Microsoft Surface Pro 11 Review: Snapdragon and OLED Deliver

8.3/ 10
SCORE

Microsoft Surface Pro 11

$999 at Microsoft

Pros

• Excellent OLED display
• Very good battery life
• Class-leading NPU performance, for now
• Finally, mainstream-Intel-comparable performance
• Nice kickstand

Cons

• Mixed graphics performance
• Optional Pen and keyboard can get expensive
• Can get hot while plugged in or intense usage
• 16GB is not enough

There aren't a lot of detachable laptops running Windows left, which makes sense: The operating system is a pretty heavy burden to place on a device as low-powered, thin and light as these devices are expected to be, and the detachable keyboards tend to not be very lap friendly. But Microsoft's Surface Pro models keep plugging away year after year and have a lot of fans, despite consistently underwhelming performance -- and none more underwhelming than the company's attempts to incorporate Arm-based chips, like those from Qualcomm (Apple's M series is Arm-based as well), as an alternative to Intel and AMD's x86.

Watch this: Surface Copilot Plus PCs Live Up to the Hype (and They're Beautiful Devices, Too)

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But the Surface Pro 11's Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite finally breaks the mold, delivering surprisingly competitive performance and a lot fewer compatibility issues for mainstream use and a lot of graphic design tasks, with long battery life and the mostly well designed hardware. It also gets a long-awaited screen update to OLED, with real HDR capability beyond the "it can do the math" of the IPS screens used elsewhere. It's a far more appealing package than it's been in a while and probably worth it if you've been itching to upgrade, though you still have to pay extra for a keyboard and stylus.

Two caveats to that recommendation. One, Microsoft announced its Core Ultra models in March, but they still haven't shipped; it's possible the company's waiting for the upcoming Lunar Lake chips with vastly improved NPUs and optimizations -- Intel's inside the missing Surface Pro 10 that this model seems to have leapfrogged. And two, I haven't tested the lower-power Snapdragon X Plus, so I don't know how the entry level models compare to these and other systems.

The Surface Pro 11 starts at $1,000, without a keyboard or stylus and configured with a Snapdragon X Plus (10 core CPU), 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD and the old LCD display, which is fine but nothing stellar. Your only choice with that processor is different colors or an extra $200 for an upgrade to 512GB. (The device still has a replaceable storage compartment under the kickstand.)  

The 12-core X Elite -- the processor in our evaluation system -- starts at 512GB for $500 more. While $1,500 doesn't buy you an upgrade to 32GB, it does come with the new OLED display; $100 doubles the storage. There's only one 32GB configuration, with a 1TB SSD and which comes only in silver, that runs $2,100.

Qualcomm's finally in the fast lane

The biggest updates to the Pro are the OLED screen -- it brings P3 calibration, though the profile is still called "Vivid" -- and the Snapdragon X processor inside.

The screen is well calibrated, if your needs run to only sRGB and P3, and it has a good luminance profile in HDR as long as you don't bump the brightness up in Windows' settings; it still hits the peak brightness of about 890 nits in a 10% window and roughly 650 nits in full screen, plus close to 575 nits in standard mode. Its white point changes as you lower screen brightness, which may prove an issue for color critical work, but at its best it hovers in the vicinity of 6500K.

You can see the fine grid of the sensor layer for the stylus in white areas, which makes light gray areas look dithered, but it's a necessary evil, and it eventually stopped bothering me.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform proves to have overcome most of its less than exemplary history, with performance comparable to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and an Apple M3. The Surface Pro's battery life is just under 13 hours streaming video, as promised, and I've yet to get a low-power warning, despite working a lot in Adobe Fresco, which sets it to a higher performance setting (though I do check the level and preemptively plug in when my battery-level-anxiety crops up).  Everyday battery performance is still good, running for more than 5 hours playing games and using Fresco in addition to lightweight web surfing and other productivity tasks, all on the best performance setting.

It's notable that performance doesn't take a big hit on battery like every Intel, and to a lesser extent AMD, system I've tested does, and you can still get better performance out of it by switching to the Best performance setting from the default Recommended.

Things get iffier when it comes to graphics and gaming. Using the Vulkan programming interface, it's really fast (the Wild Life Extreme Unlimited test). That makes sense because it's been in use for a long time and is the most cross-platform compatible. It's not as good at DirectX, at least the most recent DX12, which is Microsoft's Windows and Xbox API. 

That doesn't mean you can't play DX12 games, but many look for a discrete GPU or a decent amount of dedicated video memory. Qualcomm's Adreno GPU has only shared memory. 16GB of memory isn't a lot when it needs to be shared (and even when I just had a lot of browser tabs open, 11GB would already be in use).

I played Hades 2 on the Pro, which is still in Early Access (so not optimized) and it plays as well on my Steam Deck as on the Pro, albeit not as well as on a system with a GPU. It did get relatively hot on the metal back, which didn't matter while it was upright using the kickstand but jolted me when I picked it up to put it away.

Basically, this isn't intended for AAA gaming. But its Wi-Fi antenna placement and Wi-Fi 7 support gave me the best wireless throughput I've seen with my Wi-Fi 6E router -- over 550Mbps on a 400Mbps plan -- so cloud gaming is a good option.

The NPU also blew the Core Ultra away (I haven't run these tests on AMD's Ryzen 8000 series yet) and some mobile GPUs on integer math, which is what Windows Copilot Plus programming interface uses for Windows Studio Effects (meh background removal and effects, plus decent mic audio noise removal) and some locally processed AI, like CoCreator in Paint.

There's a big "but," though. AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series, which we'll see in laptops next month, and Intel's Lunar Lake (rumored to be Core Ultra 200 series), coming in the fall, are poised to beat Qualcomm's performance already, and we don't know how the Intel will change the equation for the Surface Pro's current appeal.

The other question is compatibility, which was one of the big complaints about earlier Arm-based chips. Everything I ran appeared to run properly, including Adobe Fresco, which isn't on Adobe's "compatibility coming soon!" list, OBS Studio for recording, VLC for video playback, the Windows' Disney Plus app and more. I say "appeared" to run properly, because there was some crashing and Bluetooth connection fails that I couldn't diagnose, and I suspect system memory was the real culprit.

Accessories optional

If you want the new Flex keyboard with the Slim Pen, it's another $450, which is a lot of money. You can use the Pro with a Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth stylus, and there are cheaper options from Microsoft, but you lose the security of the place to garage and charge the Slim Pen 2. There are magnets on the side and bottom of the Pro, but they're not strong enough. The new Flex keyboard has been reinforced so you can use the Pro like a typical clamshell laptop on your lap, but you still need to use the kickstand to keep it upright and you might need some long femurs for that. 

All of Microsoft's keyboards have small touchpads that are a different aspect ratio than the screen, which you can get used to. I'm not a big fan of the Slim Pens; turning off the haptic feedback makes it feel less like nails on a blackboard and the nib feels good if you like more friction than those like the slippery Apple Pencil, but I find its flat shape gets tiring to hold. And the button on top rattles constantly, which gets on my nerves.

The Flex keyboard now has a small battery and Bluetooth receiver in it, so you can use it with the Pro undocked, which is good; I had a meh experience with the handwriting recognition while trying to use it for text entry. For instance, every time I write "lgrunin," it changes the "l" to a comma, no matter how much the "l" towers above the rest.

The design hasn't changed much since the Surface Pro 9. It still has just two USB-4 ports, which can be used for charging, as well as the proprietary Surface Connector that refuses to go away. Its flip-out kickstand remains one of its highlights, lets you prop the tablet up at almost any angle. 

Microsoft eliminated tablet-specific interface controls, and navigating it without the Pen and keyboard is fiddly, especially for those of us to at least occasionally set the screen at full resolution rather than scaled by the default 200%.

The Surface Pro 11 impressed me more than any of the earlier models, and if you're willing to take a little bit of risk with compatibility -- Microsoft's got a lot of software partners lined up to deliver native versions of major applications, but a promise isn't a guarantee -- and that you won't care if a potentially better performing model comes out in a month or two, I recommend it for upgraders. And because I haven't tested the lower-power Snapdragon X Plus, I can't extrapolate how the performance compares for the cheaper models. Or you can wait a few months and know for sure.

Performance test results