The long wait is finally over. After 2 years, Qualcomm finally delivered what they promised, but did they? I have seen mostly negative comments on this new chip, X Elite. The price is also ridiculous at 2.7K AUD with the keyboard and pen, it will cost over 3k AUD. This is on bar or even worse than Apple for a first-generation product of a new era.

Qualcomm is the infamous chip manufacturer of Android devices. We had FireDragon 810 and 888 which will burn your hands while using your phone. Their latest chip, SnapDragon 8gen3 is decent and has excellent GPU performance. The CPU is still a bit behind Apple chips, and the power efficiency isn’t as good also.

Microsoft is another infamous company I believe everyone on Mother Earth should know their Windows operating system. I had lots of previous experience with Microsoft and their Surface devices. In short, Surface devices were quite promising, but many issues made them less user-friendly. Does this change with this new release?

So far, I have been using my new Surface Pro for over a week now, and I believe it is worth the long wait regardless of all the negative comments.

Surface Pro is still that machine capable of doing everything, but it does nothing well unlike the Macbook Air and the iPad Pro. It still has less performance, less efficiency and is less user-friendly in general. However, you can do most things on this single machine, why most?

Due to the new ARM64 architecture, you cannot do everything like previously. The compatibility is good enough, it can be a bit better compared to when M1 was released. The fact that I am using Hugo, Visual Studio Code and all the developer software without any issues while listening to music using my Edge browser without plugging into the power. Yeah, just like a MacBook Air. This isn’t something the iPad Pro can achieve regardless of how powerful it can be.

The battery life is also extremely good, again like an iPad Pro. The power drain is always reducing like the system is optimising in real-time. The sleep is finally working as expected. Never could I press the power button from a Windows machine to enter the proper sleep mode. Previous machines were always draining the battery with the fan on. This is probably the first Windows machine I ever own and I rarely hear the fan noise unless I am gaming. Can you even game on MacBook Air?

This is the thing, I can play my Steam games, but not all of them. However, this isn’t possible on iPad Pro. I think you should get what I am talking about here. This new Surface Pro is inferior to the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air. However, you can get this one machine instead of having two machines with you. If you have to work remotely, this one machine can do everything you need, and you can play some games to relax.

The iPad Pro 13 inch 256 GB with the Magic Keyboard and the Apple Pencil is also 3k AUD. The Macbook Air M3 256 GB with 16 GB RAM is around 2K AUD. Combining them, you have to pay 5K AUD and have two devices. This machine is 3K AUD with 512 GB and 16 GB RAM, if you look at it like this, it isn’t a bad deal.

Ultimately, what you need is the focus. I have seen people using super-heavy gaming machines with a loud fan at UNI lectures. Everyone has a different preference. For me, the new Surface does it well. It is a decent tablet and a decent laptop combined. I can even play some Steam games on the go if needed. The iPad Pro is indeed a powerful machine, but you cannot do more than a certain task, while the Macbook Air isn’t ideal for note-taking and gaming.

Qualcomm doesn’t even need to beat Apple, coming closer is more than enough for Windows users and Microsoft to start pushing Windows on ARM. This may be the future, but I am not sure if we can do it.