It’s Go Time (Premium)

Microsoft's goal for Surface Go is as understandable as it is necessary: To dramatically expand the customer base for this premium line of PCs. But for Surface Go to succeed, it has to deliver on some basics. Key among them, of course, is performance.

The good news?

Surface Go is the right idea. The Surface PC lineup is excellent today, and I can hold up recent generation products---Surface Laptop, Surface Book 2, and the 2017 Surface Pro---as examples of some of the very finest PCs I've ever used. These products succeed on a very visceral level, something we typically only associate with Apple products. I love them despite some curiously dated components.

But Surface PCs are too expensive. And for the PC market to stave off its inevitable decline, it's not enough for Microsoft or any other PC maker to only serve small but profitable niche markets for gaming PCs and other premium PCs. This market needs the quality of Surface at price points normal humans can afford. It needs to reach the mainstream.

This concept isn't limited to PCs, of course. We see quality levels and specific features that were once relegated to flagship smartphones make their way down-market over time too. Outside of personal technology, these trends impact other markets too. Car makers expand their product lineups, and often add new entry-level models as existing products evolve and get bigger and more expensive. You just can't ignore the mass market.

The question for Surface Go, of course, is whether the idea---a lower-cost Surface Pro---has translated into reality. There are many ways you can save money when building something like Surface Pro, and Microsoft has tried a few of them. For example, it has used lower-cost and lower-performance Core m/Y-series chips in base models.

Surface Go is different. The Pentium Go processor in this PC is some order of magnitude less impressive than the Core i5 and Core i7 processors that PC makers expect. The device, too, is tiny, with a less than full-sized keyboard on its Type Covers. This seems to limit its usage to child, or to those with smaller hands.

But I think this compromise addresses the real world needs that Microsoft sees for the device: It's not a PC that most would use all day, every day. It's for occasional usage. Perhaps in a school setting where different students will interact with a single PC in short time increments. Or a PC that one might tuck in a bag and then pull out only when they need a display/keyboard that is better than their phone. Or at home, where you might turn to it from time-to-time to check on email, look up something online, or whatever.

Whether Surface Go will meet these needs is still unclear. At least to me.

As you may know, I'm traveling, so I wasn't able to receive a Surface Go review unit in time for this week's release. But I asked Brad if he would perform a simple performance test, which is something I do for every Windows-based PC I review: Use Handbrake to ...