Microsoft Surface Pro 13" Sapphire 2024

The Surface Pro 11 combines a brilliant 13-inch 120Hz OLED screen with the fastest CPU we've seen in a tablet and excellent battery life. Just know that the Type Cover and pen are pricey extras, the GPU underperforms for gaming, and some Windows on ARM gremlins persist. If you can live with those trade-offs, it's a stellar 2-in-1 tablet for productivity and media.

If you're hunting for a premium Windows 2-in-1 that finally feels like a modern tablet, the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 is almost certainly on your radar. Powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, this thing pushes the Copilot+ PC dream hard, with a 12-core chip and a Hexagon NPU that can handle up to 45 TOPS of AI workloads. Our test unit came with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 512GB SSD, and the star of the show is that 13-inch OLED PixelSense Flow touchscreen with a crisp 2880x1920 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate that hits 900 nits of peak brightness. It's light at just under 900 grams, has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and you can add 5G if you need it.

Microsoft is marketing this as the first true Copilot+ machine, and after a couple of weeks with it, we can see why. The performance on native ARM apps is shockingly good, and the battery life, when it behaves, is some of the best we've ever measured on a Windows tablet. But the Surface Pro 11 also carries the usual Surface baggage: the Type Cover and Slim Pen are still sold separately, which stings when the tablet itself already sits north of a thousand bucks. And while the hardware is mostly excellent, the software side, especially Windows 11's ARM quirks and the occasional Copilot glitch, reminds you that this is still a first-wave product.

For students, readers, and productivity workers, the Surface Pro 11 hits all the right notes in our database as a best-in-class device for those tasks. But if you're a gamer or someone who runs heavy legacy x86 software, you'll want to read the performance breakdown carefully before you buy.

The Snapdragon X Elite is a monster in CPU-bound tasks, landing in the 100th percentile of our benchmark database among all tablets. Geekbench scores trounce pretty much every other slate on the market, and even most thin-and-light laptops look slow next to it. In everyday use, that means apps launch instantly, multitasking with a dozen Edge tabs and Office apps doesn't make it sweat, and photo editing in Lightroom feels desktop-class. The integrated Adreno GPU, on the other hand, is a different story, falling into the bottom 2nd percentile. This isn't a gaming tablet, period. Casual titles and Minecraft run fine, but anything demanding like Cyberpunk 2077 is a slide show, and even some older x86 games refuse to launch through emulation.

We tested the 13-inch OLED screen with some HDR content and it's brilliant, reaching 99th percentile for overall display quality. It covers the DCI-P3 gamut beautifully, and the 120Hz refresh makes scrolling and pen input feel fluid. The 900-nit peak brightness means you can work outside without squinting, though the glossy panel still catches reflections. Storage speeds from the 512GB SSD are solid, sitting in the 93rd percentile, and the 16GB of RAM is ample for what this machine is designed to do. Just don't expect to run Premiere Pro with heavy effects smoothly, the GPU bottleneck is real.

Pricing on the Surface Pro 11 is a mess right now. Our database shows listings anywhere from $1,079 all the way up to an absurd $44,990, which we can only assume is an error or a scalper with dreams. Realistically, the 16GB/512GB model we tested hovers around $1,300 to $1,600 at most retailers, and Best Buy is often the place to check for same-day pickup and price matches. Factor in at least another $180 for the keyboard and $130 for the Slim Pen, and you're looking at over $1,600 all-in. That's a lot of coin, especially when you can get a 13-inch iPad Pro with an M5 chip and a better pen experience for less, or a Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra with its included S Pen. If you need Windows and that OLED screen, it's a premium worth paying, but we'd wait for a bundle deal or a sale because the value proposition stings at full freight.

The elephant in the room is Apple's iPad Pro M5. Starting at $1,099 with a similar 13-inch tandem OLED, it's actually cheaper once you factor in the Surface's necessary add-ons. The iPad's M5 GPU runs circles around the Snapdragon's Adreno, making it a far better pick for video editors or creatives. But the Surface Pro 11 fights back with a full desktop OS, true windowed multitasking, and that incredible AI engine that's still waiting on more software to truly shine. If your workflow demands Windows, there's no contest.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is another strong competitor, packing a 14.6-inch AMOLED screen and an S Pen in the box for around $1,099. It's a media consumption beast and, thanks to DeX mode, a passable laptop replacement. But its Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 isn't in the same league as the X Elite for raw CPU grunt. The Lenovo Idea Tab Pro and Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro undercut the Surface on price significantly but lose out on build quality and long-term software support. If you're after a premium Windows slate specifically for reading, note-taking, and light productivity, the Surface Pro 11 is our top pick, provided you can stomach the hidden costs.

Skip the Surface Pro 11 if a great GPU matters to you at all, this tablet's 2nd percentile graphics performance means gamers and video editors will be endlessly frustrated. Budget-conscious shoppers should also look away; once you buy the keyboard and pen, you're deep into premium ultrabook territory. If you're deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem or need flawless pen latency for digital art, the iPad Pro M5 with Apple Pencil is a better, and often cheaper, fit. The same goes if your daily workflow includes obscure x86 software, Windows on ARM's emulation can be hit-or-miss.

The Microsoft Surface Pro 11 is the best Windows tablet we've ever tested, hands down. The OLED screen is drop-dead gorgeous, the Snapdragon X Elite chews through everyday work like it's nothing, and the battery life on a good unit is class-leading. It finally makes the 2-in-1 dream feel complete, if you're willing to live inside the Copilot+ ecosystem.

But "if" is doing a lot of work here. The high entry price coupled with the missing keyboard and pen, the GPU that's unfit for anything beyond casual use, and the lingering Windows on ARM quirks mean this isn't a slam dunk for everybody. If your priority is a tablet-first experience with a mature app library, get the iPad Pro. If you need raw CPU power in a Windows laptop shape, a Dell XPS 13 with an Intel Core Ultra is often cheaper and more compatible. For the person who wants a gorgeous, ultraportable Windows slate that can also double as a laptop for Office, browsing, and media, the Surface Pro 11 is exactly that, and we think you'll love it.