Surface Pro 8 Full Review: The Most Outstanding Update in Years 

Also, sorry for my occasional blurry shots and for some bad audio during certain parts of the video. I've been gone for a while, so I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things. 😅

Bro, you are AMAZING!!!!! This depth is wonderful man. And with the SP9 being lack luster in terms of updates, and the SP8 going to be discounted, your video is legit right on time. Thanks bro 🙏🏾

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the support! ✨ And oh, that’s right! The Surface Pro 8 *is* starting to receive some pretty nice price drops now! I guess posting this video super late isn’t such a bad thing after all. 😂

Honestly... Surface Pro 8 > Surfac Pro 9

Please does the battery actually last that long - 7.5hrs using office, edge and RU-vid in edge? I've seen reviews saying 5hours

Hey! Yeah, I’m back! And aw, that’s really sweet of you, thanks for sticking around! Really hoping I won’t disappear like that again. 🫠

Thank you so much! ✨ I’m not _entirely_ happy with my editing for this video, but hopefully the next one will turn out a lot better. We’ll take a look at the Surface Pro 9 really soon! Hang tight!

How much did you pay?

@@travelhustle747 open box at Best Buy was $799 for an Pro 8 16gb, I7

@@lour9348 you got a good deal man. When was it? During black Friday? I want same config. Should I wait for deals?

@@travelhustle747 yes I did get an excellent deal! Yes around black friday ... i'd pick one up on eBay for no more than 850 if you can fine one with these specs. Good luck!

Thanks! Almost done with my Surface Pro 9 video. Hang tight! :)

@@EJYu Hi. Are se going to nave a surface pro 9 review? I am looking forward!

In this review, I showed and talked about these Surface Pro 8 configurations: i5 / 8 GB RAM / 128 GB SSD i7 / 16 GB RAM / 512 GB SSD i7 / 16 GB RAM / 1 TB SSD For basic everyday tasks, any of the RAM configurations will realistically serve you just fine. Although, considering how pricey the Surface Pro 8 is in general, ideally you shouldn’t be getting a one- to three-thousand dollar Surface just to get some basic work done. If you’ll be taking advantage of *everything* the Surface Pro 8 has to offer, then I highly, highly recommend configuring the Surface Pro 8 you want with at least 16 GB of RAM. However, I should also mention that the Surface Pro 9 is out already. So… 1. If you’re still looking into Microsoft Surface Pros for your next computer right now, 2. You know for sure that you’ll be able to take advantage of everything this product line *and* form factor has to offer, and 3. You have a little bit of extra money to spare …then you may want to look into the Surface Pro 9 instead of the Surface Pro 8, as the CPU and the RAM in Surface Pro 9 are now a lot more performant than you might think-resulting in even the i5 + 8 GB RAM configurations to be somewhat viable. Upgrading to a faster SSD on, let’s say, the entry-level configuration could help. But once you start doing some more “power-hungry” tasks, whatever that might mean to you, then the advantages of a faster SSD will only get you so far. I’d suggest that you prioritize your RAM configuration more than whatever you plan to do with the internal SSD in the Surface Pro 8. Unlike the RAM, your storage can be upgraded anytime.

@@EJYu thank you for taking the time for such a comprehensive piece of advice. I had a feeling the answer would lead down that route but it’s great to have this clarity. I’m subscribed up and really appreciate your reviews. All the best

I use both!

Not yet, but I'm hoping to get it done soon. I've been dying to talk about the Surface Pro 9 here on my channel ever since it came out. But indeed, the jump from 11th- to 12th-gen was huge. The i5 SP9 completely outperforms the i7 SP8 and is now pretty well-documented.

That's actually a very good question. Albeit, a very broad question with the potential for a number of answers too. Both devices have their own advantages and disadvantages that are sometimes not necessarily software-related. Really quick: recall that the biggest difference between the Surface Pro X and the Surface Pro 8's software experiences has to do with program support-or app support. Programs run best on the Surface Pro X if they're compiled for ARM and ARM64. Fortunately, most x86 and x64 programs will run fine on the Surface Pro X, but they'll be emulated-usually with a clear bottleneck "somewhere" in "some form." Now with that said, this dilemma regarding program support may or may not matter to you, depending on how you're planning to use either of the products you mentioned. It personally doesn't matter that much to me anymore because I'm flexible enough to make the Surface Pro X work with my workflow. Not to mention, Windows on ARM has gotten astronomically better since 2019 now that x64 applications can be emulated in Windows 11. But if you *ever* have to genuinely ask, "Will [third-party app / program] work on the Surface Pro X?" then you probably shouldn't get the Surface Pro X. So, to answer your question, when it comes to these two specific devices, I'd probably nudge most people towards the Surface Pro 8 over the Surface Pro X. There are still a lot of reasons to get the Surface Pro X-more notably the refresh from this decade, equipped with the SQ2-but, if those reasons are not immediately obvious and attractive to you even after some light research, then it's a much safer choice to get the Surface Pro 8. Those are my quick thoughts for you! Unrelated (and significantly less objective), but: despite using my Surface Pro X regularly, I honestly do prefer Windows 11 on the Surface Pro 8 and 9 because the animations in Windows 11 hugely benefit from the SP8 / SP9's high refresh rate display.

I own basic i5 128GB version and it handles everything i throw at it. I wont suggest you to go with i7 considering your requirement. what i did was i bought basic version and than upgraded the ssd to 512gb which i bought it from ebay for 60$

@@jospdcunha Currently I have a thinkpad x1 carbon gen 9 with 256 gb ssd, 8gb ram and core i5 1135g7, and the performance is disaster. During a zoom call, I can't do anything. Also watching youtube videos in Edge is a disaster.

@@priombiswas that sounds like a cooling and throttling issue for sure.

No worries! I knew this was going to be brought up at some point, haha. Long story short, this review took me a really long time to finish due to a deluge of complications. Most of those complications were also why I was gone for so long, not making any content for two years. And you're absolutely right, the Surface Pro 9 was both announced and released last month, so, honestly, I'm not even sure if anyone will watch this review. But if anyone does, I hope they'll still enjoy it. 🥺 I've been working on this review for over a year, so I didn't want to scrap all the hard work I had put into this video just because I was taking a very long time to finish it and would be uploading it extremely late. It took me a while to get my game back, but I continued to push myself to get it done and, well, now it's here! I wasn't intending for this review to come out so late, and I was _especially_ trying really hard to get this finished before the next Surface Pro generation came out (which clearly didn't happen LOL), but I was going through some extremely low points in life so I wasn't able to get myself to work on this as much as I thought I could. I'm working on my Surface Pro 9 video right now though! I hope you'll stick around to see it when it gets posted. Thank you for checking out my new video!

@E.J. Yu I'm watching this review. Just purchased SP8 because of 300 off discount. Got one open box with additional 250 off. Much much better than $1500 for SP9

@@EJYu Thanks for your hard work, I'm thankful for the review. To me, the Pro 8 is much more interesting than the Pro 9 since it is significantly cheaper and still has everything I need, so I would always go for the previous model. Don't stress yourself too much about posting a video "in time", mental health is much more important :) Greetings from Germany!

Take advantage of your warranty right now and don't let that slide. That hardware defect you mentioned regarding your display shouldn't be happening at all-especially not within one year.

Oh no! I’m sorry to hear about that! I got my hands on a few Surface Pro 8 units, as you can see in the video, and, from my experience, I’m pretty sure that those issues you’ve mentioned *aren’t* normal things that you should be experiencing-especially for a brand-new device. I would’ve suggested to look into a replacement, or even to return the old device and repurchase a new one to make sure you didn’t get a defective unit or something, but no worries. Sometimes, we can’t afford to be wasting time over that stuff. What other laptop or tablet did you end up getting instead, if you don’t mind me asking?

I'm a SP fan and I'm glad that the ancient headphone jack is finally gone. The SP9 has doubled in multi-core CPU performance while having similar battery life, has much better button and port placement, supports Gen4 SSDs, and is finally easy to repair, Therefore the SP9 is the best for SP fans.

I wouldn't say it's almost negligible. At all. I really hope I can get my video out on the Surface Pro 9 really soon because honestly I've been dying to talk about it here on my channel.

And I totally get that. I *don't* want to deal with any of those things either. But you seem to have completely forgotten who's making these Surface Pro Signature Keyboards in the first place and are therefore dismissing the entire point of the vision driving the Microsoft Surface family of devices and its newer peripherals. Take the time to genuinely think about this really quick and hear me out. My vision for having *wireless* Surface Pro keyboards is not that far off from what we already have today, and it's probably what Microsoft would most likely do if they ever do decide to take this route. If a good, new, wireless Surface Pro keyboard were to come out, I'd imagine it would surely accomplish the following: 1. Have a seamless charging solution (that you wouldn't have to think about), 2. Have a good battery that *wouldn't* go bad as quickly as you're suggesting it would, 3. Have a seamless parting solution (that you *also* wouldn't have to think about), and 4. Follow the design principles and careful attention to detail that Microsoft Surface devices and peripherals are actually *supposed* to have (which... most third-party Bluetooth Surface keyboards unfortunately **do not follow whatsoever** right now). First of all, *you* wouldn't have to go out of your way to charge it. Your *Surface* would automatically charge it for you whenever you'd use it wired-which is the experience I'd imagine *most people* (including you) would still be using the majority of the time anyway. And you wouldn't even have to think about it because your Surface would charge the keyboard in question the same way that charging the Surface Slim Pen and Surface Slim Pen 2 has always* been done: through the power fed into the keyboard via the Surface Keyboard port. This is already a very positively received solution for its seamlessness (and yes, charging the Surface Slim Pen this way *is* seamless *and* practical in use). So, why wouldn't it be for a wireless Surface Pro keyboard from Microsoft as well? With that said, this directly addresses your concern regarding "not [wanting] to have to charge another device" because (1) this approach builds on top of the experience that we already have today and (2) therefore wouldn't prompt the user to have to go out of their way to charge it (by design). (Asterisk [*]: Unless you *don't* want to charge it that way, of course, but that's an inessential choice and, at that point, you're putting in the effort to make the experience worse than it was intended to be. Continuing on…) Second, this isn't something that necessarily needs a “big” battery to work well. Surface Slim Pen 1 and 2 both have (arguably) ultra small batteries, but they: (1) work great, and (2) don't degrade nearly as fast as quite literally anything else that can be reasonably compared to it. If history with Microsoft's most recently released rechargeable products has taught us anything, it's that these batteries won't fail as fast as your comment is suggesting it would. Obviously, it's inevitable (since these are lithium ion batteries we're talking about here, so you may have a point there), but the quality control with Surface Slim Pens have been phenomenal-resulting in batteries that don't go bad easily-and that therein prompts me to believe that having a battery in a wireless Surface keyboard would be just fine. Therefore, the fear presented here-of having "another battery that will fail eventually"-is nothing short of futile skepticism. Third, you wouldn’t have to deal with Bluetooth pairing as we know it whatsoever. You'd be docking the Surface Pro Signature Keyboard to the Surface Pro itself-the same way anyone would right now with Microsoft's existing (wired) Surface Pro keyboards (which people *do* like)-and, boom, it's paired, without you even thinking about it. Now the keyboard can be used wirelessly. Take it off and you’ll find that it still works. (And this *is* technology that exists right now. It's not hard to accomplish.) Remember, this is basically also how the Surface Slim Pen 1 and 2 pairs to the device. Albeit, *through* the charging cradle inside of the keyboard (if you know what technicality I’m talking about), so that's technically not a direct connection to the Surface Pro itself depending on how you see it, but my point still stands. This would directly address your concern about how you "don't want to have to deal with paring" because, with this concept, you literally would *not* have to think about pairing whatsoever since that would be completely done through a passive process unconsciously initiated by you-and, again, it *is* seamless (because existing pairing methods for existing Surface peripherals are already seamless by design). Fourth, while there may be tons of third-party Surface-compatible Bluetooth keyboards out there, the majority of them aren't good. Even many of the ones designed and produced specifically *for* Microsoft Surface. And I thought we already knew this. They're prime examples of exactly what your comment states you DON'T want. Bad batteries, pairing instructions, and manual charging routines, just to name a few. And I doubt that Microsoft would let *their* version of this wireless Surface Pro keyboard in question get to that point because they already *don't* entertain that with *any* of their current core products and accessories. So, why think they’d succumb to that level *now?* Not to mention, these aforementioned third-party keyboards in general don't even follow the design principles and careful attention to detail that make Microsoft Surface devices and peripherals attractive at all in the first place. So that directly addresses your final remark regarding the "TONS of Bluetooth Surface keyboards out there." And there. That was it. I directly addressed each and every one of your concerns right here, right in front of you-and it wasn’t hard to think of each one. And all of this would ideally be in the same physical package of the Surface Pro Signature Keyboards that we have today. Nothing should get thicker. Nothing should get uglier. It's literally just the same keyboard, but wireless. I don't see a problem with that. And I really don't understand why you 1,000% disagree with this. This entire vision is what I had in mind when I talked about the desire for wireless Surface Pro keyboards (14:07 - 16:13) in my review. And if this vision ever truly does get executed in the manner that I am envisioning it to be executed (again: seaming charging / pairing that you literally don't have to think about, agood battery, same size as the first-party Surface Pro keyboards that already exist, etc.), then this should be welcomed. Not feared. Again, at the end of the day, the Surface Pro Signature Keyboard products literally just need to be the same thing as what we have right now, but with a small battery (that doesn’t make the actual keyboard any thicker than it already is) and the ability to seamlessly continue using it while detached-even if that's for a small amount of time (like five hours). Because let's be real: if that product *does* ever become a reality, there's no way that a wireless version of what already exists could be *any* worse from how we all already use the *existing* first-party Surface Pro Signature Keyboards from Microsoft. It'd just be an extension of the same experience, and (hopefully) *no more* than that. Adding a small battery and components for wireless accessibility really shouldn't make the keyboard any thicker than it is right now nor introduce intricacies that would complicate the user experience. Period. And trust me, I've thought of almost every possible argument against this idea. They all fall short somehow. If the team behind Microsoft Surface genuinely stays true to the vision driving these products (which we currently have no reason to believe that they won't-at least for their accessories), then this is an idea that nobody should be against-including you. Besides, it’s not like the intent (at least, from my vision) is to make the keyboard *completely* wireless and untethered 24/7. So, I’m telling you, a wireless Surface Pro Signature Keyboard *would* be great, and I'm very passionate about that stance. And remember: Microsoft has offered a *variety* of options for first-party Surface keyboards for years. If a Surface Pro Signature Keyboard with wireless capabilities were to come out, I'd imagine they'd still offer the original "signature keyboard" experience *without* Bluetooth just as usual. But even if they don't do that, well… again, that's *not* a problem, as the concept / vision that I'm presenting to you would quite literally be an extension of what we have already. There's no way that this hypothetical product could get any worse just so some people can have the opportunity to use the keyboard detached.

hiding rn 😩

Lol