Surface Go 2 is a cheap and charming Windows tablet

[MUSIC] It is the laptop I was least expecting. It's the laptop that really nobody was asking for it but here it is. And so far I kind of like it. It is this guy right here. The new Surface go to from Microsoft, that's right isn't surface go, not Surface Pro. Surface Pro your big windows slate and you get the keyboard is snapping on magnetically [INAUDIBLE] that pops out. But again the Surface go has that window slate and you snap the keyboard on and it's got the several kickstand that comes out the differences. It's smaller and less expensive. When we saw the first version of the surface go, I think back in 2018, it seemed perfectly nice. It was frankly kind of underpowered. And once you add it on all the extra accessories you had to buy to really make it useful. It was not that inexpensive anymore. Maybe you should trade up to a Surface Pro instead, or get a more traditional clamshell hybrid like a Lenovo yoga Well the surface go to fixes some of those problems about the original not all of them, but it's certainly a nicer machine with a lot more high end potential because they have taken the screen. They bumped it up from a 10 inch screen to a 10.5 inch screen and frankly, that makes a big difference when you're talking about a small screen. Bezels are a little bit thinner, but they're still pretty thick compared to a lot of other devices out there. We're getting the bezels the border around the screen really smallest become one of the main selling points, on its own. It kind of looks a little bit like an iPad. It's a Windows slate. The real key to all of the surface products is they sell this guy, the sold separately. Keyboard cover and it attaches magnetically just like this. [SOUND] And then you've got something with a keyboard and a screen, almost like you can do with the iPad now where you have Apple's new magic keyboard clip on cover attachment. Now the catch with the iPad version is Number one you're running IOS not windows. So there's some limitations there. Number two, that magic keyboard for the iPad, It's like $300 $350. That's crazy. Then again I used to say the surface keyboards were crazy because when you buy a surface whether it's a Surface Pro or if it's a surface Go like this guy. It's $399 to start with this but guess what, what comes to the box is just this nothing else. If you want the keyboard that is $129 you get a super plain Jane one for 99 but the nice ones with the fabric cover and the colors, those are 129 if you want the surface pen that's another $100 on top of that. When you're starting at 399 for the product itself, that really adds up. It's a big additional expense and you end up spending a lot more than you expected to. That said the combination of the surface go and the keyboard is a pretty nice one. I even find that small size means it's a little bit more left friendly than some of the other surface products which are great on desks. Great mounted on small spaces but on the human lap, the fact that the the kickstand comes out in an angle and you have to balance it and you don't really have a lot of points of contact between the device in your legs. It's not the most laughable thing ever, but it has its fans and every service does really well and frankly, they're really well engineered well put together products for the new go version, the smaller, less expensive version. The biggest changes, you can now get an Intel Core M3 processor. And although that is again going to cost you extra, the base 399 model is still a Pentium. And that's not going to be useful for all day everyday work. The fact that you're taking a machine like this and you're saying, It's super small, it's super portable, it goes anywhere. That may not be the biggest selling point right now when we're all. Stuck at home not going anywhere. But the fact that it is a surface product that is relatively inexpensive, is a good selling point. And once we all get out of being self guaranteed and working from home, having a very small, very portable system could certainly be something that's nice to have. There is one last caveat though, when I turned on the Surface Go for the first time, I was shocked by one thing, the operating system it comes with, it's not regular windows 10, it is something that they used to call windows 10s, which I had not heard about in the last couple of years because it was mentioned a few times and then Seemingly never mentioned again. It was a stripped down version of Windows that would only run certain pre approved app from the Microsoft Windows App Store. Which is frankly not the world's greatest app store. And a lot of the stuff you want to do, even things like installing the web browser Chrome, just are not gonna work on it. Now, It's called Windows 10 in S mode now to kind of make you understand it's not really that different it's still windows 10. So as soon as you start to load up a programme that is not compatible with it, it says, Do you really want to run this? Well okay press here but don't say we did warn you and literally in 10 seconds you've got regular windows 10 on here. They say you can't go back to Windows ten s so be careful. Don't worry about it. You don't want to go back and that should be the first thing that you do. I'm just gonna leave that in. I love that the surface go. This new second version is very portable. It's made some processor and screen updates. I think the keyboard is still one of the best engineer things I've seen in the laptop scene in Many years, it does still bummed me out that you have to pay extra for the keyboard it should come in the box. It's practically required. No one would ever buy a surface and not want to get the keyboard to go along with it. That said, if you want that combination of super small, super light and not all that expensive, even if you're throwing an extra $129 for the keyboard Then you might want to take a look at the Microsoft Surface Go 2.