It’s been a while since the 2-in-1 Surface Pro 8 productivity beast last made headlines with a substantial discount or two, but now that the Surface Pro 9 is decidedly around the corner, Windows enthusiasts looking to maximize their savings while minimizing their hardware compromises are in for quite the exceptional treat.
Although Microsoft’s next-gen iPad Pro alternative will undoubtedly pack, well, next-gen Intel processors (while also offering ARM-based in-house SQ configurations for the first time in the family’s history), it’s incredibly hard to argue with the raw power and speed of an existing Surface Pro 8 model rocking an 11th Gen Intel Evo Platform Core i7 chip.
This bad boy also has a state-of-the-art 512GB SSD on deck, as well as no less than 16 gigs of RAM, not to mention all of the premium specs and features offered by every single fall 2021-released Pro 8 variant.
We’re talking everything from a stunning 13-inch “PixelSense Flow” display with a resolution of 2880 x 1920 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate capabilities, and minimal bezels to a stellar battery life of up to 16 hours on a single charge in “typical device usage”, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support, a good old fashioned 3.5mm headphone jack, Dolby Atmos-enhanced stereo speakers, a 10MP rear-facing shooter with 4K video recording abilities, and a 5MP front-facing camera with Windows Hello face authentication.
All in all, this is way closer to a professional computing machine than an inherently flawed consumer tablet (minus the bundled keyboard), and for a presumably limited time only, it can be yours for a whopping 600 bucks under its $1,899.99 list price.
That’s still pretty expensive, especially if you compare this massively discounted Surface Pro 8 configuration with Apple’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2021) or Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S8 family, both of which have received deep price cuts of their own lately, but for a number of different reasons, that’s simply an unfair comparison.
For instance, the newest iPad Pro 12.9 giant may feel like a bargain in an entry-level 128GB storage version, but Amazon is still charging $1,200 for a 512 gig model and Apple can’t exactly rival the 16GB memory count, Intel Core i7 power, or Windows 11 productivity of Microsoft’s absolute beast currently sold at $600 less than usual.
