Microsoft Surface Go 4

Zac Bowden says it exists:

Sorry gang, but this makes my SP8 LTE look pretty good still…

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Wait, what? They did release it?

Doesn’t look enough to entice me though.

@James not much detail nor availability info yet - but clearly business customers only (but bought my LTE model a few years back through Microsoft business store) - and even though it now has N200 and 8gb ram, only UFS storage (no ssd) and no LTE/5g yet…and NO IN KEYBOARD PEN STORAGE

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SP7+ originally was business only until they later opened up to everyone. I got mine at Best Buy & I assume this will eventually show up there too.

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Sticking with the Pro X. This is one of the factors. No replaceable hard drive either.

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Here is hoping that an OEM will pick up the torch dropped by MS for this generation. I noticed on Asus’s site there is a new Asus Slate with a i3-N300 (improvement of the N200, both igpu and cpu it seems Intel Core i3-N300 vs Intel Processor N200 (notebookcheck.net)), perhaps other OEMs will follow.

So, the Go 4 comes in only 3 configurations, a laughable 64GB, marginally acceptable 128GB (only because the micro-SD card remains), and an acceptable 256 GB version. All have 8GB RAM only. At the very least, there should have been a 16 GB option and removable Solid State Drive.

Taking a page out of the Apple playbook, the price is tied to the storage. 250GB is $780. Add keyboard and slim Pen 2 and you’re at $1,000. I got my Go2 LTE 256/8 GB bundled with KB and Slim Pen for $750. More for less. Should be Microsoft’s slogan these days.

I am more than dissapointed. Im insulted in a way. The Go is a near perfect design that needs only a few key improvements to make it a really great device. Microsoft clearly doesnt give a **** (add your own 4 letter expletive) about us in this market segment. I wouldnt mind paying $1,000 for a 128/16 GB 5G model with pen charging KB slot and replaceable HD.

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The rumors of “business only” were true.

Business/Commercial models also encompass the EDU market, so given the Go 4 and Laptop Go 3 are the only under 1K surfaces (for some SKUs anyway) it makes sense they would keep it around for the sake of that market.

From my understanding…the N200 chip aside, its exactly the same as the Go 3 in every way. Small plus side, accessories like Keyboards and Cases from Go 1 to Go 4 will still work.

The N200 chip is a low end 12th gen quad core, with all 4 cores being efficiency cores. I would be interested to see if this offers any real world improvement over the i3 in the Go 3, or at the very least improves the pen performance. I’ve found the Go 3’s pen, while better than Go 1, is still subpar to the Surface pro 5,6,7+ when it comes to the V4 Surface pen.

Also it is nice to see Microsoft finally standardize on 8GB of Ram. That’s now the lowest ram allotment in any Surface device.

A 2 in 1? I couldnt find it. The N300 would have been a far better fit for the Go4. 7w tdp works just fine

This is the one (though it is not yet in shops and is 16:9, on the bright side it is lightweighted for its size): ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED (T3304)|Laptops For Home|ASUS Global The previous models were kindy weak for a 13" tablet because of the pentium they used, but now with the N300 this might be a really interesting jack of all trades device (that is if you can live with 16:9 on a 2 in 1).

Thanks. I had hoped to see a fanless I5 in an 11" form factor but I think there is zero chance of that. The N300 would probably be a decent alternative but with Microsoft all but abandoning the 11" size, that’s unlikely as well. Everyone that is making a 2 in 1 competitor seems to be in the 13" space.

Plus is has a pretty mediocre OLED. Poor linearity generally and way off color accuracy out of the box. It does get decently bright though.

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It does sound like the next version (Go 5) will be a “bigger” upgrade (possibly smaller bezels and hence larger screen) since this ‘only business’ version reminds me of the Pro 7+. Does anyone know if MS sold any Surface Go’s (1/2/3) to consumers? (I mean aside from a couple of TPCR’s :slightly_smiling_face: ). Or is it almost solely to businesses?

Yes, in fact the “business SKU” only came up when they added LTE support, which is not even advertised as “coming later” yet.

They sold and still do sell them to consumers through sources like Best Buy and Microcenter here in the US and PC Richard in the UK for instance

Can’t speak for the others, but the 7+ was sold to the consumers. I got mine (open box)at Best Buy.

Nice, hopefully that will let them keep consumers SKU’s for the time being (saves me the costs for Windows Pro :grin:).

Must be country specific than, where I live in Europe the Surface Pro 7+ was not nearly as widely available as the Pro 7.

Maybe, but when the 7+ came out it was business only & later became avail to the consumers.

So I was just able to obtain a Go 4 the other day. The top end model N200/8GB/256GB

I wish I could say I was more excited, but eh.

As I’m sure most of remember the Go 1’s notorious Pen Nightmare, despite Microsoft making the Go 2 and up properly Pixelsensed, I found the pen performance in the Go 3 still vastly inferior, and not even in comparison to the Pro 8/9, but in comparison to the Pro 5 & 7+

Since the GO 4 is exactly the same as the GO 3, but with a slightly better CPU, I can’t say I had high hope they would fix the pen performance, but it was still a little hope I held onto.

Well they didn’t. Despite the better CPU, pen performance is still subpar compared to the Pro 5-7+. Did a side by side drawing test between the Go 4 and the Pro 7+,and it didn’t take more then a few pen strokes to see nothing has changed for the Go.

So for my purposes the Go 4 is more or less useless.

I haven’t had too much time yet to fully test the device out beyond the Pen, but I did run Geek Bench 6

With both the Go 3 and Go 4 set to best performance.

Go 3 (i3, 4GB)
Single Core - 1047
Multi-Core - 1958
OpenCl - 4223

Go 4 (N200/8GB)
Single Core - 1089
MultiCore - 3197
OpenCl - 3861

Definity improvement in Multicore, but surprisingly worse on graphics

That 10th gen i3 had a Intel UHD Graphics 615, which I guess trumps the default 13th gen UHD Graphic with the N200.

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Could you go over the main pen deficiencies/differences compared to the SP8/9?