MARCH 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 19Pro X will fare in web apps. As with the PCMark test,
the Surface Pro X’s scores are unremarkable.
To emphasize multimedia applications, including
video editing, photo manipulation, and light gaming,
the PCMark 8 Creative benchmark fills the bill.
Here, again, the Surface Pro X is outpaced by older,
supposedly slower machines.
Underwriter Labs made a special version of its
3DMark graphics benchmark for ARM-powered
machines, that can be run on both x86 as well as
ARM-based systems. This allows us to do some
cross-platform benchmarking of the Surface Pro
X’s integrated Adreno GPU, and compare it to the
integrated chips in the Core and Ryzen processors.
Here, the Surface Pro X does surprisingly well.
Performance: Battery life
Distilling a product down into a single attribute can
be a dangerous stereotype. On the other hand,
Qualcomm’s whole argument for the Snapdragon 8cx
ortheMicrosoftSQ1hasbeenall-daybatterylife,
withnear ubiquitous connectivity. Unfortunately, the
Surface Pro X’s battery life was all over the map.
Manufacturershavebeenpushinghardforusto
testproducts in the real world and avoid synthesized
usecases.Buttheyaren’trepeatable.That’sthekicker
- we don’t know if, or when, an update to Photoshop
will impact performance, or by how much. With
thatsaid,wedotesteachproductunderreal-world
scenarios,aswell as with recorded benchmarks.
In this case, we took four separate approaches.
Typically, we loop a 4K video until the battery