Surface Go 4 In Store For Consumers – But What Are The Windows Alternatives At This Size And Price?

While Microsoft may have unveiled the new Microsoft Surface Go 4 this week, it also managed to confuse people at the same time by naming it ‘Surface Go 4 for Business.'

It's now finally possible to order it even if you are not an enterprise customer or have a business account, so you can buy the Surface Go 4 from Microsoft today as a regular retail customer.

The price did go up a bit from the $399 entry price of the Surface Go 3 to $579 as the price entry for the Surface Go 4, so that's one factor that puts people off from buying the new Surface Go 4, since the price adds up to $679 with the cheapest keyboard.

So, what are the Surface Go 4 alternatives right now? Well there's actually not a whole lot of them.

If someone wants a Surface Go, it's either because of the price range, the size, or not really needing anything more powerful. So let's explore the options.

Buy Surface Go 4
Surface Go 4

One option is still the Surface Go 3. After all, there are two processor options on the Surface Go 3, and the top model has an Intel Core i3 processor. And it will be the tablet closest to the Surface Go 4.

Meanwhile, the very cheapest Windows tablet is the 10.3-inch Full HD tablet Lenovo Duet i3 for just over $200, with keyboard included! But it's still hard to recommend a tablet like that because it is slow by 2023 if you need to do other tasks than check emails, or write and create documents.

So if we care about performance, then Alldocube has an interesting alternative with the 11-inch Alldocube iWork GT, which is powered by an Intel Core i5 processor, with 16GB RAM.

The 10.5-inch Asus ExpertBook B3 is also available, and somewhat resemble the Surface Go, but since it's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor, that makes it open to app-incompatibility again.

And all the other brands find themselves right in the middle of an update cycle for their Windows tablet of this size too, so if we want any other new Windows tablet, we'll have to wait a bit.

But there may still be other options. Among the slightly larger tablets, the older Surface Pro 7+, which was the last 12.3-inch Surface Pro and had a newer processor than the Surface Pro 7, is still available new for around $740 with a keyboard included.

This tablet was in production for a very long time because Microsoft continued to manufacture it even after the launch of the Surface Pro 8 and and Surface Pro 9, for their enterprise customers who had already deployed a 12.3-inch tablet with all its accessories and did not want or need a newer model at that point.

For something completely new, Microsoft also just unveiled the new Surface Laptop Go 3 this week, which is a 12.4-inch laptop with a touchscreen and an Intel Core i5 processor.

Or, for a twist on this, there's the 10.5-inch laptop Chuwi MiniBook X which has a 360 degree rotating touchscreen that can be used in tablet mode too. It's powered by an Intel Celeron N5100 though, so it's not as powerful as the Laptop Go 3. The point is rather that it's the same size as the Surface Go 3 tablet.

So whatever needs someone will have in the compact 10-inch to 12-inch Windows PC segment, there are a couple of options out there to think about.

– Jim Miller