The fourth-generation Surface is official

Oct 6, 2015 15:15 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has just presented the fourth-generation Surface, a reinvented tablet that's supposed to squash competitors who are trying to build similar devices, as Panos Panay, the man in charge with all devices at the company said.

“We changed everything, some you will never see, but you'll feel everything,” Panay explained.

The device comes with a 12.3-inches screen, up from 12 inches on the Surface Pro 3, featuring 5 million pixels and a pixel depth of 267 PPI. Panay bragged about the display for minutes, “the screen, oh my God, it will knock you out.”

The screen also comes with a brand-new system which Microsoft calls PixelSense “See. Touch. Write. Feel.” This is the “best technology on the planet, on a tablet right now,” Panay explained. There is a new G5 chipset which runs the optical stack and makes everything run smoothly.

It is a mix of 0.4mm Gorilla Glass 4 and 1.1 mm backlight unit, which should make it even more durable and responsive to both touch and the pen.

And speaking of the pen, the device comes with an all-new Surface Pen that's greatly improved and has its own place on the tablet. This is called “pen storage” and Microsoft says that customers really need such a thing.

“53 percent of Surface buyers use a pen,” Panay said, so you get 1024 levels of pressure and a tail erase, plus a full year battery life, so you don't have to change the battery too often.

There will be five color versions of the Pen, plus interchangeable pen tips because “they are magical and change everything.”

Performance

The Surface Pro 4 is 30 percent faster than the Pro 3. The MacBook Air, which is a great product as Panay said, is 50 percent slower than the new Pro 4.

There's 1 TB of storage in the tablet, 16 GB of RAM, obviously on the top models. There's no compromise, Panay explained. “It's unreal,” he told the audience.

The tablet is only 8.4 mm thin, which makes it the thinnest most powerful Surface yet.

There's also a new Surface Dock which features four USB 3.0 ports, two 4K DisplayPorts, and an Ethernet port.

There's also a new Type Cover, which also works on the Surface Pro, with a new keyset with 1.3 mm travel, with 19 mm between the keys and the trackpad is 40 percent larger. It uses the full power of Windows 10 and uses backlighting. It also includes a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello, the new biometric authentication feature in Windows 10.

Surface Pro 4 pre-orders are already available and shipments will start on October 26. Pricing begins at $899.

Surface Pro 4 (24 Images)

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