The Surface Pro is a trailblazer of sorts in the market for 2-in-1 devices, but many rivals have been introduced since it debuted. While Microsoft would love to maintain its dominance, as signified by the recent unveiling of the Surface Pro 4, interesting new hybrids from competing manufacturers keep appearing – one of these is the Google Pixel C. Here is a comparison of the new Google hybrid against the latest professional-focused tablet from Microsoft to help you determine the one worth your money.
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The Design
Both hybrid parades premium construction with chassis made of metal, but the Google tablet having a smaller footprint. While the Surface Pro 4 has a kickstand that allows you rotate it and use in different angles, it rival lacks one but still lets you flip for between 135 and 180 degrees.
The Microsoft device offers an improved keyboard with wide-spaced keys and a large multi-touch trackpad. The enhanced Type Cover also comes with backlight and a fingerprint reader.
The Display
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 packs a larger 12.3-inch touch display offering an amazing resolution of 2,736 x 1,824 pixels. By comparison, the Pixel C sports a 10.2-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,800.
The convertible from Google promises crispier viewing than its rival, thanks to its smaller display which helps it to a greater pixel density of 308 pixels per inch, compared to the Surface Pro 4’s 267 pixels per inch.
You will have to make a trade-off between large screen estate and better clarity here, obviously. The Surface Pro 4 is bundled with an improved Surface Pen for interacting with the display, but the Pixel C offers no stylus accessory, at least not with the price.
Performance and OS
Under the hood, the Surface Pro 4 is equipped with latest Intel Core Series processor (up to Core i7), assisted by up to 16 GB of RAM. The Google Pixel C, by comparison, is driven by a relatively lightweight NVIDIA Tegra X1 processor, which is paired with just 3GB of RAM.
Graphics is handled by a robust Intel Iris 540 GPU on the Surface tablet and by a NVIDIA Maxwell GPU on the Pixel C. Judging by these configurations, the Surface Pro 4 is the one to go for if you need a tablet that can truly double as a powerful laptop.
The operating systems used by the hybrids further confirm that the Microsoft device is more of a 2-in-1 laptop than a 2-in-1 tablet. It runs on the latest Windows 10 OS from its maker, offering you access to several new and exciting features such as Cortana, Continuum and Windows Hello.
Of course, Google Pixel C also runs on a latest operating system, even though it is a mobile-focused Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Extra Features and Specs
Storage on the Pixel C maxes out at just 64 GB, with this giving it away as device intended to serve more as a tablet than a laptop. The Surface Pro 4, on the other hand, carries a super-fast solid-state drive, with capacity ranging from 128 GB up to a massive 1 TB – just the sort of storage you’d expect to see on a laptop.
The Microsoft hybrid will also come with a microSD card slot for storage expansion, but it is not clear if its rival will have a similar slot.
The Surface Pro 4 tablet features a full-size USB 3.0 Type C port, a Mini DisplayPort, Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (5GHz) for connectivity. Google Pixel C features reversible USB Type-C port as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
You get an 8-megapixel main shooter with autofocus and Full HD (1080p) video recording capability as well as a 5-megapixel front-facing snapper on Microsoft Surface Pro 4.
In its own case, Google Pixel C will also come with rear and front cameras, but the specifications are not yet known. Up to nine hours of battery life is promised on the Surface tablet and up to 10 hours on its Google rival.
Based on the foregoing, you will find Google Pixel C perfect if you are more interested in the tablet side of an hybrid. Otherwise, Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is your better bet between the two.
