Following its release for business use, Microsoft’s Surface Pro with LTE Advanced is now on sale to the general public, making the top-notch 2-in-1 more attractive than ever before. Better yet, if you’re a student, teacher, parent, or member of the military, you can grab one now at a sizable discount from the list price.
We enjoyed our time with the latest Surface Pro when it first debuted last year and that verdict holds true today. While it might not sport the absolute latest hardware available from the likes of Intel, a seventh-generation Core i5 CPU is still plenty powerful — especially when paired up with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD space. More powerful versions of the Surface Pro are available, but the LTE Advanced connectivity is limited to that one specification.
Still, it takes advantage of all of the other great Surface Pro features like battery life that will last a full workday and a fantastic 12.3-inch PixelSense display with a resolution of 2,736 x 1,824. That’s not a particularly typical resolution, but it does conform to the increasingly popular 3:2 aspect ratio, which gives it a lot more vertical screen space for web browsing.
The big feature of this version of the Surface Pro though is the LTE Advanced connectivity, which makes sure that you get a solid data connection just about anywhere without needing to tether your smartphone first. It’s powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, according to Windows Central.
The standard price for the whole package is $1,450 with free shipping and returns, though if you’re a student, parent, teacher or member of the military, you can have that knocked down to $1,305 when ordering directly from Microsoft. You’ll need to prove your eligibility, but that’s a noticeable drop and should make this laptop even more attractive to those particular audiences.
If you don’t need all of that fancy connectivity, but still want to enjoy the versatility and features of the best 2-in-1, we’d still recommend the Surface Pro over most of the competition — just save some money or go for one with higher specifications. If you’re interested to see what the competition has to offer, here’s our guide to the best 2-in-1s out there.
