The Surface Pro 9 still looks like a tablet just under 1 cm thick with a kickstand on its back. As usual with Surface products, the finishes are exemplary and the kickstand mechanism leaves no doubt regarding its longevity.
To transform this tablet PC, it is necessary to add its dedicated keyboard in alcantara, which is magnetized on the lower part and folds up to hide the housing of the stylus. It is thus usual to use it flat or slightly inclined thanks to two magnets which stick to the level of the lower edge of the screen.
The backlit keyboard offers a decent typing, the travel of the keys being sufficient. It lacks overall rigidity, however, and sounds a bit hollow, especially when tilted, with the space below acting as a sounding board.
The relatively small touchpad (especially in height) does its job. We therefore find ourselves compensating for its lack of comfort by performing touch gestures directly on the screen. Left and right clicks are relatively noisy with a characteristic “cloc” with each press.
Connectivity is reduced to its simplest expression with two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left edge. The start and volume buttons sit on the top, while the power connector retains its position to the right of the screen. The jack socket has simply disappeared.
Wireless connectivity is entrusted to the Intel AX211 chip compatible with wifi 6E and its famous 6 GHz band at 2.4 Gb / s, but also with Bluetooth 5.2.
On the webcam side, two sensors are present. The first on the front with 3.5 megapixels is of very good quality for videoconferencing; the second 10 Mpx sensor will allow you to take pictures quickly. Note that the front webcam is Windows Hello compatible and therefore allows you to quickly unlock a Windows session.
To cool the ardor of the Core i7-1255U, Microsoft has placed a fan, the extractions being located very discreetly on the upper edge of the tablet. Thus, following regarding thirty minutes of video encoding, the back of the device reaches just under 42°C and 40.6°C on the front. We do not notice any particular hot spot and the metal surface on the back of the tablet also serves as a heatsink.
Despite this strong demand, noise pollution is contained with 34.7 dB (A) recorded, not enough to disturb our office neighbors.
