In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) chat on Reddit, Microsoft VP Panos Panay said it’s fair to compare the Surface Pro’s battery life to a MacBook Air, not an iPad. His reasoning is that the Surface is a full-blown PC with an i5 processor, running a regular operating system and the same desktop applications as a workstation; it isn’t a tablet processor running lightweight apps.
But Panay hinted that a future hardware release might contain extra battery capacity built into the keyboard. That would require an enhanced connection from the keyboard to the tablet body, and that’s already in place.