Retire the Pro 4?
Good morning Surface fam,
I have a Surface Pro 4 that I've owned since January of 2016. It's been a stalwart workhorse since then, carrying me through quite a bit of travel leisure with family, work on active duty, and 75% of my online masters degree. I use it as a companion device now mostly in conjunction with my Surface Laptop 3 workstation I have set up at home, using my Pro 4 almost exclusively for OneNote and Drawboard PDF as a digital note taker for class, as well as Word and Edge when I'm on the road.
I've noticed that my battery life has been declining the last 9 months or so, and precipitously the last few months - really only getting maybe 3-4 hours on a full charge. I've checked my settings and I have it set to where almost nothing starts up when I boot up my device, and the only programs I use at any given time are OneNote and Drawboard, with Word and Edge while I'm on the road.
Is this more or less the end of my Pro 4 as far as on-the-road productivity? I've been debating on selling my Pro 4 AND my Laptop 3 and consolidating into either a Pro 7 i7/16GB (my Laptop 3 is an i5/8GB, Pro 4 i5/4GB) to have at my Dock 2 workstation with external monitors... Or maybe waiting to see what the Pro 8 offers? A Best Buy trade in for my Laptop 3 yields 260...? I'm thinking I could get more than that on ebay or Craigslist...
My use cases are predominantly home with a Dock 2 with external monitors, running OneNote, Word, Drawboard, Mail, Edge, Your Phone, and some light gaming. Definitely need hands-on with screen/pen (that's something I've felt I've underutilized with my Laptop 3). I'm on the road about once a month for anywhere from a weekend to a week or more on occassion. Advice? TIA!
Posted Mar 21, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC
Just fyi, mods remove purchase advice posts that are outside the pinned purchase advice thread.
It's not surprising that you've underutilized the pen on your Laptop 3, because pen use on a traditional laptop is awkward. It's a different world on Surface Pros.
Also not surprising that you can't get more battery life than that out of your SP4 after over four years.
SP7 would give you the same performance as your Laptop 3 while providing much better pen use. On the other hand, you'd have less screen space and worse lapability, which might be a negative if you often type with the laptop on your lap.
Currently not known when SP8 will be released. You could also look at SP7+.
EDIT: added the missing + to the end of the model in last sentence.