Surface Pro 12-inch review: heart warmer
Tom Warren is a senior editor and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
I have always had a soft spot for the Surface Pro X. It was the thinner, lighter, and fanless Surface tablet that I had always wanted Microsoft to make, but when it came out nearly six years ago, Windows wasn't ready to handle the Arm chip inside — and vice versa. Sluggish performance and app compatibility issues kept the Surface Pro X from living up to its beautiful design. It was a heartbreaker.
Microsoft is once again trying to perfect the Surface Pro design with a $799 12-inch version of its tablet and laptop hybrid that ditches the fan and uses Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X Plus chip. This time around, it's warming my heart instead of breaking it, thanks to a redesign of the entire tablet and the performance and battery life to match.
The result of the overhaul is a tablet that combines some of the best design elements you'll find on an iPad or Samsung's tablets, with the versatility of Windows. While the competition has been trying to copy the Surface Pro for years, Microsoft has now borrowed from the best tablets to improve its own laptop and tablet hybrid even further.
Last year's Surface Pro 11 (now the Surface Pro 13-inch) had the same basic design Microsoft had been using since the Surface Pro 8 in 2021, with an airflow vent wrapped around the top half of the chassis that your fingers would tend to find if you were using it as a tablet. The most obvious design change to the 12-inch Surface Pro, other than its smaller display, is that it doesn't have those vents. It's sealed off and rounded in a way that an iPad is, so it feels a lot softer to hold.
I love this new design. The lack of a fan has allowed Microsoft to push ahead with this change, and it's one that I really hope sticks for all future models because I never want to use a Surface Pro with a fan ever again.
While the kickstand is largely unchanged, this new rounded design also enables some big changes to how the stylus and keyboard work on the 12-inch Surface Pro. Microsoft has moved the stylus storage and charging to the top rear of this smaller Surface Pro, much like Samsung's Galaxy Tab devices. It's more convenient than having to dig into the keyboard and fiddle to get the Surface Pen out, and Microsoft has managed to use strong enough magnets that the stylus never once dropped inside my bag over the past few weeks.
However, that does mean that if you're in tablet mode but not actively using the pen, it's often in the way. The keyboard cover won't sit flush with the back of the Surface if you fold it back while the pen is attached; there's a gap at the top where it rests against the pen, and it feels a bit wobbly. And if you use the Surface Pro as a pure tablet, but don't use the stylus, then you'll probably end up resting your fingers on it or shaking the slightly loose button. It's not a big deal, especially when you consider that the Surface Pro ships without a keyboard ($149) or stylus ($129), and you have to purchase them separately or in a $249 bundle. Most people probably won't bother with the stylus, but if you do, that's something to be aware of.
Repositioning the stylus has allowed Microsoft to make some significant changes to the keyboard on the 12-inch Surface Pro. While it still magnetically clicks into place on the bottom edge of the tablet, it now lays perfectly flat. The keyboards of previous models had a second magnetic attachment point at the bottom of the front bezel, optionally giving the keyboard a slight angle. Without it, the keyboard feels a lot sturdier.
Previous Surface Pro keyboards also had a lot of flex to them, which always put me off using the Surface Pro on work trips where I'd be writing thousands of words for stories. The new keyboard has no flex whatsoever. Even on my lap, it feels sturdier for typing, though the kickstand prevents you from having it far back on your legs as you would a regular laptop, and I quickly got used to the slightly smaller size. The other big change is that it's no longer lined with alcantara fabric on the palm rests. The rear cover still has alcantara, but Microsoft is now using a plastic for the palm rests instead of the fabric that could easily get dirty. I think I still prefer the softer touch of the alcantara palm rests, though.
You can't use the keyboard wirelessly like you could with the 13-inch Flex keyboard, and Microsoft has also ditched the haptic touchpad. I never used the wireless option, but the lack of haptics really makes the touchpad feel a lot more bland, and it's something I've missed a lot over the past few weeks.
One thing I haven't missed is the larger OLED display found on the 13-inch model. I really hate the grainy effect that the OLED has, especially around black text on a white background. On the 12-inch model, Microsoft is using a regular 3:2 PixelSense LCD display, and while it's a slightly lower resolution and a 90Hz panel instead of 120Hz, I far prefer it for reading text. I do wish the bezels were a lot slimmer, but Microsoft has at least made them the same size all around the 12-inch display, so they feel a little less distracting than on the 13-inch model.
In keeping with Microsoft borrowing ideas from other tablets, the company has repositioned the rear camera on the 12-inch Surface Pro so it's in the corner like on Samsung's tablets or Apple's iPads. I still wouldn't be caught dead taking photos using a tablet, but it makes more sense like this, rather than centered on the long edge, so you can at least hold the Surface Pro vertically if you really want to take photos or videos.
The front-facing 1080p camera isn't ultrawide this time around, so it doesn't have the unflattering fish-eye effect and framing found on the 13-inch Surface Pro. I've used it for plenty of calls, and while I'm still not a fan of the way the eye contact feature changes the shape of my eyes, the other Windows Studio Effects are super useful for improving your lighting or blurring out the background automatically.
Inside the 12-inch, Microsoft is using Qualcomm's eight-core Snapdragon X Plus chip. It's an Arm-based processor, so that means apps will run emulated unless a developer has natively compiled their app for Arm64. That used to be a big issue with the Surface Pro X in 2019, but a lot has changed over the past 12 months, let alone six years.
Most of the apps I use on a daily basis are now native Arm64. The big exceptions for me include Discord and Premiere Pro. While Discord has been busy adding currencies for ads instead of releasing a native Arm version of its app, that might be about to change. I've been using an early Arm-native development build of Discord recently, and it totally solves all of the sluggish performance issues.
The same can't be said for Premiere Pro, though. While Adobe has created an Arm64 version of Photoshop, you still have to install the Intel-based version of Premiere Pro. It's not totally unusable, but I wouldn't recommend any Arm-based machines for Premiere Pro usage until Adobe finally addresses this.
The Snapdragon X Plus chip inside the 12-inch Surface Pro has two fewer cores than the base LCD 13-inch model, and four cores less than the 12-core OLED variant. I've been using a 10-core Surface Laptop regularly over the past year, and this Surface Pro hasn't felt slower at all.
As this is a Copilot Plus PC, Microsoft also uses the neural processing unit (NPU) built into Qualcomm's chip to enable a bunch of AI-powered features in Windows. The controversial Recall feature is now available, which takes snapshots of mostly everything you do on the Surface Pro to create a scrollable timeline. I've found Recall to be creepy, clever, and compelling, but it's not a big reason to buy a Copilot Plus PC. I've loved using the improved AI-powered Windows Search though, which lets me search for text inside files or photos, and find documents a lot more quickly.
If you're like me and most of your work is in the browser or involves apps that are native Arm64, then the Surface Pro 12-inch feels like the performance of a laptop squeezed into a tablet. I've found that I get around nine hours of battery life with mixed usage of the browser, apps like Photoshop and Slack, and maybe the odd Teams call here or there.
I've never really worried about charging the Surface Pro 12-inch, and on some days I even used it for an eight-hour working day and still had 30 percent battery remaining. I'd wake up the next day and it still had that 30 percent, or close to it, ready for the day ahead. Microsoft has also ditched its magnetic Surface Connect charging cable, but there are two USB-C ports that can be used to charge up the Surface Pro. I only use USB-C to charge my devices, so I don't think I'll miss the Surface Connect port other than the neat way it attaches on the 13-inch model.
While the Surface Pro is great at resuming instantly and not draining battery life in your bag or overnight, if you don't use it for a couple of days over a weekend then you'll have to wait 30 seconds or so for it to be ready to use on a Monday morning. This isn't a huge issue, but the iPad never goes into a deep sleep mode like this, and on a couple of occasions I've resumed the Surface Pro on a Monday and the Windows Hello camera has failed to work. I kept getting a 'something went wrong' message, but rebooting the device brought it back to life again.
I've used this Surface Pro on a train, on my sofa, on a desk, and in pubs and cafes over the past few weeks. I still find that I have to adjust my posture or body to use the Surface Pro in my lap because of the kickstand, but it almost feels worth this slight compromise for the versatility of using a small PC on the go.
This Surface Pro redesign also presents some of the best bits of rival tablets into a piece of hardware that feels a lot more tablet-like than Microsoft has ever created. I've been using this Surface Pro in tablet mode more often as a result, simply because of the smaller size and the ease of switching between laptop and tablet modes. The operating system and apps still feel like more of a laptop, though. Microsoft also sells the Surface Pro without a keyboard, as if it's a pure tablet, but as always, you really need to purchase that $150 keyboard to unlock the best experience.
That pushes the pricing up to $950, which is more than you'd pay for a 13-inch Surface Laptop, and close to the $999 launch price of the Surface Laptop 7. While the Surface pricing situation seems more complicated than ever, I love small computers, and the 12-inch Surface Pro has this allure to it that makes me want to keep picking it up for the day.
I'd still like to see Microsoft improve the tablet experience in Windows 11 with a mode that's more like what existed in Windows 8. But even without those improvements, the 12-inch Surface Pro is as close as Microsoft has ever gotten to fulfilling my dream of a lightweight PC you can throw under your arm and carry around all day without worrying about battery life. It's still not perfect, but it's not the heartbreaker the Surface Pro X once was.
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
2 High-Yield Healthcare Dividend Stocks to Buy Hand Over Fist in June
The average healthcare stock has a yield of just 1.7%. Medtronic's dividend yield is 3.3%. Alexandria Real Estate Equities' yield is 7.4%. 10 stocks we like better than Medtronic › The healthcare sector isn't exactly known for offering huge yields, with Health Care Select Sector SPDR (NYSEMKT: XLV) offering a yield of just 1.7%. If dividend investors take some time to dig into the sector, however, they can do much better. For example, Medtronic (NYSE: MDT) has a 3.3% yield today, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE) is offering a yield of 7.4%. Here's what you need to know about each of these high-yield healthcare stocks. Medtronic makes medical devices. It is one of the largest competitors in the space, making products across the cardiovascular, neuroscience, medical surgical, and diabetes categories. It has a leading position in each of the areas in which it operates, and it operates on a global scale. That said, the last few years haven't been the best ones for the company. Innovation, which is highly important in the healthcare space, can be lumpy. And given Medtronic's size, the business has become a little cumbersome. Growth has stalled out, and profitability has come under pressure. Investors have focused on the negatives pushing the shares lower and the dividend yield up toward the high end of Medtronic's historical yield range. If you are a dividend investor that thinks in decades and not days, however, this is likely to be an investment opportunity. The company's innovation pipeline is starting to turn into new-product introductions. As new products gain traction, financial performance is likely to improve. And management has been working to streamline the business with cost cuts and a move to refocus on its most profitable operations. To that end, the company is set to spin off its lower-margin diabetes division in 2026. The move is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings, and the dividend policy isn't expected to change. All in, Medtronic is doing what it needs to do to get back on the growth path. And that should support continued dividend increases; the medical device maker only has two years to go before it hits Dividend King status (50+ years of annual dividend increases). June could be an opportune time to buy the stock hand over fist. Alexandria is a real estate investment trust (REIT), which seems pretty far away from healthcare. Its primary focus is on office properties, which also seems a bit removed from healthcare. The key here is that the REIT owns biomedical research facilities, which combine research space and office space in one property. Both are important to each other since the research takes place in specialized space, while the analysis of that research takes place in a normal office environment. Alexandria is one of the largest pure play medical research REITs you can buy. Alexandria counts some of the largest and most important medical research groups as tenants, from both the private side of the equation and the government side. However, like any landlord, the REIT's revenues will be impacted by the occupancy levels of its properties. And those rise and fall over time. Right now, occupancy is relatively weak, dropping to 91.7% at the end of the first quarter of 2025 from 94.6% at the end of 2024. Swings like this happen from time to time, but Wall Street is treating Alexandria as if its dividend is at a material risk of being cut. Only the funds from operations (FFO) payout ratio in the first quarter was a fairly strong 57%. There's room for adversity before a dividend cut would be in order. To be fair, office properties, and particularly highly specialized office properties, tend to have higher operating costs than other real estate assets. But it seems highly likely that Alexandria will manage its way through this weak patch and continue to extend its 15-year streak of annual dividend increases. For income lovers, this healthcare REIT is worth a deep dive in June. The average healthcare stock has an uninspiring dividend yield. But the average is made up of many different companies, some of which actually have very attractive dividend yields. That list includes industry-leading companies like Medtronic and Alexandria Real Estate. You might just want to pick up shares in one, or both, of these high yielders before June is over after you get to know them a little better. Before you buy stock in Medtronic, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Medtronic wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $664,089!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $881,731!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 994% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Reuben Gregg Brewer has positions in Medtronic. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alexandria Real Estate Equities. The Motley Fool recommends Medtronic and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $75 calls on Medtronic and short January 2026 $85 calls on Medtronic. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 2 High-Yield Healthcare Dividend Stocks to Buy Hand Over Fist in June was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tulare County home listings asked for less money in May - see the current median price here
The median home in Tulare County listed for $419,975 in May, slightly down from the previous month's $421,778, an analysis of data from shows. Compared to May 2024, the median home list price slightly decreased from $424,975. The statistics in this article only pertain to houses listed for sale in Tulare County, not houses that were sold. Information on your local housing market, along with other useful community data, is available at Tulare County's median home was 1,774 square feet, listed at $244 per square foot. The price per square foot of homes for sale is up 1.6% from May 2024. Listings in Tulare County moved steadily, at a median 44 days listed compared to the May national median of 51 days on the market. In the previous month, homes had a median of 43 days on the market. Around 352 homes were newly listed on the market in May, a 15% increase from 306 new listings in May 2024. The median home prices issued by may exclude many, or even most, of a market's homes. The price and volume represent only single-family homes, condominiums or townhomes. They include existing homes, but exclude most new construction as well as pending and contingent sales. In California, median home prices were $775,000, a slight increase from April. The median California home listed for sale had 1,775 square feet, with a price of $477 per square foot. Throughout the United States, the median home price was $440,000, a slight increase from the month prior. The median American home for sale was listed at 1,840 square feet, with a price of $234 per square foot. The median home list price used in this report represents the midway point of all the houses or units listed over the given period of time. Experts say the median offers a more accurate view of what's happening in a market than the average list price, which would mean taking the sum of all listing prices then dividing by the number of homes sold. The average can be skewed by one particularly low or high price. The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu. Our News Automation and AI team would like to hear from you. Take this survey and share your thoughts with us. This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Tulare County home listings asked for less money in May - see the current median price here
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
I Use the 3-Hour Rule to Stay Organized, and It's a Total Game-Changer
This article may contain affiliate links that Yahoo and/or the publisher may receive a commission from if you buy a product or service through those links. Hosting large gatherings can seem overwhelming — especially when you're not sure where to begin. Do you clean before or after putting up decorations? And when should you start setting up? I'm someone who tends to overthink the timing of tasks and when they need to be completed. Fortunately, I've found a method that's really worked for me. I came up with the 'three-hour rule,' which is simply a process where I work backwards three hours from when my guests are expected to arrive. This practice gives me a cushion to get everything done, whether it's completing an errand or finding an outfit. Plus, it ensures that I don't feel anxious before the event and allows me to handle any last-minute challenges with ease. After experiencing the stress of last-minute preparations one too many times, I knew I needed to find a solution. I reflected on how the day typically goes when I'm hosting an event, which led me to think about how I managed my time. I realized that I naturally prepare three hours in advance, so I made this a non-negotiable rule moving forward. Here's how the three-hour rule can play out. If your guests are expected to arrive at 6 p.m., then you'll start preparing at 3 p.m. Based on what needs to be done, you can do whatever within that three-hour time frame. On a day where I have an event at 6 p.m., I will begin to prepare at 3 p.m. I start by finishing small tasks like setting up decorations. I'll also make sure that I have everything I need for the event by asking myself questions like, 'Did I buy the plates?' and 'Is there enough cheese and wine?' If the answer is no, I still have time to run out and grab anything I need. After this is done, I'll start to get dressed around 4:30 p.m. I know that it usually takes an hour for me to get ready, so being dressed by 5:30 the earliest is perfect in the event someone decides to show up on time (there's always one person!). By 5:45, I am all set and ready for guests to arrive. With this new routine, I don't feel anxious. I have everything I need and am able to successfully enjoy the evening. Before implementing this method I would normally lie around, thinking I had time all day to get ready, and then before I knew it 5 p.m. would roll around and I'd be panicking about when to begin to get ready. However, now that I know that I need an hour to get dressed and ready to go, I can have that time set instead of it cutting into my prep time. With this new method, I feel prepared. Because I'm essentially dividing my time up to focus on mini tasks, I can have a clear structure and finish everything in advance. This has become a game-changer for me, and it's helped me approach any event with confidence, knowing that I've given myself enough time to get everything done smoothly. I'll definitely be using it this holiday you end up using it, let me know in the comments how it worked for post originally appeared on Apartment Therapy. See it there: I Use the 3-Hour Rule to Stay Organized When Hosting (It's a Total Game-Changer!) We Asked 3 Chefs to Name the Best Ice Cream, and They All Said the Same Thing Do Water Filters Really Work — And Which Ones Are the Best? Ball Just Dropped the Most Beautiful Mason Jars for Its 140th Anniversary ("So Iconic!") Sign up for The Kitchn's Daily newsletter to receive our best recipes, posts, and shopping tips in your inbox.
