Microsoft Surface Pro 3 review

Billed as the tablet that can replace your laptop, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 has a lot to live up to. Both the original Surface Pro and the Surface Pro 2 were only partially successful at creating the ultimate two-in-one hybrid, as the first was hindered by poor battery life while the second still had a huge, chunky chassis that detracted from its overall portability. But if the first two tablets were testing the water, then the Surface Pro 3 is the real deal, as this is easily the best Windows tablet we’ve seen. Ideal as a hybrid device for home use, it’s also all set for business applications, as discussed by our sister-site IT Pro.

The most obvious departure from its predecessors is the Surface Pro 3’s huge 3:2 12in screen. This makes the tablet’s overall shape is much more akin to a sheet of A4 paper than a widescreen laptop, which is great for using the bundled Surface Pen but less practical for viewing two documents side-by-side. Microsoft manages to sidestep this problem, though, by giving the screen a massive resolution of 2,160×1,440, which equates to a pixel density of 216 pixels-per-inch. This isn’t quite as high as the iPad Air’s PPI of 264, but the desktop still looked razor-sharp.

Of course, more pixels doesn’t always mean a better screen on a Windows device, as we’ve had several issues with ultra-high resolution laptops in the past due to a lack of flexible scaling options, particularly for third-party programs. The Surface Pro 3 is set to scale to 150 per cent by default, but you can increase this to a maximum of 200 per cent if need be.

It’s likely you’ll need to use one of the scaling options, as we feel that setting the desktop to 100 per cent is too small to be practical for most. We certainly appreciated the extra work space, especially for third-party programs such as iTunes and Spotify, but we wouldn’t want to work at this resolution for long periods of time. Text was so small that we often had to strain our eyes to read it most of the time, so we stuck with the default 150 per cent scaling throughout our testing.

^ The Microsoft Surface Pro 3’s different scaling options give you varying degrees of desktop space. From left to right: 100%, 150% and 200%

Surprisingly, the touchscreen coped no matter what scaling option we were using, as it’s exceedingly accurate in repsonse to your jabs and swipes. Even on 100 per cent, we were able to open and close internet tabs accurately, minimise windows and open programs by tapping the respective icon. Windows 8 gestures also worked perfectly, both on the tablet itself and Microsoft’s new TypeCover keyboard (more on this below).

The quality of the Surface Pro 3’s Gorilla Glass-protected screen was equally excellent. Our colour calibrator showed it was displaying 93.7 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, which is incredibly high compared to other laptop screens. Only the 15in Apple Macbook Pro, Dell XPS 11, Dell XPS 15 and Toshiba Kirabook beat it on colour accuracy, and all of these are vastly more expensive than our review spec Surface Pro 3. The Surface Pro 3 also scored higher than Apple’s 13in Macbook Pro, so you can be sure this is one of the most accurate screens money can buy.

The screen’s overall brightness was also impressive, measuring 333.1cd/m2. This is one of the brightest readings we’ve seen, so you should be able to use the Surface Pro 3 even to work outside in the sunshine. The only downside to having the screen on full brightness is the presence of greyer blacks, as our calibrator measured a black level reading of 0.45cd/m2. This is a little higher than we were expecting and our solid colour image tests revealed that blacks were tinged with a very small hint of blue compared to the tablet’s deep black bezels.

Contrast was also fairly average, measuring 748:1. This meant very dark areas of shadow detail tended to get lost in our high contrast test images, appearing as simple patches of black. It’s a shame this isn’t higher, but it’s still by no means bad and the screen’s viewing angles were superb. This is particularly important now the Surface Pro 3 has a much more flexible kickstand that can sit anywhere from 0 to 150 degrees. It would be no use at all if the screen suddenly darkened when you tilted it backwards, but fortunately we could see the screen clearly no matter where we positioned the kickstand.

As well as having a larger screen, the Surface Pro 3 is more portable than ever before. Weighing just 800g and measuring 9.1mm thick, it’s considerably thinner and lighter than the Surface Pro 2. This is quite a feat considering its larger surface area, and its beautifully smooth silver vapor-magnesium chassis only adds to that feeling of luxury. It’s still almost twice as heavy as an iPad Air, though, which weighs just 469g, so you’ll want to rest the Surface Pro 3 on your lap or on a table if you’re using it for longer periods of time.

You still don’t get many ports with the Surface Pro 3, but there’s one full-sized USB3 port, a microSD card reader, a mini-DisplayPort for connecting it to an external display and a headphone jack. There’s also a volume rocker on the left hand side.

Another thing that distinguishes the Surface Pro 3 from its predecessors is the availability of multiple specifications. Previously, Microsoft only let you change the amount of internal storage that came with your Surface tablet, but now there are specifications ranging from a £649 Core i3 model with 64GB of storage right up to a £1,649 Core i7 version with 512GB of storage.

Our review sample was one of the lower-end specifications which comes with a 1.9GHz Intel Core i5-4300U processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. This is a similar set-up to most Ultrabook laptops, so the Surface Pro 3 certainly has a lot more processing power than your average Windows tablet.

However, that slim chassis isn’t best suited to intense multi-tasking, as it can’t dissipate all the heat generated to runs its CPU at full speed all the time. Because of this the Surface Pro 3 only scored 41 overall in our multimedia benchmarks. This is six points lower than other Core i5 Ultrabooks we’ve tested, giving it performance speeds more akin to an older Ivy-Bridge Core i5 Ultrabook instead. This is a shame, as the Surface Pro 2’s Core i5-4200U processor performed much better, scoring 47 overall.

The Surface Pro 3 mainly struggled with our video processing and multi-tasking tests. The rear of the tablet became quite toasty during the latter, and we could hear the fans whirring away inside as well. Our image encoding test, on the other hand, was actually very quick, putting the tablet on par with laptops which have a Core i7-4500U processor, so it’s unlikely you’ll notice the tablet becoming sluggish unless you’re using really heavy-duty media editing software.

The processor’s integrated Intel HD Graphics 4400 chip can even play 3D games as long as you don’t mind playing on lower detail settings. While its average frame rate of 19.7fps in Dirt Showdown on High quality at a resolution of 1,280×720 isn’t really fast enough to play games at a decent speed, we managed a much more respectable 26.1fps when we set the quality to Low with x4 anti-aliasing. We wouldn’t recommend trying to play games at the Surface Pro 3’s native resolution of 2,160×1,440, though, as it couldn’t even reach 15fps on Low quality with no AA.

More impressive was the Surface Pro 3’s battery life. While Microsoft only estimate around 9 hours of web browsing, we were able to get a huge 12 hours and 46 minutes out of it in our light use test with the screen set to half brightness. This is outstanding for such a powerful tablet, and is almost a full hour longer than the Surface Pro 2’s battery life.

The Surface Pro 3 also comes with a brand new Surface Pen. Surface Pro tablets have always come with a fairly basic digitiser, but the Surface Pen actually lets you use the Surface Pro 3 much more like a drawing tablet or pad of paper. This is partly because the screen actually has palm-rejection this time round, so you can rest your hand on the screen without it making accidental marks on your document.

However, the real linchpin is the inclusion of OneNote, which comes bundled with every device and can be opened simply clicking the button on the end of the pen. You can even use the pen to open OneNote when the tablet’s in sleep mode, letting you use it without going through the hassle of logging in to your Microsoft account and opening the program normally from the Start screen. This is great if you only want to jot a note down very quickly, and it’s this kind of immediacy that elevates the Surface Pro 3 above other Windows tablets.

You can also grab screenshots straight from your web browser by double-clicking the same button. This will bring up an overlay across the screen and then you can simply drag a box around the area you want to capture and it will go straight into OneNote, ready for you to add your own hand-drawn doodles to it. Everything’s automatically saved to your OneDrive, too, so you can access all your OneNote documents from other Windows devices.

The Surface Pen is pressure-sensitive, so the thickness of your lines will vary depending on how hard you press on the screen. This makes the Surface Pro 3 a particularly useful tool for digital artists who want to be able to draw directly on the screen. OneNote isn’t particularly useful in this respect as there’s no function for adding extra layers to your artwork, so we installed free drawing program Gimp 2 instead.

Here, sketching worked wonderfully, and using the Surface Pen was just like drawing with a real pencil, albeit with extra buttons for an eraser and selection tool. Even better was the ability to hold the tablet vertically like a proper A4 sheet of paper for portrait pictures.

The only slightly disappointing thing about the Surface Pen is how Microsoft has decided to keep it from getting lost. Previously, there’s been a small loop of material built into the Type Cover keyboard where you can store the stylus, but this time you have to stick the loop on yourself. This solution is a little cheap for what’s otherwise a very high-end product, but admittedly it’s a small complaint overall.

This aside, we’re big fans of Microsoft’s new Type Cover keyboard for the Surface Pro 3. It’s a shame they’re still not bundled in with the tablet, as this adds another £110 onto the Surface Pro 3’s overall price, but we feel it’s an essential accessory for most and have factored its cost into our final reckoning. You can use an older Surface Pro 2 Touch or Type Cover keyboard with it instead; just bear in mind that the smaller dimensions of older keyboards won’t protect the entire screen of the Surface Pro 3 when you’re taking it on the move.

The Surface Pro 3 Type Covers, on the other hand, are the correct size and also have a small magnetic strip that runs along the top of the keyboard. This snaps on to the bottom of the tablet to give you a slightly raised typing angle, which we found was much more comfortable than simply typing flat on the table. Raising the keys also brings a welcome sense of stability when using the Surface Pro 3 on more uneven surfaces, such as reclining on the sofa. We also felt the extra height gave the keys slightly more tactile feedback as well, but typing flat was still just as accurate.

The touchpad is significantly bigger, too, due to the larger amount of space available on the keyboard. Previous Type Cover touchpads were truly miniscule, and while the Surface Pro 3 Type Cover’s touchpad is still relatively small compared to your average Ultrabook laptop, the extra space is a very welcome addition. It’s not only much easier to move the cursor round the screen, but we also hardly ever found ourselves bumping up against the edges as we swiped our fingers across its smooth surface. Swiping in from the side to bring up the Windows 8 Charms bar also worked well, as did multi-touch gestures such as pinch-zooming and two-finger scrolling.

It may have taken two years and three models to get right, but the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 finally feels like a laptop-tablet hybrid that really does give you the best of both worlds. It’s a shame the slim chassis compromises its performance slightly, but it still remains one of the most powerful Windows tablets currently available. With a better battery life than its predecessors, excellent pen support and a superb screen, this is the tablet that really can replace your laptop.