I recently had a chance to get to the Microsoft store and test out the original Surface tablet. You can find my review of the original Surface here. Just this past week, Microsoft announced that the Surface Pro would be released in January. Microsoft also provided more details on price and specs. I wanted to take a look at the new Surface Pro and compare it to the original surface.

Essentially a Small Laptop

The original surface had limitations in which you couldn’t just install any program you wanted. You had to find the program as an App. Most popular programs have an App in the App store already. However, if you needed a specific business software, you were out of luck. The Surface Pro has the full version of Windows 8. So, now, you can find any program you want and install it. To support the full Windows 8, the Surface Pro has a beefed up processing core. This more powerful CPU will also allow the Surface Pro to run more intense programs.

Still Offers Snap-on Keyboard

One of the really cool and convenient things about the original Surface is that it offered a snap-on keyboard that also acted as a screen cover when not in use. The Surface Pro will keep this snap-on keyboard design. This keyboard makes the Surface much more powerful than an average tablet in my opinion. It makes typing longer documents or emails much easier.

Higher Price Tag

The Surface Pro will be offered with 64GB of storage at $899 or 128GB of storage at $999. Neither price includes one of Microsoft’s keyboards, which add at another $99 or more to the price. You can compare this to the original Surface prices of $499 for the 32GB version and $599 for the 64GB version.

Making the Choice: Surface vs Surface Pro

Generally speaking, I think the choice is pretty clear depending on the user’s needs. I would recommend the original Surface to most users who aren’t looking for a full functioning laptop. The original Surface is quite powerful when compared to many other tablets in the same price range, including the iPad. If you pretty much just use your tablet/laptop for email, word processing, Excel sheets, or browsing the web, the original Surface would be a great choice.

I think that the Pro makes sense for the user who needs to install special software or for the user who really needs that extra CPU power. A few examples would be the user who needs to install Photoshop or for the user who needs to install special accounting software. I don’t think the extra space is that big of an issue since both Surfaces come with expandable memory slots. The extra space would only come into play if you needed to install a number of space consuming programs.

One last thing I want to point out that this type of user should think about a convertible laptop/tablet. The new convertible laptops are going to be a bit more expensive that than the Surface Pro but they offer more power and can offer a bit more screen size if that is needed.