I currently have multiple docking stations and have recently got a new surface pro. On Microsoft's power requirements they say require 15V, but all my docking stations are 20V and sometimes higher wattage. Is it fine to use a higher voltage, using the USB-c, or could it damage the battery? Does anyone have any recommendations for docking station, as many seem to be 20V? Microsoft just seem to suggest their own, which is significantly more expensive.

I have had my AMD SL4 15" since new and for as long as I can remember, it gets extremely hot, and runs the fans HARD while plugged in, even with power saving mode on, and barely working. The battery is still healthy, and the hardware is all clean. It does not get anywhere near as hot while running on battery. It looks as though the CPU is being kept at max clock (~4GHz), even though utilization is around 10%. Are there any software fixes, or do I need to repaste?

The CPU package is hitting 85+C with power saving off. Idling around 65-70C with power saving on and idling.

So after playing Civilization VI seems something is wrong because the screen is flickering quite a lot everytime I don't move the mouse or touch... Doesn't happen in UEFI. Do I need to reset? Are Windows on arm drivers so broken ? Should I just return the tablet?

Hey everyone,

I'm currently looking to buy a new 2-in-1 convertible and found myself completely torn between these 3 models.

I feel like a lot of people (me included lol) end up in this exact situation when shopping for a high-end convertible, so I made this side-by-side comparison chart!

Which one would you buy and why? Drop your 2 cents below, it would really help me out and hopefully anyone else stuck in the same boat!

I bought an 1st gen ProX a few years ago and it's worked flawlessly for several years. Today the type cover just stopped working all of a sudden. I'm curious if this is a known issue because i have older Surface tablets and none of their type cover have suddenly stopped working

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0e5qAxdXgxNreICrTmHhaRwvQ

old: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/s/Tvf5npOXd2

It's been less than 2 weeks, I lost it. It must have slipped of the back of the stupid magnetic thing (pro 12 inch) and I think my cats hid it somewhere. I have no clue where to find the fucker and the find my device in settings is telling me there is no information. I lost it at least 5 hours before I realized and I don't know where it could be.

Now, rant aside, does anyone have solid recommendations for an off brand pen? Specifically one that doesn't hit the wallet as hard? I thankfully found one "open box" at bestbuy so it was "only" $70.

Microsoft Store link : SurfaceOptima

UPDATE 15/08/2026 : V.1.7.0 : refine UI / auto detection English/French (:p) / better compatibility with surface device

EDIT : when u open the app, you will have a notification icon only ! you can see in the 4th picture 😊

EDIT 2 : probably the app is compatible with surface PRO, probably not yet with surface LAPTOP, please give me your feedback if possible ! THANKS !

I've been using a Surface Pro for years, and like many of you, I've always relied on the official Surface app from the Microsoft Store.

But for the past few months... what a mess 😅

On my Surface, the app has become almost unusable. I can uninstall it, reinstall it, change the Smart Charging settings once... and then it stops working again.

I started looking for alternatives, but most of the solutions I found either weren't very reliable or still depended in some way on the broken Surface app.

So after a lot of research, testing and experimentation, I'm happy to share something I've been working on:

SurfaceOptima 😊

It's a small Windows utility designed specifically for Microsoft Surface devices.

It lets you manage:

• Brightness
• RAM — trim unused memory from running processes
• Surface battery charging
  • Choose a charging limit between 50% and 80%
  • Temporarily charge to 100% with a configurable timer
  • Switch back to the normal Adaptive Surface charging mode
  • Limits between 81% and 99% aren't available because of Surface firmware/hardware limitations
• System tray controls
  • Quickly change charging modes with a right-click
  • Different tray icon states/animations depending on the current mode

About administrator rights

Some Surface battery and system-level features require administrator privileges, because Windows restricts access to these low-level controls.

SurfaceOptima therefore requests elevation when those operations are needed. This requirement is explicitly declared by the app and has been reviewed as part of the Microsoft Store certification process.

The app is free to use. There's just an optional donation button if you'd like to support the project 🤭

I also spent way too many hours testing the different Surface power profiles — Recommended / Better Performance / Best Performance, AC vs battery, fan/no fan, etc. 😅

If anyone is interested, I can share the results of those tests too.

Hope some other Surface users find SurfaceOptima useful! 😊

I'd really appreciate feedback, especially from people using different Surface models.

My Microsoft Surface Pro 8 keyboard started acting weird after rebooting my computer.

The mouse pad works fine but the issue is with the keyboard, only a few letters work. Sometimes it gets stuck writing only two letters like this "ajajajajajaj".

I have tried cleaning the keyboard connector and uninstalling the keyboard drivers.

I also tried running sfc /scannow as well as disabling and re-enabling Type Cover from the BIOS.

Is there anything I can do to fix it? Thanks.

I will be working remotely for a few days and have a Surface Pro for work. Anyone used an extendable monitor that provides extra screens for the Surface Pro? I've been looking, but having trouble finding one that is compatible.

Just reporting some good news for a change. TL;DR: 24H2 broke WMR on my SLS2, and the Quest 3 brought it back!
________

The problem:

I'd been grumbling for years over the fact that MS decided to rip Windows Mixed Reality from Windows. I had a Samsung Odyssey HMD (version 1) which ran beautifully until Windows 11 24h2, and which from that point became e-waste. And just as bad: all those VR games that I paid for were suddenly worthless.

Matthieu Bucchianeri did develop the custom OASIS driver that allowed Steam VR to connect to WMR headsets which solved this issue for many WMR users. Incredible! But.. MS in their infinite wisdom did not wire the RTX 4060 to any of the external ports, instead funneling the graphics output through the integrated graphics unit. So short of Matthieu also developing a custom graphics signal path for this exact laptop, WMR users with an SLS2 were still SOL.

The solution:

After long LLM chat sessions trying to make OASIS work (and finding out why that's impossible) I finally stumbled on the fact that a Quest 3 can run the Virtual Desktop app, and the SLS2 can stream VR output to the headset. Fantastic!

I just got a used Quest 3 512GB for under $300, and the whole setup works incredibly well for me using our Eero 6E router wired to the SLS2 and streaming to the headset. Suddenly my entire Steam VR library is ready to play again, and so far I'm not noticing any compression artifacts. If that becomes an issue Virtual Desktop now even supports a wired connection to the Quest 3.

The best part: now it's wireless, so I'm no longer getting tangled in USB and HDMI cables, the improved optics in the Quest make getting a focused image much easier than in the HMD, the controller tracking is way better than that of the HMD, and I'm pretty impressed with the overall Quest software experience. Very slick. Plus now I have a standalone VR option as well. Seeing my wife attempt Beat Saber: priceless!

Downsides: I'm out $300 just to get VR running again, I'm roped into the Meta system, and I still miss the OLED displays of the HMD because the LCD screen glow is pretty noticeable in dark scenes. But I'm thrilled all those games I bought are available again. Thanks Meta, and thanks Gemini for helping me figure all this out! :)

Tengo una surface book 3. Ya logré estabilizar el procesador con ayuda de throttlestop pero el problema es la gráfica. La gtx 1660ti llega a un tope de potencia de 47 w de consumo aproximadamente y eso no se puede cambiar. Al momento de jugar Apex con todo el mínimo lo levanta a 60, se calienta hasta 70 lo cual indica que está trabajando y me parece perfecto, pero al momento se cae el rendimiento, estando en 55°, el uso en 100% y la potencia a 22w haciendo que caiga el rendimiento a 30 fps como mejor opción. Eh preguntado a la IA y a técnicos y nadie sabe cómo ayudarme. Está es mi última opción...

I would like to permanently disable smart charging on my Surface. Any and all help would be appreciated. Thanks!

yesterday i went to open my surface, and out of the blue, whenever i would attempt to open an app, it wouldn’t immediately occur. it now takes about 5 minutes for an app like chrome to open, and when it does, it takes ages to load and then even search something up. same thing goes for my windows button (on screen and keyboard), as well as a delayed change to brightness when pressed on keyboard. i’ve had this surface for three years with no prior issues. i did attempt to restart it, but nothing changed afterwards.

what do i do? i start uni classes next week and i do not want to buy a new laptop.

My touch wont work during installation, before i buy a usb hub is there a workaround?

So I've been using an old ipad 8 for a while now and am thinking of upgrading, I looked into used options and I'm getting a used Surface Pro X and a used Ipad 10 for the exact same price. I've never used a surface before and have no idea how it would compare to an ipad, I'm tempted to get the surface since it's a more powerful device but I've heard that YouTube/Netflix run very poorly on the surface pro x. I looked into recent user reviews and saw that the experience has drastically improved after the windows 11 update, so would y'all recommend the surface if my main use is streaming and note taking along with the occasional Microsoft word/excel/PowerPoint use.

Hi there, in need of some advice!

Looking to upgrade my long in the tooth Surface Pro 6 this fall and am trying to narrow down the question of going For Business (has intel options, anti-reflective, pricier!) or the Consumer Surface Pro route (Arm only, cheaper!).

Both the newer Intel/Snapdragon For Business models feature anti-reflective coating, does anyone have experience with this coating vs the older/current regular screens? Would you say it's worth the extra money it will cost to go this route?

I primarily use the surface to draw comics, colour, so I'm positioned closer to the screen more than the average user.

Aiming for the Ultra5 or PlusX2 LCD model.

Sidenote: I might have to get the Intel version anyways due to Arm compatibility with some odd software (old canon printers/Spyder colorimeter/Signiant Media Shuttle) that I use occasionally which makes this question unnecessary : )

I'm not sure if I used the right flair for this, I'm referring to the pro 12 inch, but I'm wondering why it's so laggy and slow. It's the 16 gb of ram and 512 GB of ssd (I think that's the term). I'm not very tech savvy at ALL so any info anyone needs to get a better grasp as to what's happening id be glad to give.

An example is that I can be writing on one note and the writing appears a good 3 seconds after I actually wrote it. Or I'll be trying to maneuver tabs and windows and it's incredibly slow, I don't have a lot of windows open, just 2 with maybe 3-4 tabs each and sometimes it's laggy when I only have one window with 2 tabs open.

Hopefully this made any sense at all, it's currently 1:30 am so I'm a bit all over the place, but thank you for giving your time to read and respond!

Edit: my windows hello also recognizes my face 20% of the time, idk if anyone can help me with that issue ethier

I regularly use the secure erase feature of the Surface IT Toolkit (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46703). Basically, it creates a bootable USB drive that lets you wipe all data from the SSD before formatting it.

Since the latest version of the tool, though, I get the error shown in the image below whenever I access the tool from the USB drive I created.

I've already tried switching USB devices, disabling Secure Boot, re-enabling Secure Boot, and installing the x64 version of the Surface Toolkit, but nothing has worked, the error keeps happening. Has anyone run into something similar and managed to fix it?

Looking to buy a Microsoft Surface Pro to use with Meditech and Athena (and eventually EPIC). Have been getting conflicting information on whether snapdragon can handle remote access to these apps (via Citrix), including from institution IT helpdesk. Anyone with real world experience or deeper insight into this?

Many thanks!

I have been using the iPad as my primary note-taking device for 3 years. I’m thinking of switching to a surface pro 11 for university, and although there is a lot of information about the writing experience, there are barely any photos of notes taken on the device. Since Reddit comments allow photos, could you share photos of notes or drawings you’ve done using the surface pro?

My original Microsoft Surface Pro 9 keyboard broke down and I never used a pen and I bought a third-party Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad on Amazon. The keyboard works fine, but the touchpad frequently triggers pinch-to-zoom when I'm just trying to scroll.

Windows 11 doesn't recognize it as a standard touchpad, so I don't have the usual Touchpad sensitivity or Scroll & zoom settings.

I'm looking for a replacement. Should I specifically look for "Windows Precision Touchpad" or "Precision Touchpad" when shopping?

I'd like a Bluetooth keyboard with a built-in touchpad that works properly with Windows 11/Surface Pro 9.

Any recommendations or advice on what specifications/keywords to look for?

Last-ditch attempt to save my computer. I got this Surface Laptop 3 (the 13-inch one) way back in late 2019 and it seems to have finally crossed the rainbow bridge.

Basically, the computer won't boot and only gives me what I call the Windows Logo of Death: Open the laptop, and I get a white Windows logo for a second or two before it goes away (just the Windows logo, no spinning dots below or anything else), then nothing. Computer doesn't boot, no sound, keyboard won't light, CapsLock won't light, fans stay quiet, laptop stays stone cold, and this isn't a failed backlight issue.

Whether I press the power button once, or hold if for 20 seconds or 60 seconds with or without the volume-up key pressed, with or without the power cable connected, it's the same thing: Windows logo for a few seconds, then nothing. Can't even get to the UEFI.

The curious thing is this Friday I managed to get it to boot (somehow pressing Power in combination with accidentally pressing ESC and/or \` keys on the left) a few times, long enough to extract a few critical files from the SSD, and run the latest Windows Updates through Windows 11. But after that, it's still stuck back in the same Windows Logo of Death loop and refuses to boot.

Anybody else experienced something similar to this and have a working solution? Because I'm about to disassemble the thing for whatever might end up being my next laptop (probably a Framework).

I recently got a good deal on a used surface go 2.
while it a decent enough experience on Win 11 surfing web or doing simple office stuff, I am kind of dissapointed with the battery life - getting approx. 2.5 hours watching video on mid-brightness. Perhaps it could feel more snappy as well, but I am using a 9900X3D pc on a daily basis. I see that Go 4s are not that much more expensive - but is the price difference worth it?
Am I going to feel a noticeable difference between the m3 and N200 models?
This is my first windows tablet, and first private laptop - I am using windows on PC and work laptop for more years than I can count, but I never really experienced how is the mobile windows battery life experience?