You could use photoshop in your hotel room without having to drag your desktop with you. A laptop would achieve the same. The advantage this has over a laptop for you is that it's smaller, you could potentially take it to the artwork to use photoshop there, where a laptop may be to big for that. They also have a decent stylus, so again if you use a Wacom on your desktop or similar, less to bring, less to have in your bag and less out on your lap. Maybe having photoshop in front of the artwork is irrelevant to you, in which case, so is a surface.

Can you carry your desktop "into the field"?
Can you use photoshop on your phone?
Would you like to work from the comfort of your sofa while working in photoshop?

You're taking pictures of hand drawn artwork from paper on your phone or you have a Note device that you draw directly on?

If you only draw on paper then snap it on your phone camera then I don't see the benefit of this for you. If you draw digitally then the size of this device, the sophistication of it's stylus pen, and it running full desktop software are your benefits.

MacBook Pro WAS the best on the market but Apple forgot to keep up with the times MBP is now years out of date, this is a better purchase, has better screen, better compatibility and is still current.

You dont quite understand how things work in practice. Just looking at a single aspect of the GPU will not tell you the comparative performance of the two machines.

In reality the MBP and SP you listed are very closely matched in performance.

13,3 MBP Geekbench - https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/8011336
SP4 Geekbench - https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/8005081

You want to look at the floating point performance for gaming or media applications.

Now when you consider that the MBP is £200 more expensive the SP4 starts to look like better value.

They're totally different product segments so in a given use case you expect some people to find one a better option than the other. Your mac doesn't have a touch screen, stylus pen and removable keyboard.

Ifixit gave it 2/10 for the difficulty in repairing/upgrading it:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+4+Teardown/51568

The SSD is replaceable but not easily.

John

​go cex if you dont mind refurbished the m3 model grade a is 490

I certainly agree about Apple products and had resolved not to buy anything else from that company when our iPads bite the dust. This offering from Microsoft seems quite expensive as well, and it is hard to know whether the cost is justified. We have experimented with two small Linx machines (7 and 1010) and been pleasantly surprised considering their low initial cost (about £40 for the Linx7 and just over £100 for the 1010 including a (very good) keyboard). Both run Windows 10 well, but the 7" screen is a bit small to take advantage of the OS, the 1010 is quite a capable little machine. Clearly the Surface Pro range is much more competent that the Linx, but does it justify being so much more expensive.
I suspect the two iPads will last another year yet, so I'm looking to replace them in that timescale. Our experiences with the Linx machines are pushing us towards Windows 10, so it would be really helpful to read informed posts by people who have experience of Microsoft and other Windows tablets (we have probably decided against Apple products).

​Exactly, I had the SP3 and I loved it :disappointed: I had to sell it cuz I needed serious cash.

Exactly. Ok its a very different league but the Linx8 only has 1gb RAM and happily runs Windows, my dad has one of those. If you actually needed more than 4gb (not thinking you need it) then id expect you actually need an i7 cpu to make use of it.

This is also a helpful thread. Thank you.

This is a useful comment amongst quite a few uninformed posts. I'm thinking about replacements for out iPads (they work fin at the moment so I'm just keeping up with what is available) so a comment by someone that actually uses the machine (and is happy with it) is very helpful indeed. It does seem a little expensive, we have a Linx 10 that only cost just over £100 including a keyboard (and is a very useful little machine), the Surface Pro must be a far better PC but I'm not sure we could justify paying almost six times as much (because we probably don't need that much mobile computing power).
Helpful post though, many thanks.

Have you compared the price of this with a 128gb ipad pro ????

Currys/PCworld customer support is terrible IMO would rather pay extra to JL who also include a 3 year guarantee,

so do the iPads!

​its a tablet? although better with one you don't need one

I think it comes down to how much typing you do. If doings hours of typing a day the Mac Air keyboard is better unless you use an external for the Pro 4 with or without docking station. I keep looking at the Surface Book which is a lovely bit of kit with proper keyboard, I just cannot justify it when I have a desktop and a Surface 3.

Really? I could find plenty of reviews that rate this product.