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

During our traditional battery life test, the Surface Pro 9 5G lasted 7h 30min, a respectable score and even higher than the Intel version, which had only managed 6h 22min. However, our measurements remain far from the 19:00 announced by Microsoft for this model.

The ARM architecture requires appropriate software to work 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 test 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 little disappointment perfectly illustrates the problem that Microsoft is currently encountering with PCs under ARM. The performances are not in the meeting and the autonomy suffers. A challenge 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 can be found this weekend Digital.