Microsoft Surface 2 review

The new version of Microsoft's Surface tablet is a little slimmer, with an improved screen, processor and battery life, plus some new keyboard options.

It's on sale now for £359 for the 32GB version, £439 for 64GB. 

Design
The new Surface is 2mm thinner and more than 200g lighter than the Pro version, at 9mm and 676g, though it's still on the chunky side for a tablet.

The 10.6-inch screen has also been improved and now has the same sharp HD 1,920x1,080 resolution as its cousin but the sensitivity drops from ten-point to five-point. That's a shame, though you'll only tend to notice the deficiency when you need more than five fingers on the screen at once -- piano apps perhaps?

Hardware, Windows 8.1 and features
The processor is a quad-core 1.7GHz Nvidia Tegra 4, which beefs up the power and reportedly increases the battery life by an estimated 20 percent -- not quite such a leap as that of the Pro 2, but it's not bad at all. In our test it delivered a little over nine hours of continuous use.
It's running Windows 8.1 RT, the slimmed down version of the operating system that limits you to using apps from the Windows Store, rather than running any Windows-friendly software. That would be a nuisance for a PC, but within the more limited parameters of a tablet, it kind of makes sense, though it can still occasionally be frustrating.

Many of the major apps are available of course, and Xbox Music app gives you access to more than 31 million tracks for £8.99 a month, which could give Spotify a run for its money.
Tiles can now be resized to suit your preference and there are a few new time-saving elements. For instance if you want to search, you just start typing, no matter what app you're in, and you'll be offered a range of results.
You can use a standard desktop layout within Windows 8.1 but if you do it's best to lower the resolution by a couple of notches to increase the size of icons and menus -- they're just a bit too small for easy navigation using the touch screen.
As before, there are a couple of clip-on covers available but these have been further refined. The Touch Cover 2 (£100) is thinner and the hard keys are now backlit, plus it's more sensitive, with the original 80 touch sensors within it now upped to 1,092. It's certainly very sensitive in use, with an optional click sound so you know you've made contact and we had no problems with it at all.
The slightly deeper Type Cover 2 (£110) has also been slimmed down but the full-sized backlit keys retain a satisfactory amount of travel and are also backlit.
As with the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft has bundled 200GB of SkyDrive online storage and 60 minutes of landline Skype use. However only the Surface 2 comes with preloaded Office software, including Outlook.

Conclusion
The Microsoft Surface 2 makes no attempt to replace your PC. It's very much a tablet, but one that uses native Windows software so it will integrate more easily with your PC. There's not much appeal for Apple users, but its build quality, speed and performance put it in good stead against higher end Android tablets.

There's still a short learning curve to get used to Windows 8.1, but once you do, this is a sleek, capable and yes, fun, device.