Hands on with the Surface Pro 7 and Pro X, which is nicer to hold with its round edges, smaller bezels, and thinner chassis but lacks 3.5mm and USB-A ports
there's a dongle for that Napier Lopez / The Next Web : Hands-on: Microsoft's Surface Buds are far more comfortable than they look Mark Hachman / PCWorld : Hands on with Microsoft Surface Pro X, a bold new direction for Surface Tweets: Emil Protalinski / @epro : Surface Earbuds work with Cortana, but also with Alexa, Bixby, Google Assistant, Siri, or any other virtual assistant #MicrosoftEvent https://venturebeat.com/... Lance Ulanoff / @lanceulanoff : I just tried out Microsoft's AI-based gaze-adjusting technology on the Surface Pro X. It moves your gaze from the screen to the camera. I tested it by hitting a keyboard button. Wild. #MicrosoftEvent pic.twitter.com/EMe9MLEft1 Kyle Wiens / @kwiens : The new Surface Pro X has upgradeable storage! Take that, iPad Pro! pic.twitter.com/YOGPwZqXBr A. Llamas / @_allamas : The Surface Pro X feels like an evolution of the surface Go. It looks like it has the same soft edges as the Surface Go has.
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after the Surface Laptop 2 debut at the same October event, Microsoft split its flagship line in two: an Intel Surface Pro 7 that keeps the familiar port layout, and a Surface Pro X that trades USB-A and the 3.5mm jack for round edges, smaller bezels, and a thinner chassis — plus ARM silicon underneath.
The Pro X is the risky half of the pairing. Early reactions praise the hold-in-the-hand design but flag what it costs users, and The Verge's follow-up November review confirmed the pattern: beautiful hardware, expensive, slow for the price, with app compatibility issues on Windows-on-ARM.
First-order effects
- Buyers at launch face a real fork: the Pro 7 keeps legacy ports for existing docks and accessories, while the Pro X forces a dongle-dependent setup in exchange for the thinner, rounded chassis.
Second-order effects
- Accessory makers gain a new dongle-and-hub market around the Pro X's USB-C-only body, while Microsoft's own add-ons carry the cost burden — the 2020 refresh still ships with the keyboard sold separately despite LTE and strong battery life.
- Windows software vendors face pressure to deliver native ARM builds or accept emulation penalties, since the Pro X's 'slow for the price' verdict lands squarely on app compatibility rather than the screen or build.
Third-order effects
- The 2019 gamble ages into strategy: Microsoft's later enterprise machines add a Copilot key and NPU (Surface Laptop 6 / Pro 10), the Surface Pro 11 runs ARM apps unevenly but pairs OLED with a Flex Keyboard, and the 2025 fan-less ARM Surface Pro 12 shows the port-light, thermally quiet template becoming the default Surface shape.
- If the pattern holds, legacy ports disappear from premium detachables entirely — the iPad Pro comparison in the coverage suggests Apple and Microsoft converging on the same trade of I/O for thinness, leaving dongles as permanent tax on pro users.
The trend: Microsoft's Surface line is completing its decade-long migration from Intel convertible to fan-less, ARM-first, port-minimal tablets, with the 2019 Pro X as the proof-of-concept its successors industrialized.