I have a business friend I see a few times a week. He has an S2 on sprint with an otterbox defender. It's noticeably bigger than my note 2/active. In every way. the active really isn't a large case. I'm sure its a little more than the surface, but it's really not bad. Its just a thin TPU with a little plastic piece that covers the corners and back. The "side to side" size is only increased by the thin tpu section. However it does seem to work. My sister wanted to play with it after seeing how big it was next to her iphone 4s. She ended up dropping it by accident from about 3ft (sitting inside my full size 4x4 pick up with the door open). She was fiddling with the spen hole, went to hand it to me and just wasn't paying attention. Landed right on the corner. Scratched up the plastic skeleton of the case a bit on the corner, but when it landed it just made a dull quiet thud sound. No damage. My GNex had a case similar to the Surface and I broke quite a few screens with that. Pick up the active. You won't be disappointed with the size, or protection I don't think. As I said, I hate cases, but this one for some reason really isn't bad. The grippy sides keep the phone in your hand, and the smooth plastic back allows you to kind of slide it around your hand to reach other areas of the screen if you want to. My only real disappointment with the active combo (other than the small dead spot at the bottom left of the screen when using the handwriting keypad.. thats the only time I notice it) is the holster. The first layer/TPU case is a little bit flimsy. The plastic skeleton keeps it nice and tight so you never really notice, and I assume this is maybe to add a level of protection by having more rubber to squish instead of it being stretched to a tight fit. When you put the phone in the holster you have to actually flip the top holster click back with one finger, put the phone in all the way, than allow the holster top flap to come down behind it. If you try to just put the phone in sometimes the top holster flap likes to get under the TPU section and clip in under the case. The bottom part of the tpu case is the same way, and can be a little annoying getting out of pants pockets until you get used to it and grab the phone a little more towards the middle, near the kickstand.
All in all, I'm super happy with the active. It's not big for a protective case.. at all.. and seems like it will actually do something in a fall. Maybe not otterbox defender protective, but normal drops and such shouldn't be a problem.