Microsoft Surface 10.6" Pro2 7EX-00001 4th Generation Review

This is a weird one. The Microsoft Surface Pro 2 is a decade-old tablet that somehow costs $249 today. The one thing you need to know? It's a tiny, shockingly powerful GPU in a body that's otherwise ancient tech. It's like finding a race car engine in a barn, but the rest of the car is made of wood.

The performance story is bizarre. That integrated AMD graphics chip is punching way, way above its weight class, landing in the 98th percentile. For $250, that's insane. But everything else is a time capsule. The CPU is in the 24th percentile, the 8GB of RAM feels cramped, and you're stuck on Windows 8.1. It's fast in one very specific way and slow in every other.

At $249, it's a fascinating value proposition, but only for a very niche user. You're not buying a modern machine. You're buying a curiosity with one standout feature.

Forget the gaming laptops on the competitor list; they're in a different league. The real question is whether this beats a modern budget laptop. Compared to a new $300 Chromebook or basic Windows laptop, the Surface Pro 2 has a better GPU but loses on every other front: OS, CPU, battery life, and support. The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 is a proper business machine but costs ten times as much. This isn't competing with them; it's in its own strange category.

I can only recommend this to a very specific person: a tinkerer who needs a ultra-portable Windows device for light, GPU-accelerated tasks and doesn't mind wrestling with old software. For 99% of people looking for a tablet or laptop today, this is a hard pass. Buy it as a tech artifact, not as your daily driver.