Thinking of Buying MS Surface Pro 4 - any advice?

[NickJames]

I run Affinity photo on my laptop which has a screen resolution of 1366 x 768 thinking of changing to a MS Surface Pro 4 with i5 chip and 8GB ram

 

Pls advise:

 

I have seen objections to the Surface Pro 4 running Photoshop (I think) because the menus or tools are pixel scaled they are too small to see on the much more pixel dense Surface Pro display.  Is that true of for Affinity Photo too?

 

Anyone any experience of Affinity Photo with the SP4?  I am an illustrator and will use it for coloured pen and ink sketches either fully digital or based on scanned pencil or ink drawings (samples below but I will be doing more detailed stuff in future I hope)?

 

Is the i5 enough or do I need the i7?

 

I like Affinity photo and use adjustment layers and also overlays especially with multiply mode for different colours because it looks like transparent ink.  The alternative to the SP 4 wd be the Ipad Pro 12.9 inch which doesn't have Affinity I think but does have apps with layers.

 

Many thanks for any help you can give.

 

[gdenby]

I don't know what model my daughter has, but she uses an MS Surface with Photoshop. She said it was less expensive than a Cintiq, and I know she has been using it for more than a year.

 

It seemed rather small to me, but she has good eyes, so apparently the display isn't a problem for her.

[Callum]

Hi NickJames,

 

Welcome to the Forums :)

 

As long as your Surface Pro 4 matches the system requirements found on the page below it should work fine with Affinity. As you can see from the bottom of that page Affinity is optimised to work with the Surface Pro 4.

 

C

[NickJames]

Thanks, Callum. I cant see what you meant by the page below? Maybe cos I'm on phone not computer.

[R C-R]

I think Callum forgot to include a link to the page or a web site glitch failed to include it, but I think https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/full-feature-list/#system-requirements  should take you to the page he meant.

[Callum]

I think Callum forgot to include a link to the page or a web site glitch failed to include it, but I think https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/full-feature-list/#system-requirements  should take you to the page he meant.

Thanks R C-R not sure what happened there!

[NickJames]

Thanks both - all clear, and good to see.

[000]

Hello NickJames,

 

my advice is to wait another three days … Microsoft has a press conference in Japan on 23rd May and there are rumors they are going to talk about the Surface. Since it hasn't been upgraded since late 2015, people expect either a price drop or slightly updated specs (more memory, different processor):

http://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-is-hosting-a-mystery-event-on-may-23

 

 

Generally however, the Pro4 should be sufficient to run Affinity, just make sure you go with a model with 8 or more GB of RAM (the smallest model with 4GB might be cutting it a bit close, since Windows 10 needs resources for itself).

[000]

And the rumors were correct, here's the "New Surface Pro"  —  updated with more power and a new Pen:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/surface/devices/surface-pro/overview

[InfoCentral]

Cheaper alternative...

 

https://www.amazon.com/Yiynova-MVP22U-V3-Monitor-IPS/dp/B010TQ7HM8/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1495562795&sr=8-4&keywords=yiynova

 

The budget model I have...

 

https://www.amazon.com/Yiynova-MVP20U-FE-Monitor-Windows/dp/B01NAT88XG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1495563227&sr=8-3&keywords=yiynova

[NickJames]

Thank you Jens and Infocentral - and I was also coincidentally thinking the tablet might be the way to go . . . .now here's the thing, it was my wedding anniversary last week and my missus who will do anything to get me off microsoft and onto apple bought me an iPad pro with apple pencil.

 

I'm struggling a bit to make sense of something which doesn't seem to have a filing system and neither procreate nor pixelmator seem to do what I can already do with Affinity Photo and a mouse.  

 

So I downloaded something called Duet pro which seems to offer pressure sensitive use of the apple pencil with windows apps. Ie it converts the ipad pro into a tablet.   All good and I can fire up my lovely Affinity Photo and get it on the ipad pro screen but it doesn't react to the pressure sensitive pencil . . . hope Im missing something simple to fix.  

 

Will start a new topic with appropriate header  to see if anyone can help me on this.  Cheers  Nick