Surface Pro 3 Vs Surface Pro 4 Review
The Surface 3's selling points can exist summed up neatly: This is Microsoft'south basic Part machine, a cheaper alternative to the Surface Pro 3. Thanks to the new Surface'southward Intel Atom chip and real Windows viii.1 (with an upgrade path to Windows 10), information technology offers decent battery life, with a processor sufficient to handle 1080p YouTube videos, Netflix streams, or basic games without batting an eye.
Every bit with any junior fellow member of a product line, in that location are compromises. The biggest are its price—it not quite equally inexpensive as it should be, for what you get; and the ergonomics, which make it less of a laptop replacement than the Surface Pro 3 clearly can be.
The Surface iii volition be available May 5, in ii different models: a $499 model with 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM; and the upgraded version that nosotros tested, a $599 version with 128GB of storage and 4GB of memory. Variants of both models with integrated LTE will also exist available, although Microsoft hasn't said how much those will toll.
All of these prices, nonetheless, exclude the $130 Type Cover, a necessity that turns the advertised price into a flake of bunko. Microsoft will likewise sell a dedicated Surface 3 docking station for $200. Finally in that location's the Surface Pen, a $50 stylus that ships with the Surface Pro iii, but not the Surface 3. It works essentially the same on both machines.
A tablet upgraded with telephone applied science
Rob Schultz The Surface 3 uses a charger with a microUSB connector, the same connector plant in your prison cell phone.
Unbox the Surface 3, and one new feature stands out: the new xiii-watt micro USB charger, the same kind of connector used by your jail cell telephone. In part, that's because the ane.6GHz Intel Cantlet x7-Z8700 used within the Surface three sips ability, so it doesn't need a hulking wall wart. The actress-efficient bit likewise means the Surface three can have rather small 27Wh battery and yet still final 8.two hours in our MobileMark 2014 battery rundown test—shorter than the Surface Pro iii'south time, but still plenty to go through a fair corporeality of the day. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Gordon Mah Ung The Surface 3'southward battery life is about what you'd await from its somewhat minor battery.
Because the processor consumes so little power, Microsoft eliminated fans entirely, passively dissipating heat through the tablet chassis. The absence of fan racket is prissy, although the Surface Pro 3's fans are so well designed that the tablet fan noise never climbs louder than a hiss.
The new charger blueprint also means your phone'south charger could substitute in a pinch, or if you wanted to cut down on the number of cords yous behave. You lot tin fifty-fifty utilise an external battery charger. Unfortunately, like some modern phones, if you drain your Surface 3 completely yous'll be forced to charge it for a minute or two before information technology boots—an annoyance when you need to use the tabletright at present.
Inferior member of the Surface clan
In one case on your desk, the new Surface 3 hardware looks nearly identical to the Surface Pro 3's. The Surface 3's superb, 1920×1280-pixel, 10.8-inch screen is slightly smaller than the 12-inch display on the Surface Pro 3, but it has the same 3:2 ratio. The space savings may translate into a scrap more condolement on planes.
Rob Schultz Microsoft'due south Surface Pro iii (left) and the Surface 3 (right)
Desktop use: Smaller is merely sometimes ameliorate
Physically, the new Surface 3 measures ten.52×7.36×0.34 inches and weighs ane.37 pounds, plus another 0.57 pounds for the Type Cover. That'south virtually duplicate from the Surface Pro iii in a satchel or backpack, just marginally heavier than a comparable Android tablet when yous factor in the keyboard.
The Surface 3 offers three fixed positions for the kickstand. Later on living with the Surface Pro 3 and its variable-pitch kickstand, that's disappointing. I understand Microsoft made the choice for cost reasons, but I can't help simply want more.
Like nigh every generation of Surface machines, the Surface 3 ships with its ain backlit Type Pad keyboard. (No word from Microsoft on whether a Touch on Pad keyboard is en route.) Like the Surface three itself, the associated keyboard is smaller, although Microsoft makes upward for it past organizing the keys far closer to the side edges than on the SP3's keyboard. It also has a nicely redesigned elevation row of keys that includes often-used functions.
Marker Hachman A Surface Pro 3 keyboard continued to a Surface 3 works, but the two won't create the secondary magnetic connexion to tilt the keyboard.
The Surface three's keyboard is sufficient, still a petty modest for my tastes. Over time, my Surface Pro 3 Type Covers has become a bit mushy, so yous may eventually need to invest in a replacement. And while you can use an Surface Pro 3 Blazon Embrace with the Surface 3, you won't be able to fold back the edge of it, creating the slightly elevated angle that both keyboards otherwise allow—the magnet in the Surface Pro iii keyboard doesn't "grab" the Surface 3 correctly to do so.
The Surface 3'south proprietary docking station provides ethernet, two USB ii.0 and 2 USB 3.0 ports, a miniDisplayPort, and a headphone jack. The dock doesn't recline, but it's a well-fabricated piece of hardware that grasps the Surface 3 deeply from both sides.
Mark Hachman The Surface iii docking station.
Unlike with the Surface Pro three'southward dock, the Surface 3's dock completely encloses the tablet'south own USB port, simply it too eliminates the power brick that well-nigh other docks include. There's a slot hidden behind the kickstand that accepts upwards to 128GB SD cards, plus 802.eleven a/b/yard/north/air conditioning and Bluetooth four.0 tucked inside. While in that location'southward boosted storage on the dock, you lot do get 1TB of OneDrive storage with your Office subscription.
The Surface three's ii cameras are designed to exist used with its Office applications. The front-facing, iii.5MP camera is designed for Skype, while the rear-facing, 8MP camera is more designed for taking video of a lecture recorded as part of OneNote than anything else. The Surface 3 (like the SP3) lacks a flash, but you can now tap to focus and autoexpose a particular chemical element of the scene, which you can't do on the SP3.
Performance: basic, but that'southward the whole point
Call back of the Surface 3 as a machine designed to run Office and other general day-to-day productivity and entertainment apps, and you'll be satisfied. Content cosmos in Discussion, OneNote and other Office apps is perfectly acceptable, although I did find myself squinting a bit at the minor, loftier-resolution screen. I couldn't encounter any slowdown while running 1080p YouTube content or Netflix videos.
Gordon Mah Ung Hither, the Surface 3 clearly fits within the Atom category. Only how intensive is an Role workload, typically?
In our initial hands-on of the Surface 3 we compared it to older Atom-powered tablets. In this new grouping of benchmarks, we added the Surface Pro 3 and a few full-fledged laptops.
In general, the Surface 3 offers performance that'south well-nigh 60 percent of what you'd get from the Surface Pro 3 in full general Role work, but most 25 pct more than than the older "Bay Trail"-class Atom-based tablets (every bit represented by the Lenovo Yoga Tablet x). That departure becomes more profound when comparing the Surface 3 using conventional graphics benchmarks, every bit the tabular array beneath shows.
Gordon Mah Ung The Surface 3 is near on par with a Core M, as far as graphics is concerned.
The glaring weakness of the Surface three compared to the Surface Pro 3 is in disk access, which can hateful dull app launches and other slowdowns. Using the CrystalDiskMark iii.0 benchmark, the Surface Pro 3 read and wrote 4GB blocks of data at 507.1 MB/south and 242.ix MB/s, respectively. The Surface three read and wrote the same data at 118.9 MB/south and 49.69 MB/due south, respectively.
Gaming will exist a mixed bag on the Surface 3. Pick a frantic second sprite-based game like The Expendabros, and it will run flawlessly. Move up to something that taxes the 3D hardware a bit more than, like 2011's Serious Sam 3: BFE, and information technology runs acceptably at the very lowest settings.
It's possible that Microsoft has its eye on another gaming feel: game streaming. In the virtually futurity, Microsoft hopes to stream games over a wireless network from an Xbox One, letting the console do the heavy lifting. Microsoft sees the Surface 3 as the ideal tablet for basic Role productivity and coincidental utilize, so it'd seem natural to optimize that feel for the Surface iii.
Note:We ran early benchmarks while the Surface iii was docked, and the tablet locked up twice—no dreaded Blue Screen of Decease, just no response. Microsoft told us they hadn't had similar reports from other early Surface 3 users. When nosotros ran the PCMark Creative Conventional exam for this review, the tablet locked up again—only this time, it was sitting undocked on a bench. Because the Surface 3 is passively cooled, we speculated in that location might be conditions where it tin't accommodate a thermal spike. We ran the PCMark Creative test a second time without issue, however, and nosotros were unable to strength the Surface 3 to crash by looping other benchmarks repeatedly.
Stuck between premium and low-end
The Surface iii is a much nicer tablet than its predecessors, and that lonely makes it worth recommending. But it feels a bit expensive to be a "bargain" version of the Surface Pro 3. For a few dollars more, y'all could have the $699 Asus ZenBook UX305, an ultrabook that's really a step up in terms of performance and bombardment life. Microsoft seemingly wants to establish the Surface 3 as a sort of premium low-cease device, and that'southward a catchy proposition in this day and age.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/426963/surface-3-review-a-junior-surface-pro-3-awkwardly-mixes-premium-and-low-end-parts.html
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