I recently upgraded my Surface Pro 4 (SP4) to a Surface Pro 7 (SP7).
The SP4 was purchased in 2015 – Core i5, 256 GB HDD, 8 GB RAM, Win 10 pro – and apart from one issue I have been very satisfied.
At that time I also bought the dock, keyboard cover, blue tooth mouse, Display Port to HDMI adaptor plus a 128 GB SD card to expand the storage. The Pen came with it – I seem to remember.
It had good battery life, is a usable tablet, an excellent and portable laptop, the SD card slot is out of the way under the hinge so the card can be left in permanently and has a touch screen with a stylus to write on the screen and use with PhotoShop Elements. Best of all, it has the Windows Hello camera for sign in via face recognition.
The only negative is that from time to time it would get screen shake. This occurred infrequently and initially I was firmly in “Team Software” as the cause.
The internet was divided into those who thought it was a software/driver problem and those who thought it was a hardware/over heating problem. I joined “Team Software” as it seemed to happen after a major update and could be fixed by re-installing the graphics driver from Intel.
As the SP4 was coming up to about 5 years old, I had planned to update but was waiting for a Surface Pro model with USB C Thunderbolt. Needless to say, when SP7 came out with USB C in place of the Display Port, I was initially pleased then disappointed when I found out it was not Thunderbolt.
However, a few months back the screen shake started to become more frequent and updating the driver did not work but putting in in the refrigerator did. So much for “Team Software”, it seemed that “Team Heat” was right after all. Then coming up to Christmas when the weather was getting warmer, the screen shake got so bad that the computer became almost unusable unless it was connected to a second monitor. Putting it in the fridge worked but the cure did not last long.
Naturally I was not a happy camper and was even more disappointed when, looking for a solution on line, I discovered that Microsoft had been offering a free fix (by replacing with a similar re-furbished model) BUT the offer HAD EXPIRED.
Normally, with something like this it is a case of ‘once bitten twice shy’ but I really like the Surface Pro and also, as JB HiFi had the SP7 on discount, I gave in and bought one. It is the same specs apart from the OS. The SP7 has Win 10 Home and the SP4 had Win 10 Pro. However, I wasn’t using any of the Win 10 Pro features so this was not an issue. Also – and importantly – all of the accessories would continue to work with the latest model.
It is a pity that the USB C is not Thunderbolt but I have a NUC with Thunderbolt and have yet to use even the USB C port. (Thunderbolt was really just ‘future proofing”)
In summary I am very happy with my new SP7 (without screen shake) and I really like the Windows Hello camera to the point that I would not buy a laptop without it. My iPhone also has facial recognition and the only reason I have not purchased a new Web Cam for my NUC is that the Windows Hello Web Cams are still a bit too expensive. U Mart has the Logitech Brio 4K marked down but only by $15.