To experience some of the best Windows hardware on the market, look no further than Microsoft Surface brand. The series first became famous for their innovative, tablet-like laptops. Microsoft later expanded the Surface line and now it’s a full family of computers.

The company was the first to successfully innovate the mobile-friendly hybrid PC hardware. It was a huge hit and resulted in every PC manufacturer copying Surface’s kickstand-packing, removable keyboard designs. But it’s still hard to find a better Windows experience than what the Surface offers.

Microsoft Surface Pro 6 is one of the best 2-in-1 devices on the market. You can turn into a makeshift laptop by pairing it up with the separately-sold Type Cover. But is the tablet good for editing? To fully answer this question, we’ve decided to review the device as its not just the performance that makes a machine good at editing.

So without any further ado, let’s just get into it.

Specifications

Design

The Surface Pro 6’s design is identical to the 2017 model. There’s almost no difference other than the elegant new black colour scheme. The tablet is quite thin and measures only 0.33 inches. It’s also very light at just 1.7 pounds.

There are no changes to the ports and wireless options. The Type Cover is also the exact same as the 2017 model.  We’ve got no complaints about the Type Cover because this iteration is excellent. In fact, it’s arguably the best accessory of its kind.

However, we would’ve liked for Microsoft to give us a USB-C port. Even the included USB 3.0 falls behind current standards in the industry. USB 3.1 has double the transferring data speed of USB 3.0.

Anyway, the main takeaway is that the tablet feels light and comfortable in our hands. Your arms won’t be feeling any strain as you perform editing tasks all day long on the Surface Pro 6.

Display

The Surface Pro 6 has a 12.3-inch screen and a high resolution of 2736 x 1824, making it a great screen for editing. The display has an aspect ratio of 3:2, which is what most of the Surface range comes with.

The display is very good. Videos and websites look sharp and crystal clear, with no colours looking noticeably washed out. The contrast is decent as well, with dark areas not appearing flat or grey. 

It’s got a tempered glass cover which tends to reflect sunlight and harsh striplights, which obstructs visibility. But that’s a minor complaint because this is a problem with all glass display covers.  

Surface Pro 6 managed to give us 90.2% of the sRGB gamut, which is good news for digital art and cartooning.

The photo viewing experience on this screen is outstanding. You can use two fingers to pinch-zoom into the images in order to perform some editing tasks. 

Performance

Maybe it’s obvious by now, but it needs to be said that the Surface Pro 6 is more efficient and powerful than the 2017 model. This newfound power is all thanks to Intel’s 8th-generation Kaby Lake Refresh chips. 

It’s not just the power which received a significant boost as battery life and multi-core performance also saw some substantial increase. This should also have result in faster video encoding and other processor-intensive tasks i.e editing.

The Surface Pro 6’s target audience is creative professionals and students, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use it to play some light games like Hearthstone or Candy Crush. Just don’t expect this device to run any AAA titles. Serious gaming was not meant for this Windows tablet.

Battery

We used the Surface Pro 6 for two weeks were able to get around seven to eight hours of power while writing and streaming Spotify playlists. We also got the same amount of hours while binge-watching our favourite TV shows, too. As far as editing is concerned, we got around seven hours of battery life. This actually exceeded our expectations because hybrid devices usually don’t have long battery lives.

Verdict

The Surface Pro 6 is a very good Windows tablet that has an awesome screen, great performance, and decent battery life. People who want to use this device for editing will find it quite capable of performing most tasks.

So feel free to buy this device if you’re looking to buy an affordable tablet good at editing.