I’ve been an avid iPad user for 30 months and counting. I still love and use my Pad a lot, but I also bought a new Surface RT. Will my Surface ever completely replace my iPad? I don’t know yet, but I’d love to find out. This blog series is aimed at comparing the two devices in all sorts of situations, from work to home, and analyzing the pros and cons of each. You can read other entries in the series using the links below.

• From iPad to Surface:
  • Day 1: Acquisition & Setup
  • Day 2: Sandy Killed my Power
  • Day 3: Under the Hood
  • Day 4: Shopping for Apps
  • Day 5: Favorite Fridays (Nextgen reader)
  • Day 6: We Need Groups!
• Bonus Post: You Want to Buy a Surface, but What is Windows RT?
• Bonus Post: Developing Apps for Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8
• Bonus Page: Infragistics NetAdvantage for Windows UI – Developer Controls for Windows 8 & Windows RT

How Good is the Surface Screen Resolution?

This is basically the question I try to answer today. At first glance, we can all agree the Surface screen looks great. It’s bright, crisp, the contrasts are great, it’s a pleasure to use. So what’s the problem? Essentially, while the Surface screen looks great, the iPad screen looks awesome. What’s the difference between great and awesome? Let’s dig in by comparing the two devices.

The following table breaks down the screen specifications for both the iPad (3rd & 4th generation) and the Surface RT:

Based on these specs, you might immediately jump to the conclusion that the Surface’s screen is drastically inferior to the iPad. We’re talking about 44% less pixels per inch compared to the Retina display on the 3rd and 4th generation of the iPad after all. However, it’s important to take an actual look at the visuals to judge.

What does it all mean visually?

Numbers aren’t everything. In the end, you just want to know “does stuff look good on screen or not?” Let’s look at the theoretical differences between the iPad and the Surface. I started with a high-resolution high-quality reference photo taken from Shutterstock:

This photo has native resolution of 4256 x 2832 (you can click on it to see the original size). The idea was to use a high quality image that technically has a higher resolution than the iPad. I cropped the left side of the photo to make it square at 2832 x 2832, and copied it to both my 3rd generation iPad and Surface RT.

This is a screenshot of the square photo as taken on the iPad (click it to see the full size):

And this is a screenshot of the same square photo as taken on the Surface RT (click it to see the full size). Note that using the screenshot feature on the Surface (WINDOWS key + DOWN VOLUME) generates poor quality images since Windows RT appears to use a heavy jpeg compression. I instead hooked up a keyboard to my Surface via the USB port, used the PRINTSCREEN key, pasted the screenshot in Paint, and saved it as a lossless PNG to preserve the quality of the photo as it appeared on Surface.

At first glance, both look good, even if you click each photo to see the full size. Of course, the iPad screenshot is much bigger given the 2048 x 1536 resolution. So how do you compare them?

I cropped each photo to frame the woman around her glasses. Again, the iPad version ended up much bigger than the Surface’s given the higher resolution. I took the cropped Surface photo and expanded it in Paint.net to match the width of the iPad screenshot. When you enlarge a raster image, you basically end-up creating or adding pixels. This is called “resampling”. There are several resampling algorithms that can do this. A bicubic interpolation resampling method is typically used to compensate for the lack of pixels and reduce jagged edges and “pixelization”. In this case, I wanted to stay true to the original pixelization so I used a nearest-neighbor interpolation for the resampling technique, which yields the following results we can easily compare:

Of course, you can clearly “see” the pixels here in this comparison because the pixels are bigger than they would appear on a Surface. Does it look this inferior on the Surface? No. I can clearly see what the photo looks like on my Surface and the image does not look bad or pixelized at all. Then again, I can also clearly see that the image looks better on the iPad.

What about reading?

Photos are one thing. Text is another. Using the same technique as above, I loaded up the latest World of Warcraft novel in the Kindle app on both devices to compare the text. In the interest of full disclosure, here are screenshots from both apps in portrait mode. Click on each to see the full resolution version.

I’ll be honest, I was not able to achieve the exact same font size on both devices. I shrunk the font to the smallest size supported in each Kindle app, but understand that this test is not 100% precise due to the differences between Kindle on iPad vs. Kindle on Surface. On a completely unrelated note, it seems that the Kindle app on iPad justifies the text whereas the Kindle app on Surface does not.

Using the same “exploded” comparison on a few lines of text, the difference is again quite obvious:

The images above basically show a pure mathematical comparison of the two screen resolutions assuming that both devices use the same type of screens and display methods, which is NOT the case. That’s why Microsoft objects to such comparisons.

Microsoft Disagrees

Microsoft disagrees with the pure “resolution numbers” game. Surface’s GM, Panos Panay, recently held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit where his team tried to convince us that pixels aren’t everything, and we’re somehow supposed to believe that despite the lower pixel density, the Surface has a higher display quality than the iPad:

“Screen resolution is one component of perceived detail. The true measure of resolvability of a screen called Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), not Pixels. MTF is a combination of both contrast and resolution. There are over a dozen subsystems that effect this MTF number. Most folks just focus on one number out of dozens that effect perceived detail. Without good contrast, resolution decreases.”

You can read the full answer on Reddit and see if you can make sense of it. I’m sure that Microsoft is partially right with some of it and this combination of contrast and resolution probably plays into the final quality. What I don’t buy is this statement that the Surface screen quality is superior to the iPad’s Retina display. It’s not even equivalent. I have loaded the same image on them side by side, and while the differences are more subtle than the mathematical comparisons I made above, the iPad screen still looks better.

Day 7 Summary

When the Surface was announced, I was really hoping that Microsoft would equip their reference hardware with something equivalent to Apple’s Retina display. 1366 x 768 is great, but it’s not awesome, and it’s not like the Surface is much cheaper. At $499, you get 32GB of storage on the Surface RT compared to 16GB on the iPad, but it could be argued that the nicer screen on the iPad offsets that difference.

The Surface Pro will feature a 1080p screen (1920 x 1080), but its pixel density will still be inferior to the iPad’s, at 208 ppi compared to 264 ppi. If Surface Pro features the same higher quality ClearType display as Surface RT, then maybe it’ll approach the iPad’s in quality. In then end, Microsoft needs to remember that nerds will be nerds, and we respond much better to hard quantitative specs than qualitative mumbo-jumbo.

Bottom line: Should you pass on the Surface RT because of the lower resolution? In my opinion, no. The Surface RT is a great device and the screen looks great. The iPad and latest Mac users among you may notice differences, but remember that the average computer monitor out there has a density of 99 ppi. The 148 ppi Surface RT will look much better than most computers we all use on a daily basis.

If you have any questions about Surface, including suggestions for future topics to explore in this series, questions about my experiences with the Surface vs. iPad, or any other tablet, feel free to ask them in the comments section below, or contact me on Twitter at @ActiveNick.

If you’re a developer interested in building apps for Surface, Windows 8 and Windows RT, Infragistics has the right tools for you with the new NetAdvantage for Windows UI. You should also follow @infragistics on Twitter.

Did you buy a Surface or other Windows RT tablet? Are you waiting for the Windows 8 Pro tablets? What are some of the key apps you want to see on Surface? Is the screen resolution a big factor for you when choosing a tablet? Let me know.

See you tomorrow!