Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro is the standard-bearer for detachable 2-in-1 Copilot+ PCs. But as I noted in my review at the time, it suffers from several issues—most notably a sky-high price of $1,950 as it was configured for our tests. No matter what you think about the detachable keyboard concept, this device comes with an awfully hard price to swallow.
Enter Asus with a suspiciously similar concept, albeit considerably cheaper. I wouldn’t quite call this the Wish version of the Surface Pro, but at $1,100, the ProArt PZ13 may at least take some of the sting out of the cash outlay should you venture down this road.
Photograph: Christopher Null
To trim the price, Asus has made its fair share of sacrifices. Certain elements remain the same, including a 13-inch touchscreen, 16 GB of RAM, and a magnetically attached keyboard, which comes included with your purchase. Otherwise, the ProArt comes across as a slightly different animal. It starts with the stripped-down CPU: The ProArt uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P42100 instead of the more capable Elite that dominated the first wave of Copilot+ PCs. The aspect ratio and resolution of the two screens are slightly different—2,880 x 1,920 pixels on the Surface versus 2,880 x 1,800 on the ProArt—and although the ProArt screen isn’t nearly as vibrant and bright, I had no complaints with it through several days of use.
Surprisingly, there are a couple of upgrades on tap from Asus over what comes on the Surface Pro. Instead of Microsoft’s 512-GB SSD, Asus packs in a 1-TB drive by default. It also enhances the two USB-C 4.0 ports—one required for charging on the ProArt, unlike the Surface Pro—with a full-size SD card slot. Oddly, the card slot and one of the USB-C ports are hidden under a rigid plastic flap that’s difficult to open and does little more than get in the way.
Photograph: Christopher Null