FEBRUARY 2021 PCWorld 35color options are available.
The Surface Pro 7+
name is appropriate, as the
Surface Pro 7 (go.pcworld.
com/sfp7) included Intel’s
10th-gen Ice Lake
processors but was
otherwise just a spec bump
from its predecessor. With
the Surface Pro 7+,
Microsoft is not only
upgrading the internal
components, but adding
the LTE option off the bat,
something that it hasn’t always done.
(Unfortunately, 5G isn’t yet included.)
The only apparent physical change is the
SSD drawer.
Microsoft positioned the design of the
Surface Pro 7+ as at least a partial response to
the pandemic, which has forced many of its
customers to work from home and adapt to
what you might call extraordinary working
conditions. For one, Microsoft said that
customers have been forced to move
around their homes unexpectedly, and
work from odd setups; the unexpected
demands of Zoom/Teams calls, downloads,
and other loads on a home wireless network
has made offloading the wireless data
burden to a cellular network a convenience,
if not a priority.
Internally, users will have a choice of
buying versions of the Surface Pro 7+ with
either a dual-core Core i3-1115G4 processor,
or two quad-core options: the Core
i5-1135G7 and the Core i7-1165G7. A change
no one will mind: Microsoft has retired the
4GB RAM option, offering 8GB, 16GB, and a
new 32GB LPDDR4x memory option.
Users are now accustomed to “camera to
camera is the new face to face,” added Robin
Seller, the corporate vice president of
Microsoft Devices, in a blog post (go.
pcworld.com/msdv). The new emphasis on
videoconferencing has turned the high-
resolution cameras built into the Surface Pro 7
(go.pcworld.com/msca) and the new 7+
from luxuries to essentials. The 5MP user-
facing camera and an 8MP rear camera both
capture 1080p video, and a pair of far-field
mics to pick up your voice. It appears that the
Surface Pro 7+ speakers have been upgradedMicrosoft’s Surface Pro 7+ is almost physically indistinguishable from
its predecessor, the Surface Pro 7.