Microsoft yesterday shared a new ad on YouTube titled "Microsoft Surface Pro 7: The Better Choice," in which the company compares its tablet computer to Apple's 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, as spotted by MSPoweruser.
The ad highlights the Surface Pro 7's touchscreen and included stylus as opposed to only a "little bar" (the Touch Bar) on the MacBook Pro. Other advantages of the Surface Pro 7 mentioned in the ad include the detachable keyboard, a cheaper price, and the claim that the tablet is "a much better gaming device" than the MacBook Pro.
Results uploaded on Geekbench show that the Intel Core i3-equipped Surface Pro 7 with 4GB of RAM has single-core and multi-core scores of 769 and 1,851, respectively. Additionally, the Intel Core i5-equipped Surface Pro 7 with 8GB of RAM has single-core and multi-core scores of 1,210 and 4,079, respectively. By comparison, the M1 chip running on a 13-inch MacBook Pro with 8GB of unified memory achieved greater performance than both Surface models with single-core and multi-core scores of 1,735 and 7,686, respectively.
The 12.3-inch Surface Pro 7 starts at $749.99 with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM and increases to $2,299.99 with 1TB of storage and 16GB of RAM. In comparison, the current 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro starts at $1,299 with 256GB of storage and 8GB of unified memory and increases to $2,299 for 2TB of storage and 16GB of unified memory.
Microsoft has long positioned its Surface devices as an ideal combination of both a tablet and computer experience. In years past, Microsoft has released several ads promoting its Surface lineup over Apple's MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iPad lineup.
Top Rated Comments
Yeah, you don’t get touch on an MBP. You also don’t get a detachable keyboard, because it’s not that kind of device (is their point that the Surface Laptop is a bad device?).
But then they bring up the price. At that price, the Surface Pro 7 includes neither the pen nor any keyboard, and its specs are very poor.
Why didn’t they simply compare it with the iPad Pro? It makes much more sense that way, and they could tout that it runs Windows apps and games (though you can’t convince me that there’s much of a market of college kids who want to run games on a Windows tablet. It’s an awkward compromise).