The second and newest challenger to Google's Chromebook's dominance of the profitable K-12 student market showed up July 10 -- the Surface Go 10-inch 2-in-1 detachable from the Microsoft Surface series.
Surface Go joins Apple's 9.7-inch iPad (2018) launched last April as a contender seeking to slice-off some market share from the omnipresent Chromebooks that owned over 60 percent of the U.S. education market in 2017. Microsoft's Windows held 22 percent of the market while Apple's MacOS and iOS controlled 17 percent.
The traditional route to dominance among students is an array of incredible features (especially lightweight) combined with a cheap price. Surface Go weighs a teentsy 1.15 pounds (18.4 ounces) and is truly thin at only 8.3 mm. It retails at $399 and this price is a disadvantage compared to the iPad (2018) and the Chromebook.
In contrast, Apple's 9.7-inch iPad (2018) retailed for $329 at launch in an effort to eat into the market owned by Google and its cheap Chromebooks. The iPad weighs just 469 grams (1.034 lb).
The newest Google Chromebook, the flippable, 10-inch ASUS Chromebook Flip C101, was released in September 2017 and retails from $289 to $318. It weighs a heftier 1.9 lb.
So, what does the student get for his or her $399 Surface Go?
There's the battery that lasts for nine hours based on normal video playback and that takes two hours to charge. Surface Go runs Windows 10 Home or Pro (depending on the model) in S-Mode.
The display is a 3 x 2 optically-bonded Pixel Sense 1800 x 1200 display with a density of 217 PPI. Optical bonding provides a full 180-degree viewing angle. The cameras consist of a 5MP front-facing the camera for video conferencing; an 8 MP rear camera and an infrared camera for facial recognition with Windows Hello.
As expected, the keyboard's detachable and the machine supports the Surface Pen. There are also features aimed squarely at students. One of these is that portrait mode renders pages much like a textbook. On the other hand, landscape mode renders pages side-by-side like an open book.
The keyboard comes in black plus three options with Alcantara fabric: Burgundy, Cobalt Blue, and Platinum. The full functioning USB-C port supports power, video, and data.
The smarts of this machine can be traced to its Intel Pentium Gold Processor 4415Y with Intel HD 615. Surface Go is available in several memory and storage configurations, and supports up to 8 GB of RAM and up to a 256 GB NVMe SSD. Storage options are 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.
