Anyone else got an opinion on this?
It's the new SP vs HP Spectre x2 vs Dell 5825 for me.
HP stands out because of the specs vs price (i7 and Iris for the same price as the SP i5...), but I'm worried about battery life.
I've had the new SP for almost a month. I played with the HP in Best Buy for a few minutes. I've not laid eyes on the Dell.
My opinion is the new SP is a great machine. I have the i5, so totally silent operation and performance has been great. I am getting 8-10 hours of usage on a charge, for work. That is usage, not elapsed time. For example, I spent 8 hours yesterday in meetings taking notes in tablet mode for about 45 minutes and then popping on the keyboard and doing other work in MS Office and Firefox between them. I intentionally left it uncharged that whole time.
The inking experience to me is nearly perfect. There's no lag at all that I can tell, and the feel of it is like writing with the best gel pen you could buy. But this is better than paper, because you get an ink result, but can erase, change colors and textures... loving the experience in OneNote.
The display is gorgeous. I've been in meetings with colleagues that are using our company issue Dell Lattitudes and their screens look horrible... can't believe I had been using that every day.
There is not much that I am not loving about the Surface Pro.
In contrast, the HP Spectre ... I've heard the battery life is more on part with SP4. The keyboard is metal instead of the SP fabric (although you can use the SP keyboard if you want), but I don't find the metal keyboard any more firm; and the key travel on the new SP is way better. The pen experience I believe is also far superior to the HP. Finally, I have read some reports of fan noise the HP too. Its definitely a better price point; but I in tend to keep my machines for about 5 years or so; so I don't mind spending a little more.
My only wish is that there were a larger SSD available with the i5. I'd love to get a 512GB drive with i5/8G RAM.