In Andrew’s review @~11:00, he says it’s MPP 2.0.
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Thanks, appreciate it. I interpret that as being able to use my existing Surface pens on it? Or should I upgrade to a Slim pen 2? (I probably should but for other reasons.)
Asking because this would actually be less than half price of the Pro X SQ2 I have in my Amazon cart.
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Yeah, any Surface pen will work. And the Slim Pen 2’s pressure optimizations and tactile feedback only work on newer Surface devices (as far as I know), so I’d skip it unless you love the form factor.
Ah the SPX, what a sexy device…tough choice, but the R&K’s just the new hotness imo.
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:vb-disagree: Nice try, but no cigar…
Yes, and it supports tilt as well as confirmed here in the Kickstarter campaign comments:
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How about if a Qualcomm NUVIA unicorn comes along next year in the form of a Robo & Kala 2 with 5G? 
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I think that would be great, but they would need to call it Robo & Kala Season 2
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It really does seem superior, unfortunately I was told thay only ship to U.S.
Seems they are working on international shipping. Will probably add another $100.
Still don’t think so - it would be my production machine which means I need to stay to big name players for my hardware.
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Indeed. I just got my Robo & Kala a day early and man, is this hardware a beauty! I have long dreamed of an iPad-like equivalent as early as the razer thin Transformer Book Chi from ASUS. The Surface Pro X was another brief brush with that dream with its slimmer and sleek physique, but we have since seen that dream shelved with Microsoft taking the easy approach by using the same fat and heavy chassis on the Surface Pro 9 for the ARM and x86 variants. But boy howdy, I have used dozens of tablets and Robo & Kala is the first Surface alternative that I would call a challenger regardless of price that makes a case for the Windows tablet market. Its OLED is quite bright at 600 nits, not to mention very vivid and pinpoint accurate, so 60% brightness is what I run it at where it is still bright, rich, and deep.
But that’s not all: memory and storage galore with 16GB RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD, the Microsoft SQ3-equivalent Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 processing this whole affair and even the type cover keyboard included with a dual mode that can be either physically connected via pogo pins or wirelessly via Bluetooth (it is seamlessly and automatically paired too, mind you, via Bluetooth during initial OS setup and I had to do nothing to get it working!)? To top it off, runtime-wise, I get an insane 10-12% of battery use per hour and that’s with a tab-filled Microsoft Edge running that is loaded to the brim with extensions for uBlock Origin, Dark Reader, Microsoft Editor, Eno from Capital One, and other odds and ends.
Now this is all great, but I have good news and bad news about why I am returning this impeccable hardware. First, the good news. WOA emulation has improved significantly since my first brush with my Surface Pro 9 with 5G I briefly tried over six months ago and that was already better than the Surface Pro x. I installed a 3D printing application and pulled up a highly complex 3D model that caused the Surface Pro 9 with 5G to come to a crawl due to the emulation abstraction not (presumably) using the processor’s GPU. That has been fixed (as well as the issue with the video streaming of the 3D printer camera), so on the 3D front, barring Vulkan support, WOA emulation seems to be perfect for my uses.
However, there are still very, very, very few rough edges. First was emulation in multimedia programs. The Windows Plex app I use still had inexplicable AV issues. So what do I try to get around that? I install a custom Windows Subsystem on Android install. Goodness gracious! I install WSA and HDR works in the Android Plex app. That is incredible progress and especially because (which I surmise) Microsoft is ironing out issues in Windows 11 and WSA to make the highly anticipated NUVIA-based SQ4 variant of Surface Pro 10 as close to a blemish-free iPad Pro killer as possible.
Now, the other rub: I cannot run Android apps in fullscreen (okay, not without a keyboard or via hacks) in tablet mode. Yes, I could do a simple keyboard shortcut combination ( Windows+shift+F11; How to full screen Android apps in Windows 11 - Pocketables) with the type cover attached. Or I could use a program like this one to set specific Android apps to run in borderless fullscreen (link: Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming: Play your favorite games in a borderless window; no more time consuming alt-tabs. (github.com). However, I often want to use this like a tablet and when I am using it like a tablet, I should not have to connect a keyboard or hop through a series of hoops in a hack just to run an Android app fullscreen. Ideally, putting an app in fullscreen should be something super simple via a button on the title bar of the app window as proposed here: Suggestion: Give us a button to toggle fullscreen on Android apps (concept attached, feedback hub link in comments) : Windows11 (reddit.com)
In short, could I have gotten around these few quibbles knowing that Microsoft is working hard on bringing the proverbial mountain to Muhammad for the expected upcoming Surface Pro 10 with NUVIA by rounding off the rough edges in Windows 11? Absolutely. I could just have mounted my network shares with ZeroTier (newly supported: Windows ARM64 Support for TapDriver6 (including Signed Driver) by jakevis · Pull Request #1949 · zerotier/ZeroTierOne (github.com)) and played my multimedia files directly and I could have avoided Plex entirely, but gosh, I love having an organized library of media content. And true, I could have used the aforementioned link program to always run the Android version of Plex in fullscreen in tablet mode. I speculate that Windows version of Plex is leveraging the full stack of Windows multimedia libraries and a few pesky ones have yet to be fully addressed by Microsoft’s WOA emulation team.
But all things said, the verdict? The Robo & Kala is the closest thing to an iPad Pro killer Windows tablet you can find on the market to date and what a steal. OLED, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Qualcomm 8cx Gen 3, and type cover included? If there is one thing, I cannot fault the hardware or the software that Robo & Kala has control over (and configured masterfully!) in the out-of-the-box experience. So here the buck stops at Microsoft, but I can already see how much progress and I fully expect Windows 11 to be up to snuff soon in WOA at the rate they are headed. If you are not a power user like me and want to experience the best that Windows on ARM has to offer now and do not need 5G like I know some of you do, save your money! Make a hard pass on the Surface Pro 9 5G because it is just not worth it.
Robo & Kala is the ticket and it is mindboggling how polished it all is at just $600 and with all this incredible hardware you get packed inside, it is nice seeing a zippy Windows Hello camera and zippy performance practically indiscernible from my i7 Surface Pro 8. I had zero issues other than the few noted, highly niche issues of a power user like myself. It is only a question about if your specific needs can deal with the current emulation limitations which unfortunately are still not quite up to the standards of Apple’s Rosetta, but Microsoft is getting close now and no doubt will get fixed soon!
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I’m going to play the devil on your shoulder and say,
“Are you suuure you don’t want to keep it?” 
As you say, MS is probably going to continue polishing WOA, especially with the upcoming Nuvia devices. The R&K is sooo close to being the true WinPad and it’s only $600. You could keep it as a definite and worthy-in-itself reference hardware, prior to Nuvia devices releasing next year.
Consider for $600, you’ll have a solid WOA device to use and to learn and tinker with. Once the 8cx Gen4 chips release, you can sample at your leisure the new Surface Pro 11" and whatever other WOA devices continue to roll out. You’ll never be pressured into the delimma to keep or to return and lose hours of your WOA setup each time, all the while having a pleasurable device to use.
And in the event you do replace it, it will always be a stellar backup/media consumption device/hand-me-down. I’ve found secondary tablets that are portable, unobtrusive with long-battery life, always come in handy somewhere in the house.
So don’t be so quick to dstrauss it, you’ll miss it!
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Or you might want to ship it to Japan?
A full review from Notebookcheck is up.
I always like to see their Witcher 3 benchmarks since it’s one of the few meaningful Apples to Apples real world comparisons out there. For gaming/graphic performance (iGPU mostly, the implementation/cooling/etc of which which can vary a lot by devices with otherwise identical hardware—e.g. look at the Laptop Go 2 compared to the Surface Pro 7 Plus, which is nearly twice as fast for that game with the same i5-1135G7, Xe Graphics G7 80EUs).
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I emailed them and they would ship to me in the UK at an additional $100 but the killer was I’d also have customs duty and VAT to pay and the shipping company usually also charge a fee for pre-paying
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The very first sentence of the review annoys me:
“Like it or not, Windows ARM is here to stay regardless of all the criticisms.”
WHY do we have to like it or not? Since software is not native to ARM, and Adobe/Chrome have turned their backs on it, why do we have to fork Windows? Obviously Microsoft can’t get Intel to get it’s s#$t together and provide a real performance per watt alternative in the x86 space, so just do an Apple and say NO to Intel and move on to your own design?
BECAUSE THAT IS STUPID. Quit trying to replicate Apple’s model and optimize x86 - be the anti-Apple not the Apple wannabe!
(Man, somebody really got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning)
PS - I read down that table of comparable devices and where do my eyes immediately freeze:
92.5 % 11/2022 Apple iPad Pro 11 2022 M2, M2 10-Core GPU 466 g 5.9 mm 11.00" 2388x1668 USD 687.55
D@mn it, SOMEBODY hack MacOS onto that tiny 11" tablet
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Not all of us are lucky enough to get that US tech pricing though.
I’m seeing 1,099 CAD for the list price up here in the frozen burning North. 
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First - sorry for the horrible fires - best of luck to our Canadian friends.
Second - wasn’t price as much as look how small, thin, light it is AND it has big brother’s (MBA) heart beating inside…
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Much appreciated, same to you guys and apologies for all the smoke. 
You gotta admit though, $600 for nice hardware with keyboard and pen is ultra attractive, no? Even having to pay $125 in shipping and import fees to Canada, my finger is still hovering over that buy button.
(Which is why I’m desperately trying to offload my gadget lust onto Sonic. 
)
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