Surface RT in 2022

After having enjoyed the Surface Pro 1 thoroughly (except that the tablet gets really hot after some usage), I decided to jump on an opportunity to get the Surface RT that seems to get no love from the very start at just mere $50 with a brand new keyboard type cover.

I am not a professional, you won’t find technical jargons. This review is based on my personal opinion and real life usage feedback. You may disagree. Hence, read this with a pinch of salt.


Size and Weight
My first impression is that this tablet is slim and decently light. It is definitely a pretty acceptable size for a tablet.
Windows 8.1 RT
So this tablet came equipped with Windows 8.1 RT, which from my reading from online reviews, this is the root cause of all problems. This tablet is equipped with an operating system that basically doesn’t allow you to install any software/application. You are only stuck with limited applications available on Microsoft Store to download. This is seriously limiting this tablet.
Internet Explorer
As a result, this tablet is unable to install any other browser and is stuck with the old Internet Explorer which is super damn slow. To make things worse, many website does not even support it anymore. Thus, these website won’t render and you cant view them. As widely complained in the online community, IE is the only browser available on this tablet and the sluggishness of it put many people off and regarded this tablet as throw away or rubbish.
Microsoft Store
The Microsoft Store available in Windows 10 has a much better variety and support of applications compare to the Microsoft Store in Windows8 RT. The are a few useful apps on Microsoft Store in Win 10 that is not available like Instagram, etc. However, this is not the case for the store on Windows RT. Netflix is available in Windows 8.1 RT store, but it is also sluggish.

Hence, I was trying to make the most of the tablet, I downloaded quite a couple kids education app to let my 3 year old to learn Alphabets, numbers, shapes and colours, etc. Well, she did use it a while not for long and i have decided to re-sell it to someone else.

For the purpose of my work, I don’t ever foresee using it despite having Microsoft office pre-installed. The tablet need to entice me in its entirety. With limiting feature and lack of support, i just simply won’t even bother.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, i don’t recommend this tablet at all. There are several issues with this tablet. Being stuck with internet explorer which cannot render many websites is terrible. By today’s standard, accessing website is a basic requirement of a tablet. The apps available in the Microsoft Store is also limited and outdated. This is tablet is pretty useless, i would recommend you to any Atom processor tablet with at least 4GB ram that can run Windows 10 if you are looking for a cheap tablet.