[Samuel_Michon]

“3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic.”

True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBook Air 11" is $30 cheaper and has 5,5 hours of real world battery life.

If we were to compare Surface Pro with a 10" iPad, it would look even worse. The Surface Pro is twice as thick, 3 times as heavy, has one-third of the battery life, has a screen with a lower resolution, and it’s $300 more expensive.

[dangrossman]

The MBA 11" is 0.68" thick. The Surface Pro is 0.53" thick. The Type Cover adds .23"; the Touch Cover only .08".

It gets the same run time per charge.

It weighs less, not more; less than 2 pounds versus 2.38.

The difference is that you can snap off the optional keyboard in a split second if you really care about thickness -- well, that and the fact that it's a tablet with a touch digitizer behind the glass too.

[Samuel_Michon]

> The MBA 11" is 19.2mm thick

No, it’s not: “Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)” http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html

The body has a wedge shape, on average 10mm thick: http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3

> It gets the same run time per charge.

No, it doesn’t. The Surface Pro gets 3,75 hours of battery life. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-rev...

[dangrossman]

For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness? I own an SP; it does not get 3.75 hours of battery life no matter what I do with it, and I could pull out a dozen review links to say that as well. Why are you trying so hard to make it look worse than it is?

[Samuel_Michon]

“For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness?”

Along with length, width and depth, that’s what determines the volume of the object (=portability). The Surface Pro has 60% more volume as a MacBook Air 11". And yet, it gets hot, has loud fans, and has less battery life. That’s just bad engineering. As a replacement for a notebook and a tablet, it really should have at least as much battery life as an iPad. Given its volume, that would’ve been possible.

Surface Pro: 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.76" = 55.95 cubic inches

MacBook Air 11": 11.8 x 7.56 x 0.39" = 34.79 cubic inches

EDIT: in an earlier version I mistakenly wrote 'mass' where I meant 'volume'.

[dangrossman]

Weight and size are what determine portability for everyone else, not how much water it could hold if it were doubling as a canteen. That's not mass, it's volume, by the way. The MBA is longer, wider, taller and heavier -- yet you've contrived a way to label that as "more portable"... ridiculous on its face.

I'm not going to make this valueless discussion thread any longer, so to your reply: those numbers are made up. Larger screens make things less portable, not more.

[Samuel_Michon]

The MBA is less than an inch longer and wider (because of the larger screen). It’s not as thick (‘tall’?) as the Surface Pro and it weighs less (2.38lbs) than a Surface Pro with TypeCover (2.55lbs).

[WayneDB]

That's 3.75 hours with a video continuously looping.

I get 6 - 7 hours on a low brightness with normal usage (web, email, visual studio, sql server, etc.)

[Samuel_Michon]

When they performed the same test on a 13" MacBook Air, it held on for 6.5 hours. That jibes with Apple’s stated battery life of ‘Up to 7 hours wireless web’. Apple states the MBA 11" has battery life of ‘Up to 5 hours wireless web’, so it’s definitely more than 3.75 hours.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/18/macbook-air-review/

[rayiner]

The surface pro is intended to converge tablets and notebooks. That's why you'd put up with the sub par keyboard and touchpad. If you're going to consolidate to one device, then the battery life matters more than it does when you augment a notebook with a separate tablet.