The Surface Pro X simply trims and rounds out the classic yet dated Surface Pro design, bringing down its thinness and weight even further. So, unless you have a very specific use case that only the Surface Pro X can solve, there are a number of far more powerful, versatile and feature-rich (even thin-and-light) laptops out there for similar prices – just check out our best 2-in-1 laptops and best tablets with keyboards buying guides for some brilliant alternatives.

All told, that’s $1,329 in the US to get a comparable experience to the complete Surface Pro X. Its keyboard accessory costs an exorbitant $199 (£199, AU$299), while the tablet’s Apple Pencil goes for another $129 (£119, AU$199). That starts at $999 (£999, AU$1,699) for half as much storage (64GB), with a similarly-sharp display and just one USB-C port. While the Surface Pro X is certainly an expensive device, it's price starts to look a little more tempting when compared to its chief rival: the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. That’s for the bare minimum of acceptable memory and storage these days, meanwhile a Surface Pro 7 goes for nearly $150 less and will get you a much stronger Intel Core i5 (Ice Lake) processor.

This means that the cheapest version of the complete Surface Pro X experience will cost you $1,269 in the US to start. That will cost you an additional $269 (£259, AU$429). You already know the kicker, don’t you? That’s right, these prices do not include the Type Cover with the stowable and automatically charging Surface Slim Pen. All Surface Pro X models include Microsoft’s Qualcomm Snapdragon-based, 3.0GHz SQ1 system-on-a-chip (SoC) processor, as well as the 13-inch, 2,880 x 1,920-pixel (267 pixels per inch) PixelSense touch display in the signature 3:2 aspect ratio.

Microsoft sq1 processor