Gadgetory

hey guys this is Austin and today I'm here with a review of the Microsoft Surface RT tablet it's a tablet that tries very hard to be a laptop it's undoubtedly unique but is it any good the first thing that pictures don't show you is that the surface is big put it in portrait orientation and it almost feels like a joke compared to tablets like the Nexus 7 up front you'll find a ten point six inch screen with a resolution of 1366 by 768 which matches most Windows laptops it's certainly not a Retina display but the saturation and black levels are top notch below the display there's a capacitive Windows button which works like the Windows key and you'll find a pair of 1 megapixel cameras capable of 720p video front and back which are very average for a tablet the rear camera is tilted downward which takes a bit of getting used to but seriously don't take pictures with a tablet running down the port's along the left side you'll find a volume rocker and headphone jack and on the right is the charging port USB 2.0 and micro HDMI the USB port is interesting as you can plug an absurd amount of stuff into the surface which I demoed in a recent video around back you'll see the tablet is made out of what Microsoft calls vapor mg which feels mostly like aluminium the cake stand is an important part of the surface is it allows you to use it like a laptop it feels very well built and closes with a nice snap but it's not adjustable it works well when you're using the surface at a desk but without being able to adjust it it can be awkward to use much at the time hidden behind the kickstand is a micro SD card slot which supports cards up to 64 gigabytes speaking of specs the surface RT is powered by a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor clocked at 1.3 gigahertz along with 2 gigabytes of RAM performance is impressive as Windows RT runs extremely smoothly practically everywhere in the OS about the only time you run into slowdowns is when the RAM is filled up which isn't too hard to do with four or five internet explorer tabs which point the tablet slows down considerably the surface RT runs Windows RT which is Windows 8 for ARM processors there are pluses and minuses to this for example battery life is excellent with between 6 to 9 hours on a charge and a slim nine point four millimeter frame on the flipside you lose that on a lot of processing power even the quad core Tegra 3 pales in comparison to a core i3 laptop which makes a huge difference with heavy lifting like gaming and photo and video editing the biggest downside is the fact that you lose all compatibility with legacy windows apps no Google Chrome no battlefield 3 and no Photoshop are available on the surface RT this isn't entirely a downside as many apps will be ported over to the Windows Store which is the only way to get ads but it's still something to keep in mind if you're planning on picking up the surface is a laptop replacement that's the thing throw in the magnetic type cover and that's basically what you have here a tablet doing its best to be a laptop in some ways it does a great job you've got all-day battery life a USB port to use a hard drive card reader or anything else along the keyboard and trackpad that you can fold away into the space of a tablet you'll find Flash support in the browser and office built-in along with the traditional desktop but then you'll realize that app support is starting from zero and Windows RT is clearly a 1.0 release in the illusion shatters at times the surface feels like a glimpse into the future right up until your fingers get tired to the lesson spectacular keyboard or smartphone internals the price is really where it hits home the surface RT starts at $499 for 32 gigabytes however you basically need the touch cover to get everything out of it which brings your total to $5.99 compare that with $399 for the nexus 10 and $499 for the iPad 4 and you end up with something that isn't a great tablet and isn't a great laptop it's a respectable compromise that some people will love but for me I feel like it's not quite there yet once the app ecosystem gets flushed out and Windows RT gets sorted the surface could be spectacular but right now it just isn't feel free to check out more videos on the surface here and hit that like button if you enjoyed anyway guys I will catch you in the next one