Lab – Don’t use Google Chrome with the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 5G

During our traditional battery life test, the Surface Pro 9 5G lasted 7h 30min, an honorable score and even higher than that of the Intel version which had worked only 6h 22min. However, our measurements remain far from the 7 p.m. announced by Microsoft for this model.

The ARM architecture requires suitable software to operate natively, so we turned to the Google Chrome browser, which is only available on Windows in the x86 version for Intel and AMD processors. The version optimized for Windows On ARM is simply not available, because Google does not want to compete with its Chromebooks which have an optimized version.

We have therefore renewed our autonomy tests with the Microsoft Edge browser designed for the ARM architecture. And under these conditions, the Surface Pro 9 ARM5G lasted 10 h 50 min, or 3 h 20 min more.

This small disappointment perfectly illustrates the problem that Microsoft currently encounters with PCs under ARM. The performances are not at the rendezvous and the autonomy suffers. A challenge that will have to be met with the arrival in 2024 of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4, which is promising.

The complete test of the Surface Pro 9 5G is to be found this weekend on Digital.