Battery blow: Surface Pro has ‘approximately half the battery life’ of Surface RT

If you were thinking about picking up a Surface Pro when the tablet hits stores in January, does news that it has around 4.5 hours battery life mean you might decide to spend the money on a decent laptop instead?

If you were planning to use your new Surface Pro tablet indoors most of the time – in other words, close to a power point – then news via one of Microsoft’s official Twitter accounts that the device’s battery has half the strength of the Surface RT’s may not bother you too much. But if you were planning to take it out and about with you, on planes, trains and automobiles, it may give pause for thought.

Sure, if the Surface RT’s battery life was around 20 hours, then 10 hours on the Pro device would still be more than good enough for most users. But it’s not. When DT’s mobile expert Jeffrey Van Camp put the Surface RT through its paces for his review last month, he found he was getting between 8 and 9 hours before it needed juicing up. Even the mathematically challenged will not have taken too long to work out that that translates to between 4 and 4.5 hours of battery life on a Surface Pro. Pretty measly, huh?

Incidentally, in his review, written well before news of the Pro’s battery life broke, Jeffrey wrote: “Microsoft isn’t going for the gold on the battery life.” Prescient words, indeed, Jeffrey. By the looks of it, it’s not even on the podium, with competitors like the 9.7-inch iPad, Amazon’s 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD and Google’s Nexus 10 claiming battery time upwards of 8 hours.

News that the Pro version of Surface has “approximately half the battery life of the Surface RT” was posted on Thursday on Microsoft’s Surface Twitter account in response to a question from another Twitter user.

This came just hours after pricing details for the tablet – which launches in January – were released by Microsoft: $900 for the 64GB model and $1,000 for the 128GB model. Both versions feature Windows 8 Pro, an Intel Core i5 processor and a 10.1-inch 1080p HD display.

Are you considering picking up a Surface Pro? If the information in the tweet proves accurate and the battery is indeed more laptop than tablet, are you going to look elsewhere, or is it not too much of an issue for you?

 [via engadget]