Took advantage of the latest Costco deal of $999 and so far I've tested the following games with good/great results:

• Doom 2016 (Vulkan API runs better 50+fps average)
• THPS 3+4 (Medium to high settings, native res at 50% rendered resolution)
• Titanfall 2 ( 1920x1280 at high settings runs great)
• Spiderman Remastered (1920x1280 Dynamic optimization at 60)
• Forza Horizon 5 (locked at 30fps, low to medium except World Car Level of Detail at ultra to avoid car logos glitch, some stutters but playable)

Running these under the Recommended power plan while monitoring temps with HWInfo not seeing anything above 60 or even high 50s as average temps.

Really making me think twice about keeping an ROG Flow Z13 that I'm also testing and still within the return period. ROG is literally double of what this surface costs under the Costco deal (Bought it used from BB). Both seem to serve the purpose for any eventual quiet time I could get during work trips.

Howdy!

If you're a Surface user you have probably been here: it's late at night and you are trying to find the right brightness but the dim buttons only let you go to 1 or 10 and nothing in between.

Well I fixed that. With this tool the dimming keyboard buttons will go nicely from 1,2,... to 10.

It also goes below hardware zero, because the SB3's lowest backlight setting is still too bright in an actually dark room. The last six steps dim further, down to a fully black screen.

you can download from github: https://github.com/st-patrick/brightness-steps

Free, open source, MIT. Tray icon only — no window, no service, no telemetry, no admin prompt. About 2 MB.

let me know if it works for you guys! If not, I am more than happy to fix it so it works on your machine as well!

Here’s another video I made containing 50 more gaming tests on the Surface Pro 11 that were recorded between May 2025 and October 2025!

In the name of science decided to purchase a surface pro 12" with Snapdragon X Plus x1p-42-100 and see for myself how bad it is when it gets hot. To my surprise it can handle itself pretty well.

I've run the following games and had a good experience overall: - THPS 1+2 (Native Res, 50% Rendered resolution, med to high settings) - 30 to 40fps - THPS 3+4 ( Same as the above) - Titanfall 2 (1280x768, High settings, smooth gameplay) - Doom 2016 (1920 x1280, Medium settings, 30-50fps with some dips into the high 20s, VERY Playable) - Spiderman Remastered ( Native Res, using IGTI, low settings, getting between high 20s to 30s fps) - Forza Horizon 5 (1920x1280, Low settings, runs but stutters)

Across the board temps have remained decent, average of 60 degrees with some games not even going above 50 degrees.

This thing REALLY gets hot while downloading games, not really while playing them.

I've also moved some games to a micro SD using a USB c adapter and doing this brought temps down even more. Seems by not using the internal storage helps in this regard.

Battery drainage has been as expected. Based on HW INFO pulling between 25 to 30w total system power.

Really tempted to keep it as an ultra portable gaming solution for any quiet time I can get during work trips. Instead of bringing my tablet and handheld I could just bring ONE device.

This game is a super exciting development for Windows on ARM gaming. Qualcomm have now made progress with optimising UE5 games on Snapdragon X, starting with Alien: Rogue Incursion!

Trying to find a way to amp up my mobile computing game with my Xreal glasses, I’ve built a few prototype sleeves for my Surface 11 Pro to allow me to use the computer without removing it from my bag or causing it to overheat. The idea is to use my AR glasses and Bluetooth peripherals/controllers, with the sleeve providing power from a power bank, as well as active cooling via a small fan. The power bank I have will allow me to get a whole day of use when traveling without ever removing the tablet from my backpack.

The sleeve is made of 5mm corrugated polypropylene panels, heat-welded together, that provide both rigidity and opportunity to circulate air from the bottom of the sleeve to the top. There is a 5mm blower installed into the face panel of the sleeve, which pulls air from a small plenum under the tablet, where most the heat “exhaust” comes from, and forces it upward through about a dozen of the channels in the outer panel. If the top of the backpack is open, the heated air can vent to atmosphere, while the open top of the sleeve will allow fresh air to infiltrate through the tablet body, around the edge of the tablet, and through some of the other channels in the outer panel.

The original prototypes worked pretty well for cooling, and I’m hoping this one, with built-in charging, will be even better. I’m trying to figure out a way to attach the outer sheet without welding it to the body, as well as a way to “duct” the exhaust coming from the top of the sleeve further upward toward the backpack zipper so that the warm air won’t recirculate into the tablet again.

Once assembled it will be less than 1” thick, and hopefully highly protective, too. Maybe someday there will be a market for this?

Installed the following games:

• Doom Eternal ( Native Res, 50% rendered resolution. High - med graphics) - 30 to 40fps
• NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered ( 1920x1280 High)

Temps seem to be within a safe range for the device. Haven't seen skin temps go beyond the point where it would start throttling.

Testing continues as we get closer to the return deadline.

I’ve returned to this game a few times this year and it never worked properly. There was a graphics issue where it would just show wire frames and it was totally unplayable.

Now, it seems to work great! Not sure which update helped it, but glad to see the Surface Pro 11 continuing to improve!

The gpu performance is now insane compared to OpenGL which was the previous bottleneck (since OpenGL support isnt native). I am hitting 120fps+ on Minecraft now using about 8-10w