How Can The Microsoft Surface Pro 5 Top The Surface Pro 4?

The Surface Pro 4 is a little more than three months old, but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating what will be on the Surface Pro 5. Hopefully, the Surface Pro 5 will have better battery life. Many have complained about the low juice, including poster Angry_Mut on Reddit.

“The battery life on my seems pretty horrendous, I recently run a test were I streamed a 8hrs 1080p video of a fire burning, to see how long my surface would last. My sp4 managed a pathetic 3:26 before dying which seems a fair bit lower than what I should be getting.”

Many other commenters agree with the person who started the thread. One of the things that was making the battery life of the Surface Pro 4 worse was the fact that when put into Sleep Mode, the battery depleted. The issue was first reported by Windows Central on October 29, a little more than a week after the Surface Pro 4 was released. However, according to Ars Technica, the issue has finally been fixed.

“Microsoft has released a firmware update to the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book that, at long last, fixes significant power management and sleep bugs that saw Microsoft’s latest systems draining their batteries and getting extremely hot when they should have been in ultra low power mode.”

According to some on Twitter, the Sleep Mode problem has been fixed. However, that doesn’t alleviate all the battery life problems. It is hoped that the Surface Pro 5 may be slightly bigger in order to allow a slightly larger battery. Most Surface Pro users agree that a compromise in terms of size would be worth it.

Then, there is the Surface Pro 4 screen, which is just about perfect. At 2736×1824 ppi, the Pro 4 has one of the sharpest and most beautiful screens on the market. However, the Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 and the Razer Blade Stealth have similar sized screens that have a 4K (3840 × 2160) resolution. The human eye cannot detect that much of a difference, but it’s there. It’s quite possible that the Surface Pro 5 will have a 4K screen. However, one has to remember that a 4K screen eats up battery life faster than a Quad HD or 3K screen does.

Some suspect that with the Surface Pro 5, Microsoft will finally include a discrete GPU for gaming. The higher-end version of the Surface Book, which is the Surface Pro 4’s big brother, has a discreet NVIDIA graphics card, making it good for gaming. The higher-end version of the Surface Pro 4 contains an integrated Intel Iris 540 chip that is good for light gaming, but doesn’t quite make the Pro 4 a gaming laptop.

Finally, there is the keyboard. The Surface Pro 4 Type Cover is a huge improvement from the practically useless Type Cover that was released for the first generation Surface Pro. However, many want a more solid keyboard on the Pro 5 that isn’t so flimsy. A hard-shell keyboard would also make the Surface Pro easier to put on your lap. Right now, a great solution for using the Surface Pro 4 on your lap is placing it on a light book or even a 13-inch laptop case.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro line is considered by many to be the most innovative laptop/tablet line on the market. There have been major strides made between the release of the first Surface Pro in February 2013 to the Surface Pro 4, released last October. What modifications, if any, would you like to see made on the Surface Pro 5? Let us know in the comments section.

[Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images]