A baseline 256 GByte SSD versus the drastically more expensive 512 GByte variant, since I knew that if I ran short of room in the future, I could upgrade the storage myself (something I’ve actually already done, via a $150+ 1 TByte Western Digital m.2 2230 drive complete with a 2-year extended warranty off eBay, and a process complicated only by the current dearth of “cloning” software support for Windows-on-Arm).The Qualcomm 8cx-based SQ1 SoC, since the successor SQ2’s marginal performance improvements didn’t justify the price increase (IMHO, at least).It apparently pays to wait!Īll three systems intentionally had identical specifications: And my last (but definitely not least) attempt was last June, again an eBay Certified Refurbished item (ironically from the same merchant), this time for just under $800 with tax.

But the merchant reported that inventory was already depleted when my order came in, canceled it, and promptly refunded my money. I subsequently sought to purchase a Surface Pro X from the Certified Refurbished section of eBay’s site a few weeks later for around the same price, just under $1,100 inclusive of sales tax.

The acquisition attempt documented in that year-ago write-up was my (my wife’s, more accurately) first try, in early November 2020, and was thwarted by (among other things) a missing AC adapter. Here's an in-depth look at the Microsoft Surface Pro X.Īs I briefly mentioned a few months back (see “ A holiday shopping guide for engineers: 2021 edition“), and in contrast to previous conceptual criticism (see “ Windows on Arm: All of Apple’s challenges with none of its charm“), the third time was the charm when it came to attempted purchases of a Microsoft Surface Pro X:

Win 11 surface pro x