Microsoft Surface Pro 7: Still the best Windows tablet you can buy

For now, Microsoft owns the Windows tablet category.

- MARK HACHMAN

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 7, the latest in the company’s excellent Surface Pro series, continues the tradition of being a durable, dependable tablet for the ages. It’s measurably better this time around, too, with an internal upgrade to Intel’s 10th-gen, 10nm Ice Lake chip and a nod to the future, a USB-C port. There are many good reasons why the Surface Pro 7 won our Editor’s Choice award, as you’ll see in our review.

Granted, it’s a lot easier to be the best game in town when rival Windows tablets are few and far between. At this point, the field consists largely of Microsoft’s Surface Pro models, the Surface Pro X (go.pcworld.com/ msfx), Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Tablet (go. pcworld.com/x1ta), monstrous tablet workstations like the HP Zbook X2 (go. pcworld.com/zbx2), and our longstanding favorite, the Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 (go. pcworld.com/miix). There’s a definite gap between these and $300-ish Atom-powered tablets from names like RCA and iView, which we wouldn’t necessarily recommend. If you’re looking for a full-fledged computer that’s extremely portable and can even work as a tablet, the Surface Pro 7 is your best choice.

BASIC SPECS

The Surface Pro 7 is a full-fledged PC made superportable. You won’t get discrete graphics, but you will get CPU choices up to a Core i7, and generous RAM and storage options. Here are the full specs:

Display: 12.3-inch PixelSense display (2736x1824)

Processor: Intel Core i3-1005G1, Core i5-1035G4, Core i7-1065G7 (as tested)

Graphics: Iris Plus 940 Memory: 4GB, 8GB, 16GB LPDDR4x (as tested)

Storage: 128GB, 256GB (as tested), 512GB, 1TB SSD Ports: 1 USB Type C, 1 USB Type A,

MicroSDXC reader, Surface Connect, 3.5mm audio jack