Microsoft Surface tablets

Better off using something like the new Sky Livescribe smartpen.

Tommy McClain

 

How is that comparable to being able to write on the screen and have it show up where you're writing? Who wants paper at all these days (not me)?

Furthermore just judging by the feature list (audio? uploading to cloud? :S) I have severe doubts that it would be comparable in accuracy, pressure sensitivity, etc. to a wacom.

 

DisplayMate did a new shootout using the Surface RT, which can be found here:
http://www.displaymate.com/Surface_RT_ShootOut_1.htm

This quote summarizes pretty nicely:
"The display on the Microsoft Surface RT outperforms all of the standard resolution full size 10 inch Tablets that we have tested in our Display Shoot-Out series. The Lab tests and measurements documented in the Shoot-Out Comparison Table below indicate that Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to display performance for the Surface RT. In particular, on-screen text is significantly sharper, it has a better factory display calibration, and also significantly lower screen Reflectance than the iPad 2 and all full size 1280x800 Android Tablets. But it is not as sharp as the iPad 3 or 4, nor does it have their large full Color Gamut."

A few quotes:
"The Surface RT uses Sub-Pixel Rendering (called ClearType in Microsoft’s implementation) that in our tests significantly improves the visual sharpness of text over standard Pixel Rendering that is used in most mobile displays. In our comparison tests, text on the Surface RT was significantly sharper than on the iPad 2 and all 1280x800 10 inch Android Tablets, but it wasn’t as sharp as the iPad 3."

"Our Lab measurements found the Surface RT to have the lowest Screen Reflectance of any Tablet in our Display Shoot-Out article series. The Surface RT also has the highest Contrast Rating for High Ambient Light for Tablets..."

"The Surface RT has a smaller 57 percent Color Gamut, which is disappointing in an otherwise excellent set of display performance specifications. While that‘s comparable to most existing LCDs in Tablets and Smartphones, many mobile displays are now coming with larger Color Gamuts from 80 to 100 percent, which significantly improves color saturation, accuracy, and vividness."


It's a shame that the color gamut is so narrow, although the statement from the article that it's probably a power efficiency tradeoff makes some degree of sense. It'll be interesting to see if the Pro has a wider color gamut given that weight is less of a consideration.

One interesting point is buried in the tables near the end. One category where Surface outperformed the iPad 3 was "Screen readability in bright light." This is one of the big measures that MS was talking about in terms of subjective performance under "real world conditions." The degree to which you use a tablet either outside or near uncovered windows on a sunny day probably affects the degree to which this is important to you.

 

And also the degree of real world difference between the subjective scorings of "B+" for the ipad3 and "A-" for the surface as per the table.

 

and also why is it judging it against the ipad 2 & andriod devices for a couple of years ago, why arent they judging it against like I dont know the (also available) ipad4 or nexus 10

 

It was compared to the iPad3, which has basically the same screen as the iPad4. As for other devices, the article specifically said that it was sticking primarily to other similar resolution displays, and that they will compare the Surface Pro to high-res tablets when it comes out.

 

We still haven't hear any sales figures for that product, it can only mean one thing...
Overall now that the info have sunk in me, I find some shortcoming for such an high end piece of kit bewildering (in order):
No 3/4G connectivity 8O
Screen resolution (no matter the tests they make wrt that, the pr disaster was written on the wall).
The SoC was on the verge of being out dated on release, ended up being out dated.

As somebody said, I don't know who green lighted that but he must be gone by now.

EDIT
I think that MfA hit the nail on the head when he stated they should have gone with Intel and ship Win8 (instead of RT). Qualcomm capitalization is now higher than Intel (even though I think it a lot of crap and I doubt the market capability to allocate capital of late, not that Qualcomm is not a great company but still). It might have been close to Intel for quiet a while, Intel had intensive to make them a deal, possibly to accelerate some of its roadmap.

 

I played with an ASUS Win8 RT tablet in Best Buy. My initial impression is that it has a really nice screen and seems well built overall, but it was kind of slow for just Internet browsing and media stuff. I think this tablet had a Tegra 3 in it.

Anyway, I'm still interested in the tablet concept, but I think I'll wait until they've got more horsepower under the hood.

 

Well Sinofsky would have had the final say on Surface and he's gone.

There are rumors that Win 8 isn't meeting internal forecasts, though they said the first day or weekend was about 3 or 4 million.

It's going to be a tough slog. Sales of PCs were flat or down and corporations haven't been spending heavily. Plus they're usually slow to upgrade.

So it's up to consumers to buy new PCs or upgrade their old ones. As well as buy new RT and W8 tablets.

 

I played around with it a bit in Office Depot the other day while I was getting some supplies.

It seemed silky smooth to me. The only disappointing thing was application launch times in comparison to the iPad 3. Browsing, to me, was smoother, and more importantly, less of a bother. Site's with Flash just work. As much as I hate Flash, I hate having sites that use Flash not working even more. Other than that the experience seemed pretty comparable.

In the bright lights of Office Depot, the screen looked quite nice.

It made enough of an impression on me that I'm going ot make sure I have time to put Win8 on my old Atom based slate. That should hold me over while I wait to see what the first gen Win8 slates are like. WinRT impressed me enough that I was tempted to buy the Asus WinRT slate purely for media consumption on the go.

But at the end of the day, I figured why sacrifice x86 compatibility? Assuming my Atom slate works well (reports I've seen say it works very well under Win8), I'll just hold off for a Win8 slate that meets my requirements.

Still, that Asus WinRT with 12.5 hours web/11.1 hours movie compared to the iPad 3 at 12.3/10.3 hours was pretty eye opening (http://techreport.com/review/23813/asus-vivotab-rt-convertible-tablet-reviewed/5 ). Stick it in the dock to make it like a laptop and that jumps to 21.4 hours web (!!!)/16.5 hours movie... It completely blows away anything else out there in terms of battery life. Even compared to the Asus Transformer that shares the same hardware.

Impressive. Almost impressive enough to make me buy one.

Regards,
SB

 

Its funny that the ipad mini has the lowest dpi of the new crop of tablets and no one complains there .


Ipad Mini 7.9inch 1024x768 = 163 ppi

kindle fire hd 7 inch 1280x800 = 215 ppi

Nook HD 7 inch 1440x900 = 243 ppi

Nexus 7 1280x800 = 216 ppi

10 inch tablets


Surface RT = 10.6 1366x768 = 148

Kindle Fire 8.9 1920x1200 = 254 ppi

Nook HD + 9 inch screen 1920x1280 = 256ppi

Nexus 10 2560x1600 = 299ppi

Ipad 9.7 inch 20480x1536 = 264ppi




Yet the mini is praised on all the blogs . It makes little sense to me .

 

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/the-skinny-on-the-mini-its-not-the-size-that-counts/

personally I would prefer 8" instead of 10" (much more portable) but theres no way I would consider something sub 200ppi. Plus at the price of $330 its a ripoff. I betcha it wont sell the usual apple numbers

Its like using >2 million pixels on my desktop monitor, theres no way in hell Im going back to the days of say half a million pixels, it would just be too painful to my eyes now

 

I didn't because it'd be redundant.

I played with a mini and it looks nice, but there's no way I'm going back to such low PPI. The negatives of the iPad 3 (a bit too heavy, a bit too big) don't bother me at all. But once the mini has a retina screen, it will be hard to resist. I don't expect that to be too soon: it's not that they can make such screen yet, it's that it will murder the battery life.

The HTC Droid DNA screen is extremely appealing, BTW, but a couple of hours of battery life makes it a no-go either. And I already dislike the iPhone 5 screen for being too big. Can't wait to see that kind of PPI on an i-Thing.

 

I think it will sell way more units than any other non-iDevice in existence, including Kindle Fire.

 

The mini is praised because it has pretty good screen real estate, weighs less than half of the full size iPad, and achieves this without any compromise in battery life.
If you haven't seen the incessant complaints about it not having a Retina screen, then you're very selective in your reading. It's simply that most writers see it as a possibly necessary, if unfortunate, compromise in order to achieve the weight/battery life/price point combination of the Mini.

It's pretty damn obvious that it will get a high res screen soonish. At 20nm, perhaps, taking care of the SoC part of the problem, and with another year or two of screen production aiding yields?

 

There are 1080p smartphones being launcged...the sharp own branded versionh actually quite cheap.

Of course ipad mini is not priced like a high end smartphone...and also stock availability is also a major issue for a high sales volume device like an ipad, but i really think the next iteration will be a retina display.

I just expected the A6 processor to be a part of it...

 

IGZO is suppose to cut power consumption on high dpi.

However Sharp is in a shaky position.

 

Did you just discover that Apple can go away with a lot of crap? I mean it's like Nintendo, I'm amazed they got away with the lack of a second analog stick on the 3ds and came up with that ugly add-on.
Going by your own numbers in the 10 inch, Surface is significantly below the competition in that regard while price significantly higher (though I would say that the build quality is the best available for now). And I know that the screen is actually good in plenty of other regards but that is not the point.

Anyway, the point still stands as well as the points about the SoC and the wireless connectivity.

 

Sharp haven't actually supplied Apple with retina displays as yet. Samsung has benen their main supplier, supplementen by LG. Digitimes has reported of a third possible supplier gearing up.
Sharps IGZO seems ideal for smallish mobile applications. God knows when they might be capable of reliably supplying in Apple volumes.

 

I'll take that bet, though Im doubtful if they break down the ipad numbers ala sony with vita/psp. We know already the launch has been worse saleswise than the ipad3