Sher the Love
Member
Waiting on pricing. Hoping the base model $899 is 8GB ram and I5.... I really like the Surface Book but too expensive, especially since I don't need a dedicated GPU.
Well, watched the whole event. I'll be getting a phone, but the sp4 was totally underwhelming. Hasn't given me even an itch to upgrade from the 3. Nothing exciting whatsoever. Think I'll be waiting for the surface book reviews.
This copying Apple and stupid buzzwords is just pathetic though.
Is this a joke? MS copied Apple? A. Why does anyone really care who copies who. B. I think the ripping off has been mainly aimed at MS lately. Agreed on the SP4 not game changing but to be fair, USB 3, windows hello and Skylake make it worth the upgrade.
What happened to ditching the fan on the SP4? Microsoft very briefly glazed over the "hybrid" cooling system. If the SP4 didn't have a annoying fan i'd be more apt to upgrade.
Think of the Wireless Display Adapter just as the same thing you would get by having a wired monitor (it includes audio in the stream - you dont need to purchase anything else). You use the normal Windows settings to either extend, mirror or just use the second monitor. I typically sit in my couch and have my coding environment (IDE) open in my Surface screen while I either have video tutorials or browsers open in my living room 55 inch TV.
For entertainment purposes a Google Chrome (they released a new one last week) is good enough. It has apps such as Netflix and it connects to your home router to fetch data, so it doesnt drain your devices batteries. You control it through mobile apps or the Chrome browser add ons.
In the other hand, the Miracast devices do a P2P Wifi connection to your device, it doesnt even need a router. Hence, the battery in the Surface suffers because it is constantly keeping the Wifi connectivity to the adapter. It basically makes up for a HDMI cable not being there, there are no apps or anything like that that could be installed to the adapter.
My experience with the Microsoft adapter has been excellent. No noticeable lags or quality loss. I highly recommend it to anyone that is used to working dual screen and wants to be moving around the house without being constrained to a docking station. If you only want to watch online content on the TV and your TV doesnt have built in apps, get a Chromecast, its only $35 in the US.
Performance should be good if your primary WiFi connection is on 5GHz....
I used mine yesterday to watch the Microsoft event and actually I found it performed very well. It only crashed out once and luckily that wasn't when anything particularity interesting was happening... the only thing that annoys me a little bit is the initial faffing about. I need to change my internet connection to 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz (for reasons I can explain if needed) then manually disconnect my HDMI connection to my monitor, as well as changing the source on the TV (such a shame this thing doesn't have HDMI-CEC)
I tried watching some TV later on just to test it out a bit more and whilst performance was good, there was some digital break up no matter what I sent through.
Overall though for £25 I really can't complain! Would be a viable alternative to AirPlay... but I have that already and man it's just so much easier/quicker for audio. Swipe up on the iPhone and hit AirPlay, and change the source on the Hi-Fi. Done.