I'm serious folks - are they good or not?
In my 40 plus years of using personal computers (mostly laptops, and recently an Apple convert), I've never seen such divergent opinions about the same hardware. Sure, there have been religious wars between platforms - Windows sucks, no Apple sucks, foget Linux, or all three are the best thing since sliced bread per their respective advocates.
But how do reviewers (particularly Surface Pro 11 Elite which I'm studying - AGAIN) attract diametrically opposed reviews:
Best 2-in-1 ever - a piece of crap
OLED is great (except screen door effect of white backgrounds) - middling quality OLED at best
Prism works very well - Prism stutters and shutterss
Performance is outstanding (near Apple M3 quality) - no real improvement even over Intel alternatives
Battery life great (10+ hours) - battery life still sucks (5-6 hours at best)
Cool and quiet (very little fan use) - fan runs and overheats doing intense chores (video editing, etc.)
I could go on and on. Some of this I attribute to fanboyism - Rubino types for praise, MacOS vets like Laporte for hate - but overall I see folks in the same general camp, like Ed Bott, doing cartwheels for SP11, but Chrispher Null almost full stop. And EVERYONE is revieiwng identical SKU's (almost always the X Elite, OLED, 16gb/512gb model). How can so many reviewers, running the smae software and benchmarks, come up with opposite answers?
After getting the Fold, I'm all in on 5G. Just the coverage alone in my rural New Jersey neighborhood (yes, there is such a thing) is such an improvement for my phone that I would love to have it on my Surface. If the Pro 11 was a clone of my Pro X SQ2, thin and fanless, I would have ordered it by now. So, I guess I'm waiting for a redesign.
Well, if anyone spots a good deal for the SP11 around black friday, be sure to post on TPCR3!
I'm sure someone posted this elsewhere, but here is Lisa's take on the SP11 and very balanced in her always reliable way. It has reached "relative parity" with Apple, but holds its own very well with x86 and Windows compatibility. Kind of midway between the cheerleaders and haters...
Love her comment "...it is exactly what Surface Pro was meant to be..."
Agreed, it's kind of hard to get a read on this one. I'm toying with the idea of getting one just to see what it's like. But.. Another $900+ spent while I already have a loaded SLS2.