Gadgetory

so we are here Joseph taking a look at something we've seen before it's the Microsoft Surface pro looks almost identical to the one from 2017 that we tested is identical with one big difference this is the new consumer version with an LTE antenna built in and that means that you can get a cell phone style data plan and get online anytime from there Joe you tested this did you find a big difference between this LTE model and the regular Surface pro from last year didn't notice the difference in performance or in the form change in it at all pretty much like the original one so how did you get the SIM card inside the inside of the system um it's actually if I can move it it's located right behind the kickstand and it's right over here you take a little typical you know cell phone push pin you pop it out slides right in and out the thing I was worried about is LTE and that's different kind of antenna on there how does that affect battery life because we do a battery test that does a lot of online streaming Wi-Fi is one thing using using an LTE antenna is something totally different unfortunately we got a decent signal in the lab and it turned out about the same time as it would with Wi-Fi so it was exactly the same battery life whether you were streaming video over LTE and we use t-mobile for this mobile yes versus just going over our regular Wi-Fi five-minute difference in favor of Wi-Fi over LTE okay but really no difference so about eight hours and change crush four for both versions now of course this cost a little bit more than the regular Surface pro I think there's about a hundred and fifty dollar add-on for the LTE and then you have to pay extra for some other stuff too yeah I don't I don't I don't know yeah I don't know if I'd want to pay all that extra I think they can yeah I think they should start including the keyboard and pin I mean it's even if you buy a very high-end version the pen is $99 they call it the surface can and the clip-on keyboard which is really the best part of this is a hundred and twenty nine dollars for a basic one and I think 159 for one with little fabric II cover like this yeah I actually noticed one thing different between this one and the service surface pro for that actually keep the keyboard that we actually got with that one a keyboard actually lights up oh the backlit keyboard yes and some of them are not that I can understand is an add-on accessory but I think standard it should just come with a basic keyboard now the thing with the LTE is years ago I said to myself oh you can only get LTE or a mobile broadband whatever they called it back then build into a couple of high end laptops usually business systems usually it was an expensive add-on I thought oh a ventually this will come everywhere a couple years later what happens you still could hardly get it anywhere that's why this is so notable because almost no consumer laptops have an LTE option you still only see it in a few business laptops and I always figured that's because everyone just started tethering from their phones that became so common and you know because of the way that the phone data plans are are structured yeah I actually um yes I am one of the few people that point it out for an iPad with LTE I did one other place you could get that an iPad they sold the LTE version and you could buy the the coverage for that and my reason at the time for going with that was cell phone companies weren't exactly battling like they are now with the plans and if you did have a hotspot it was maybe like 30 40 dollars for like two gigs and once you went over that two gigs they'd burn you whereas through t-mobile when I got the iPad data plan through them they gave you like maybe like five or ten gigs but then they throttle you there were no overages so that was one great thing to have and it can also be used as a hotspot so that was that was initial drawing for me and then of course it started becoming more mainstream and you're kind of locked in you're like okay how can I get out of this how can I get out of this my iPad broke so that's how I got out of it the iPad the tablet this guy is a tablet you used LTE on your iPad with it radically easier than just getting your phone out and doing a tether um yes and no in early stages when you use the hotspot on your phone you had to physically turn it on I guess over the over time with Apple's updates you allow to tether to your device and it would turn it on you automatically for you that's iOS to iOS as terms of like a PC to your phone you have to still physically turn it on so it definitely was a lot more convenient having one within the system itself but I still don't think we're gonna see LTE built into a lot of consumer laptops with one exception later this year we're gonna see the first laptops with Qualcomm CPUs on them HP's making one a few other companies are made and besides having batteries that they claim will last you know 20 plus hours there are gonna have always on LTE connections because Qualcomm makes chips for phones and it makes a lot of sense the trade-off of course being these are not Intel chips so they're probably not going to be as powerful as a regular standard laptop or a PC tablet they may not run all the same software but will have that great battery life and they're gonna have those always-on connections so I guess we'll see if people will adopt that as a standard or people will just keep tethering to their phones or using that Starbucks so that are that Airport Wi-Fi another one was sitting in the park wire-free it's true that's true would you pay extra for an LTE enabled laptop or tablet well let us know what you think in the comment section below