MARCH 2021 PCWorld 63answer two related
questions: How much faster
is the Surface Pro 7+
compared to the Surface
Pro 7, and how much faster
is the tablet version of Intel’s
11th-gen Tiger Lake chip
versus its predecessor, the
10th-gen Ice Lake? The
answer is: a lot faster, and
without any fan noise to go
along with it.
For benchmark nerds,
one of the best things about
the Microsoft Surface family
is that the various models
have remained relatively
unchanged, making it easier
to draw solid comparisons
between generations. That allowed us to use
the Surface Laptops to compare Intel’s Ice
Lake chip against the AMD Ryzen 3000
Mobile family (go.pcworld.com/r7i7), for
example, to determine the best mobile
processor of that generation. Now we can do
the same for Intel’s tablet chips.
We have a review unit of the Microsoft
Surface Pro 7+ in house, and we’re working
through our performance tests. But even the
limited benchmarks we’ve run so far—from
synthesized CPU tests to a series of creative
workloads—already tell us that the Surface Pro
7+ offers some massive advantages,
specifically in graphics. Here’s a sneak peek.
HOW WE COMPARED
THE SURFACE PRO 7 AND
SURFACE PRO 7+
The Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro 7+ we’re
testing differ in a few notable ways, as we
have to work with what Microsoft and other
vendors send us for review. Still, it’s worth
noting that while the Surface Pro 7 we
reviewed was a Core i7, our Surface Pro 7+
review unit is a Core i5. If you buy the
Surface Pro 7+ with a Core i7 chip
installed, performance should be better.
Here’s a small snapshot of the two
system configurations. The key differences
are in the processor and the integrated GPU.The Surface Pro 7 we tested has a Core i7.