on paper by using the duplexer, a useful
piece of integrated hardware that automatically flips over a sheet of
paper to print on both sides. There's also a 20-sheet auto-document
feeder (ADF) tray on top that's useful for batch scanning or faxing
using the dedicated phone line. Of course, if you want to go digital,
you can also perform a "PC Fax" using an Internet connection to
communicate directly from your computer to the unit -- faxing a document
without first having to print it.
Brother MFC-J470DW
Price as reviewed
$99.99
Dimensions in inches (width x depth x height)
16.1 x 14.7 x 7.1 inches (24.6 x 47.6 x 45.2cm)
Functions
Print/copy/scan/fax
Inks
4-ink tank (black, cyan, magenta, yellow)
Automatic 2-sided printing (duplexer)
Yes
Automatic document feeder
Yes, 20 sheets
Memory card reader
No
Connectivity
USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, Google Cloud Print, Apple AirPrint, Brother Cloud apps
Paper input tray capacity
100 sheets
Display
1.8-inch color LCD screen
If you're looking for relics of Brother's older designs, check out
the control panel. The buttons for mode selection, menu navigation and
phone number entry are all made of mushy rubber that feels uncomfortable
to use and brings the overall user experience down a step. At least you
get a 1.8-inch color LCD display on the left side that shows you things
like ink levels, setup assistance and the location of paper jams
(although I thankfully experienced none during testing).
Brother bills the MFC-J470DW as a "Work Smart" printer, which might
explain the lack of photocentric features like a memory card reader and a
PictBridge-compatible USB port for pulling photos directly off flash
storage drives and digital cameras.
But that doesn't mean you
can't occasionally print photos on this machine. In fact, the removable
paper tray on the bottom has plastic tabs that easily adjust to
accommodate popular photo paper sizes like 4 by 6 and 5 by 7, in
addition to the standard sizes like letter, legal, executive, and even
envelopes and index cards.
The flatbed glass scanner also fits up to letter-size documents and
can save projects in a variety of formats onto a hard-drive folder, an
email message, a Microsoft Office project, or directly into the free Scansoft PaperPort document-viewing software that Brother bundles with the machine.
If you follow the
simple manual instructions and connect the printer to your Wi-Fi
network, you can even set the scanner to automatically send projects to
your compatible mobile device running the Brother iPrint&Scan app
for iOS, Android/Amazon Fire, Windows Phone 7 or 8, and BlackBerry
(Cortado).
Like many of the big-name printer manufacturers,
Brother offers a full suite of cloud printing software that lets you use
your smartphone or tablet
in conjunction with Web services like Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, and
more to view your projects across a wide landscape of services.
Additionally, Brother also works nicely with Google Cloud Print and
Apple AirPrint to send wireless jobs to and from the printer using the
Google Chrome Web browser and Apple iOS devices, respectively.
Inks and supplies
The ink cartridge bay sits behind a flimsy plastic door to the right
of the paper tray and houses the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black
cartridges that feed to the printer. The cartridges are so easy to
install that you probably won't even need the manual to figure it out,
and the easy access door is convenient for swapping them out -- the
process is much more convenient than lifting the whole scanning bay and
auto-document feeder.
You'll also spend less on ink refills
compared to competitive printers in the sub-$100 category, even more
over time with continued use. Assuming you invest in Brother's XL
capacity cartridges that offer more ink for less up front, the costs add
up to 2.4 cents per page of color ink and 4.1 cents for a page of black
ink.
That's less than the same XL ink costs of the Epson
XP-420 (3.5 cents for color, 5 cents for black), so you'll save money if
you do end up printing a lot of color photos and business handouts,
even if you don't get a memory card reader to help you do so.
Performance
The MFC-J460DW registered high marks in CNET's speed tests, well
within the acceptable range for a sub-$100 inkjet printer. It flew
through our standard 10-page black text sample document at a consistent
rate of 9.78 pages per minute, double the speed of the equally-priced HP Officejet 4630 all-in-one.
The Brother's print engine also bested the competition in the
full-color graphics page tester with an average speed of 3.93 pages per
minute. For comparison, the Epson XP-420 couldn't even churn out a
single page in the same test, with only .42 pages printed per minute. If
speed is a priority for your business, the Brother MFC-J460DW deserves
your dollar.
Photo quality is also above average for what I
expect out of a $100 printer. The separate ink tanks provide an extra
level of detail that competing printers with a single tri-color tank
can't offer, and there's a noticeable difference in the smoothness of
color transitions, especially in facial tones and multicolor portraits.
The software driver lets you cycle through different print qualities
to conserve remaining inks, and you'll be more than satisfied with the
printer's color reproduction -- the darker spots of our sample image are
dense and unmarred by bleeding colors. Bright colors pop as they
should, and the text is well-formed all the way down to smaller font
sizes.
Conclusion
Business environments require a
versatile printer that offers cost-saving features and has the potential
to increase productivity, and the Brother MFC-J470DW delivers strong
results on both fronts. You get all the tools you need to get creative
with print projects without paying too much of a premium on ink
cartridge refills. In addition, the ability to use your mobile devices
to view and send jobs to the printer through a host of cloud-based
applications will keep this printer relevant in your office for years to
come.
Samsung Gear Fit2 Is Half Fitness Tracker, Half Smartwatch
When it comes to your
wrist, there are two kinds of wearable gadgets besides a wristwatch. You
can go with a fitness tracker, an efficient little wristband that may
or may not have a display. Or you can drop serious coin on a smartwatch.
Once in a while, a device splits the difference. The Samsung Gear Fit and Microsoft Band 2, both
billed as fitness bands, combine the roomy touchscreens of a smartwatch
with the battery life and affordability of a fitness band. The Gear
Fit2 blurs the line further, providing notifications from your phone and
canned one-tap responses to messages. It also sports more onboard
instrumentation than rudimentary fitness trackers. And despite the added
firepower, Samsung says it’s good for as long as four days on a charge.
The advantages start with the built-in GPS, which lets you view
progress on a map without tethering the tracker to your phone. It’s got
an impressive 4GB of storage and the ability to listen to music through
Bluetooth headphones. A Spotify app lets you stream tunes, but you’ll
need to use a Wi-Fi connection or tether the band to your phone.
Samsung says the Gear Fit2 riffs on the Tizen operating system
powering its Gear smartwatches. The UI has been rejiggered to a vertical
orientation on the 1.5-inch AMOLED waterproof (IP68-rated) touchscreen,
which the company says is more natural when you’re looking down at your
wrist. The extra screen real estate provides a map interface,
visualizations for your activity targets, and leaderboards that let you
challenge friends to feats of crushing it. Inside you’ll find a
heart-rate sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, and a dual-core
1GHz processor.
The device auto-tracks the usual categories like steps, floors,
calories, and sleep, and it’s purportedly even smart enough to recognize
when you’re doing squats, riding a bike, using a rowing machine, or
doing hot yoga and logs those stats accordingly. A redesigned band—it’s
curvier underneath—available in large or small should help provide a
snugger fit for any size wrist.
Preorders for the Gear Fit2 start June 3 for $180, and it ships a week later.
If there’s a drone that can
claim ownership of consumer airspace, it’s DJI’s Phantom. The company’s
white, 4K-camera-toting quadcopter is the Prius of the skies; hip,
accessible, and ubiquitous.
Chat with a drone
pilot at your local park, there’s a good chance they’re flying a
Phantom. But if you chat with a pilot who’s flying DJI’s latest
offering, the Phantom 4 ($1,399), he might even be able to have an entire conversation with you while the drone flies itself.
This latest iteration of the Phantom drone contains enhancements in
two key areas: the automated flight control, and the collision avoidance
system. It’s not yet a fully autonomous drone that you can command to
do your bidding with a flick of a finger, but it seems things are headed
there, because this bird is remarkably easy to fly, and the on-board
sensors keep it from zipping head-on into a tree.
The Phantom 4 looks similar to the Phantom 3,
though the props have changed. Each of the four motors now sit outside
the fairings over the propeller arms, which makes the Phantom 4 look a
bit sleeker and less bulky. Also, there are no prop guards. The new
object avoidance system gets messed up if you snap the guards on (you
also have to buy the guards, $19 for a 4-pack). I occasionally missed
having the guards there, especially when flying indoors around people.
But you shouldn’t do that anyway, right?
You’ll Miss Me
The most important enhancement in the Phantom 4, however, is the new
object detection and avoidance feature. The pitch is that the Phantom 4
will stop you from flying your drone into trees, and will somehow
miraculously make it possible for anyone to fly no matter what their
skill level. The truth is more prosaic. The obstacle detection features
only work when you’re flying forward. It relies on forward-facing
cameras that can recognize large objects. Those cameras cannot warn you
about obstacles when you’re flying in any other direction. Want to hit a
tree? Just back up. Or go left. Or right. Or slightly off center.
I flew it directly toward a volunteer subject. It stopped about four feet in front of him and refused to get closer.
That’s not to say the collision avoidance system isn’t useful. It is,
but it isn’t enough for you stop worrying about flying into things. It
works best on large dark objects. I flew it directly toward a volunteer
subject. It stopped about four feet in front of him and refused to get
closer. It was however happy to fly straight into his raised arms, which
where not sufficiently big enough to detect. It was also happy to fly
into bushes—again, the bushes were likely not dense enough to trigger an
override.
The Phantom 4 will also not detect what might be a drone’s
greatest enemy: power lines.
Still this is the first iteration of DJI’s object detection system,
and it’s not hard to imagine future releases adding more cameras around
the body of the Phantom to make detection possible on all sides. It will
also be interesting to see what sort of software upgrades DJI might
offer to make the system stronger.
Automatic for the People
The collision detection is at its best when combined with what might
be the best new feature in the Phantom 4, TapFly. This feature allows
you to use your touchscreen device to simply tap any point in the drone
camera’s field of view and have the Phantom fly toward it. There’s a
horizon line you can use to control the altitude of your automated
flight, and the collision avoidance system will keep the copter away
from most solid objects.
I used TapFly to navigate gaps between trees that I would never have
attempted on my own. That alone makes the Phantom 4 worth the upgrade.
Again, it’s also not hard to see how this capability might improve in
future releases. For example, DJI could add a way to slow down and speed
up the drone at specific points in the flight path.
The other new automated flight control system is an object tracker,
which works well for tracking people in relatively open settings. The
idea here is that you can train the drone’s camera on a subject like a
cyclist or a runner, then have the drone follow them, flying above and
behind them as it captures a smooth, gliding shot. It’s not perfect. The
software sometimes gets confused if someone of similar appearance
crosses paths with your subject. But barring shooting in crowds, this
works well—well enough to be moderately creepy and stalkerish,
especially if the Phantom is at shooting an unknowing subject from max
range, one half mile straight up. (I didn’t test this because it would
be against FAA regulations.)
Luckily for the paranoid, while the Phantom’s camera has been
improved, it still probably couldn’t pick out individuals from that
altitude. (And don’t worry, the police have a drone for that.) The
Phantom 4’s camera improvements are subtle, but when looking at footage
from a Phantom 3 next to footage from the 4, you’ll notice the latter
has considerably less chromatic aberration, less noise, and slightly
less distortion.
Fire in the Sky
The new sport mode is one of the highlights of the Phantom 4. The
Phantom line was already the nimblest of the half dozen drones I’ve
tested, but the sport mode puts it in a class all its own. With a top
speed of 45 miles an hour, an ascent rate of 20 feet per second, and the
ability to turn so fast the craft nearly flips over, sport mode is not
necessarily the best way to shoot incredible video. In fact, at top
speed the props will be in your shot, and there will be some vibration
in the video you shoot. But it sure is fun to fly that fast. Shooting
forward while flying backward looks good well above normal mode speeds
(though again, not at 45 mph), which will enable professional filmmakers
to better track high speed sequences like chase scenes or races.
With a top speed of 45 miles an hour, an ascent rate of 20 feet per
second, and the ability to turn so fast the craft nearly flips over,
sport mode is not necessarily the best way to shoot incredible video.
Sport mode does come with a price: the battery drains much more quickly.
Also, you can’t use any of the automated flight controls or collision
avoidance features. Sport mode is very clearly aimed at experienced
pilots. If you happen to be one, it’s a lot of fun.
DJI claims the Phantom 4 is five times more stable than previous
models, and while I have not empirical way to test this, it sounds
correct based on my time with it. When watching footage where the
Phantom 4 was just hovering, I frequently found myself thinking I had
accidentally paused playback because the video shot did not change or
shake at all. Even in moderate wind, the Phantom 4 managed to hold its
position with hardly a waver.
Much of that stability comes from the Phantom 4 expanded array of
downward cameras and sonar sensors. The Phantom 4 has double the number
of downward facing cameras compared to the Phantom 3. This comes in
handy indoors, which is one place the Phantom 4 is nothing short of
incredible. Flying a drone indoors is a nerve-racking experience, even
with the relatively stable Phantom 3. The Phantom 4, however, maintained
its increased stability even inside when I flew it around an unused ice
hockey rink. It was actually enjoyable to fly inside, though the lack
of prop guards made me reluctant to get it too close to the walls.
The Phantom 4 is DJI’s best Phantom offering yet. While the automated
flight features might not entirely live up to the hype, they do make
possible things that would have previously been very difficult or even
impossible. They also pave the way for even better automation in future
releases.
he new Surface Pro 4 is Microsoft taking a victory lap -- and a well-deserved one at that.
After three generations of pitching "a tablet
that can replace your laptop" -- with mixed success -- the formula has
finally clicked. The 2015 version of Microsoft's tablet adds the latest
Intel processors, a slightly larger screen (perfectly sized at 12.3
inches with a just-right 3:2 aspect ratio), and a handful of hardware
and software tweaks, but doesn't radically change the DNA of its
predecessor, 2014's excellent Surface Pro 3
. That's a wise move, because at this point, the Surface Pro line is
less about pitching the very concept of the tablet PC with a detachable
keyboard to wary shoppers, and more about seeing how far it can go in
refining the finished product.
Looking at the finely polished Pro 4, it's worth remembering the humble beginnings of the Surface line
. Debuting in 2012, Microsoft's line of tablets were, if not outright
mocked, then damned by faint praise at best: an overreach by a
software-and-services company into the rough-and-tumble world of
computer hardware; a Hail Mary response to the megasuccess of Apple's iPad
the previous year. Any design innovations -- the snap-on keyboard, the
fold-out kickstand -- felt overwhelmed by quirks and compromises. Not
the least of which was the choice of operating system: either the
much-maligned Windows 8, or the the severely limited (and now deservedly
extinct) Windows RT . In those early days, the Surface was looking less like an Xbox-style home run for Microsoft, and more a Zune -like fiasco.
But that's all ancient history -- call it the Ballmerzoic Era. The
2014 Surface Pro 3 became what Microsoft always hoped it would be: the
flagship device for touch computing on Windows, the go-to alternative
for those who wanted both a tablet and a laptop without feeling
shortchanged on either front. The Surface Pro 4 refines the hardware
formula even further, and with Windows 10
on board rather than Windows 8, the platform's final big compromise
evaporates too. Now, the Surface line is the design leader: Apple's
upcoming iPad Pro and Google's Pixel C
tablets are the ones aping Microsoft's design, adding snap-on keyboards
and ramping up the multitasking chops of their touch-first operating
systems.
But, as a very refined product, the Surface Pro 4 is
not inexpensive. The wide variety of configuration options and
accessories mean that its starting price of $899, £749 or AU$1,349 is
not very realistic. For that entry price, you get a Surface Pro tablet
with an Intel Core M3 CPU, 128GB of solid state storage and 4GB of RAM,
plus a touchscreen stylus that magnetically attaches to the side of the
screen.
From the handful of systems we've tested with earlier
Core M processors from Intel, it's just not what you're looking for from
a full-time, all-day, everyday computer. The latest versions may be
better, but we have yet to benchmark them in a consumer laptop or
tablet. A more suitable choice for most will be the mainstream Intel
Core i5. Microsoft has updated the processors across the board in the
Surface Pro 4 line to Intel's still-new sixth-generation models,
sometimes referred to by the codename Skylake, and a configuration with a
Core i5 jumps to $999. Double the storage to 256GB and the RAM to 8GB,
and you're at $1,299 (and that is the specific configuration tested
here). You could spend more than $2,000 for an even faster Core i7
processor and bigger hard drive.
But no matter how much you spend on a Surface Pro 4, when you open
the box and set it up, there will be one important missing ingredient.
The Type Cover, a slim keyboard and screen protector in one, is still
sold separately, no matter which Surface Pro 4 configuration you buy.
From the earliest days of the Surface, that keyboard cover has rightly
been called out as an impressive engineering feat, and the latest
version even improves on that. It now features widely spaced
island-style keys (like those found on practically every laptop), and a
larger touchpad with a better touch surface.
Like the previous
Type Covers, it connects via a magnetic hinge along the bottom of the
tablet, and folds shut over the cover for easy transport. Also like
previous Type Covers, it costs an extra $129, £109 or AU$199. We rarely
see a Surface in Microsoft's advertising materials or press previews
without the keyboard cover attached, but for some reason, the company
still won't pack the most noteworthy part of the Surface ecosystem into
the box. For such a premium product, it's an omission that continues to
mystify.
At least the touchscreen stylus -- improved over last
year's version, and magnetically attachable to the tablet's edge -- is
included by default. Likewise, the display is a tad larger (12.3 inches
diagonally versus 12), without expanding the overall size of the
tablet.
The one design issue that Microsoft hasn't changed with the Surface
Pro 4 is its "lapability" problem. When the keyboard is attached, its
rear kickstand works well on a tabletop -- but typing on your lap or in a
crowded airline seat remains a logistical challenge. Instead, Microsoft
has addressed this problem with a whole new sister product, the Surface Book
. Billed as the "ultimate laptop," it takes some of the Surface Pro's
design cues (detachable screen, impressive keyboard) and folds them into
a more traditional notebook-style product with a strong hinge that
keeps it from tipping back. The Surface Book is cool, and available in
even more powerful configurations -- but it lacks the Pro 4's lighter
weight and better portability.
Just as the Surface Pro is a full-time tablet and part-time laptop,
the Surface Book is a full-time laptop and part-time tablet, and may be
what someone looking for a combination of laptop and tablet features is
really looking for. Detached from their respective keyboards, the two
screens are difficult to distinguish at even a few feet away, and it
makes one wonder if the next generation of these products won't be a
single high-performance tablet that combines with your choice of a
clamshell laptop base or a portable keyboard cover. Now, that would be
something that could truly be a no-compromise tablet and laptop at the
same time.
Microsoft Surface Pro 4
Price as reviewed
$1,299, £1,079, AU$1,999
Display size/resolution
12.3-inch 2,736x1,824-pixel touchscreen display
CPU
2.4GHz Intel Core i5-6300U
Memory (RAM)
8GB
Graphics
128MB Intel HD Graphics 520
Storage
256GB SSD
Networking
802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
Operating system
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
Design and features
The Surface tablet line set
out its basic design rules with the very first generation of products
and has largely stuck to its guns since. What we've seen, instead of
wholesale reimagining, is a steady march of improvements to the display
and chassis, helping the product feel just a bit more premium with every
generation.
The earliest Surface Pro models were 13mm thick,
while last year's Surface Pro 3 shaved that down to 9.1mm. This year,
we're down to 8.4mm, despite increasing the size of the screen. Both the
Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4 are 1.7 pounds (771 grams) by
themselves, or 2.5 pounds (1.13 kg) with their keyboard cover and stylus
pens attached.
One of the biggest improvements to last year's Surface Pro carries
over here: the highly adjustable kickstand, which can be adjusted to
nearly any angle between 22 and 150 degrees. The kickstand, which runs
the entire width of the system, is stiff enough that it will stay where
you put it, and hardly moves at all, even when using your fingers or the
pen on the touchscreen.
Missing from the black bezel
surrounding the screen this time around is the capacitive Windows logo
touch button. In previous Surface models, this moved around from the
long edge to the short edge of the system, but always served the same
purpose: to take you back to the Windows 8 tile interface. As we're now
operating in the Windows 10 world, having a physical home button isn't
necessary, although the Windows 10 "tablet mode" is still very similar
to what Window 8 looked like.
The pen, almost perfected
Also missing is the awkward plastic loop that used to tether the
included stylus (Microsoft calls it a pen) to the keyboard cover. The
new pen accessory is a little larger than the previous model, and has a
flat edge along one side. This allows it to securely connect to the left
or right edge of the tablet via a fairly strong magnetic connection.
While it may seem dodgy if you plan on running around all day with your
tablet, inserting and removing it from a backpack or shoulder bag, I
found that the pen remained securely attached, even in my bag --
although I'd recommend doing frequent spot-checks to make sure it hasn't
popped off.
Clicking the eraser-like button on the back of the pen automatically
brings up OneNote, Microsoft's preferred app for pen input. If you have
all your Microsoft cloud services properly setup, your OneNote files
can sync to other devices such as your phone or tablet (with
cross-platform support on Android and iOS devices) or laptop (Windows or
Mac).
I also used the pen with a variety of other apps,
including the built-in Fresh Paint, for drawing and sketching, and the
New York Times crossword puzzle app, which took pen input and converted
it to printed characters. You can also tap the pen on most text fields,
even in a Web browser, and a pop-up box will take handwritten input and
convert it to text for Web searches, filling in forms or composing
email.
Microsoft says the new pen offers reduced latency, and 1,024
pressure levels. It's excellent overall, and an improvement over last
year's version. Aftermarket swappable tips for the pen should appeal to
artists looking for a specific feel and size.
But don't take my word for it. We were able to coax comic book writer and artist Dan Parent,
best known for his work on "Archie" comics, to test drive both the
Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book. As an illustrator who works both on
paper and in programs such as Photoshop, he was impressed by the feel of
the Surface Pen and especially its eraser. You can see more of his
reactions and a live drawing demo in our video.
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