The Pen’s main ‘draw’ is how it can be used to navigate around Windows 10. The improved pen is impossibly fun to use. There’s also the reimaged design, which has a flat side to mimic a pencil, an eraser that can be used as (shock horror) an eraser and the fact that it magnetically attaches to the Surface. Why? It’s more sensitive than ever (it can register 1024 levels of pressure, which is four times as much as the previous Pen). But for now, Microsoft is laying down a serious challenge to other stylus makers, because the Surface Pen is excellence in cylindrical form. Is the Pen mightier than the Pencil? We’ll know in more in my upcoming comparison. We’re entering a new dawn of stylus wars, with Microsoft and Apple standing on either side aggressively waving their writing weapons at each other. With that said, the Pro 4 still suffers from the same design drawbacks of its predecessors: it’s too thick and heavy to be a proper tablet and the keyboard is too flimsy to be as good as a conventional laptop.

Even flexible laptops, like Lenovo’s Yoga range, still have large and clunky keyboards attached, constantly reminding you that you’re playing with a bent in half laptop. It wouldn’t work because it’s limited in how far the display goes back. Imagine trying to draw on the display of a normal laptop. Microsoft has cleverly incorporated features that both make use of the Pen and work well with a tablet: namely annotating and drawing on webpages, signing documents and generally using the Pen like a mouse.

Why is this useful? Because of the Surface Pen, which adds another dimension of interaction with your computer.

Surface pro 4 desktop mode