A (potentially annoying) ode to the Surface Go.

My MacBook Pro died on the plane to WorldCon while I was halfway through the trip to San Francisco. I rebooted it to finish a software installation, and it plain refused to come back to life. I’ve been using Macs for twenty years, so I know all the tricks to reset the PRAM and the SMC and all the nerd stuff you usually do as a first-level tech support protocol, but nothing worked, so it had to be hardware-related.

I had some work to do in San Jose, and all I had with me other than a dead MacBook Pro was my iPhone, but that doesn’t cut it for a lot of the stuff I have to do on a computer. So I sucked up the local California 9%+ sales tax and bought a Surface Go at a local Best Buy to let me get some of that needed work done before getting home.

I’ve been effusive about the little thing on social media, but after a few weeks of ownership, I can only reiterate what I said about it so far: it’s a near-perfect travel computer. I already have a Surface Pro and a Surface Laptop for various uses, so I am well familiar with the Surface line of products, and I think that Microsoft has hit an absolute home run with the Surface Go.

Its biggest selling point is that it’s a full-fledged Windows 10 computer that’s almost exactly the same size and weight of a standard iPad. I’ve tried to use the iPad Pro as a travel work machine, but while it’s very powerful–and a fantastic content consumption device–it’s not deserving of the Pro moniker when it comes to creative work. Its biggest drawbacks are the operating system (a souped-up mobile OS without robust file management), and a lack of mouse support. If you’re a writer, and you’ve ever tried to copy and paste text just with your finger on that touch screen, you know what I am talking about.)

The Surface Go has the same portable convenience, but it offers full mouse and keyboard support. Moreover, the Type Cover peripheral is excellent, especially for a device with a mere 10″ screen diagonal. The Type Cover for the Surface Go has a backlit keyboard that manages to be eminently usable despite its smaller size compared to its bigger brother, the Surface Pro, and the glass trackpad is closer to the Apple trackpads than any Windows machine I’ve used.

The rest of the hardware doesn’t feel like a budget compromise over the Surface Pro either. The Surface Go is made out of the same magnesium, it has the same excellent build quality, and the kickstand (the killer feature of the Surface tablet line as far as I am concerned) is the same as on the new Surface Pro, with infinite adjustability.

The Surface Go also has a SDHC expansion slot, a USB-C port which lets you recharge the device from a power bank on the go, and compatibility with the great Surface Pen for on-screen inking. (I’m telling you that if Apple put out a device like this, the Cupertino faithful would hail it as design genius, the Second Coming of Jobs.)

If it has any shortcomings, it’s the short-ish battery life compared to an iPad or Surface Pro, but that’s completely ameliorated by the fact that you can just top it off from a USB-C battery pack on the road. Some people have also commented on the processing power because the Surface Go has a Pentium Gold chip instead of a Core chip like the more expensive models, but I am here to tell you that the Pentium Gold is plenty fast for the stuff I do with this device, which is writing novels in Scrivener and Word, browsing the web, and checking email on the road. This is not a rig for playing World of Warcraft or Fortnite (although it can play them at low settings), so I won’t hold that against the Surface Go.

What is the Surface Go in the end? It’s a tiny, iPad-sized Windows 10 machine that runs full-fat Windows apps and fits into any bag that can hold a regular iPad, and that’s a major accomplishment on Microsoft’s part. I use it all the time now whenever I am away from my full-sized desktop, and I think the kids are going to get the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop as hand-me-downs. If you are looking for a writing rig that fits into the smallest of bags while still giving you full Windows 10 desktop OS power, this little device is pretty much king of the hill right now.