You’re in the market for a tablet. The iPad has been the leader of the pack ever since it arrived to 
the scene in 2010. Others have tried and horribly failed. Cue in the Dell hybrid tablet and laptop here. You have to give it to Apple support. Competitors not only need a solid tablet, but they’re fighting an uphill battle with trying muster users away from the Apple app store. Nowadays, depending on your device, you can choose the Google store or Microsoft support store. Both have been gaining steam and taking some app purchases away from Apple’s share. Enter the Surface Pro to the scene.
The Surface Pro has been Microsoft’s prized tablet. However, the old versions weren’t able to run full-fledged. Instead, they were pseudo app-like versions that really were clunky and ruined the whole reason for buying the Surface in the first place. With the Surface Pro 4, you get an actual machine that runs Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint as you would on a laptop or desktop.
Alright, enough of the pleasantries. Let’s get to the match-up here.
- Pricing and storage – The iPad Pro is $799 – $1,079 depending if you go with the 32GB or
128GB model as well as LTE cellular radio. The Surface Pro starts at $899 that comes with the 128GB storage. You can also beef up the power and speed like a desktop by upgrading it to Core i3, i5, or i7 processors. RAM can go from 4GB to 16GB. And you can also go to a whopping 1TB of storage if you’d like. That’s pretty ridiculous on a tablet! And if you have an external hard drive, the Surface Pro 4 has a USB 3.0 port you can use to connect to it. iPad Pro, well, you’d have to find an lightning-adapter external drive which is available but obviously not compatible with PC’s or laptops. Advantage: Surface Pro 4 for its killer storage upgrade option. - Design and display – Hey, let’s face it. Apple is king when it comes to design. This is no different here. Who knew slimmer and lighter could be translated to sexier. Well, that’s the case here with the iPad Pro. The iPad Pro is 12 x 8.68 x .27 inches and weighs a light 1.57 pounds. In comparison, the Surface Pro 4 measures 11.5 x 7.93 x .33 inches and weighs a heavier 1.73 pounds. Apple has a slight resolution edge at 2,732 x 2,048 whereas Microsoft is at 2,736 x 1,824. Advantage: iPad Pro
- Case and pen – A lot of attention has been made of the case and pen on both tablets. Steve Jobs was always against a stylus so Tim Cook honored that by releasing the “Apple pencil,” not a “stylus.” This play on words didn’t fool anyone and some Apple fan enthusiasts have plainly not bought the iPad Pro for this single defiance. Okay, I digress. Here’s the deal with the stylus, or pen, or whatever you want to call the pencil-thingy. You can shell out $99 for the Apple Pencil if you’d like. By the way, it just doesn’t work as you’ll need to charge it up and it will last up to 12 hours. The Surface has the Surface Pen is only $50 and just works. No battery charge is needed. As per the case / keyboard parts, Apple’s Smart Keyboard is $169 and the Surface Pro Type Cover is $130. Each has a built-in keyboard and although they are necessary evils, I’m bitter towards both for forcing consumers to pay for them. Well, okay, we are used to using the iPad glass for typing as I’m more bitter towards Microsoft for forcing users to pay for the keyboard case unit since 90% of the people buying it is to turn it into a laptop + keyboard typing machine. Advantage: iPad Pro due to my pure bitterness on this towards Microsoft
- And the winner is – Yup, still the iPad on this one. Still looks better, you still have tons of apps from the Apple store, and the Surface Pro 4 is priced too high when you can just buy a Windows laptop for cheaper with comparable specs. Apple does it again!