The Surface 3 Review
by Brett Howse on May 4, 2015 9:00 AM ESTDisplay
When Surface Pro 3 moved to a 3:2 aspect ratio, it made a lot of sense. 16:9 in a tablet makes for a very poor experience, and in a laptop, it is not much better. Almost everyone has moved to 16:9 in the laptop space and the lack of vertical height can make for a less than ideal experience. Most web content is vertical, and working in Office means you want vertical space as well. The widescreen does help with two windows snapped open at once, but I always find myself craving more vertical room.
On a tablet, I feel that 16:9 is even worse. Holding a 16:9 device in one hand can feel very heavy due to the length of the tablet, and turning it to portrait means that it is very tall and skinny. The move to 3:2 really squares up the device, and makes it a lot more balanced in either direction. Holding it in one hand is much easier, and finally portrait mode is usable on the Surface.
So the aspect ratio is a big improvement. The display size also has a slightly wider corner to corner of 10.8 inches versus 10.6 inch model that came before this. The actual width of the display is about 9 inches, compared to 9.2 on the outgoing Surface 2 model. The display height is now 6 inches, up from 5.2, so the total area of the display is almost 54 square inches, up from 48 inches on the outgoing model.
To fill this display, we have a Panasonic panel with a resolution of 1920x1280. This is roughly the same pixel density as the Surface Pro 3’s slightly larger 12 inch 2160x1440 display, coming in at 217 pixels per inch. It is not the highest PPI of a tablet, but it makes a good compromise between desktop and tablet use. Speaking of desktop use, I found that it makes a perfectly acceptable size for a small notebook, and even with touch it was not too difficult to work with the icons.
When Microsoft launched Surface 3, it said “with incredibly accurate colors and clarity from multiple viewing angles” and that would be excellent to see. The Surface Pro 3 has a decent display, but it was not the most accurate device we’ve tested.
To do our display testing, we use SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 suite with a custom workflow. Brightness and contrast readings are taken with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter, and color accuracy is measured with an X-Rite i1Pro spectrophotometer. We target 200 nits brightness when doing our tests.
Brightness and Contrast
The Surface 3 gets quite bright, coming in at 432 nits at maximum output. The black levels are a bit high, but overall contrast is a decent 920:1. This makes the Surface 3 almost 100 nits higher than the Surface Pro 3 that Anand reviewed last year, which is a good start for this less expensive version.
Grayscale
The grayscale average for the Surface 3 is very good, coming in just about at 2.5 as an average for the sweep. There is a bit of a spike at 25% but it is not indicative of the overall calibration. Gamma is a bit low, but the white point is fairly close to the ideal value.
Saturation
The accuracy on our saturation tests is outstanding, with an overall average score of just 1.57. Looking at the individual colors, the red is a bit oversaturated at 100%, and blue tends to be undersaturated, but the amount of error is very small.
Gamut and Gretag Macbeth
Once again the Surface 3 comes in with fantastic scores on these two tests, with the comprehensive GMB test under 2. When we are doing these tests, values under 3 are considered good, and the Surface 3 has passed with amazing scores. The best part of this is that all of this is done without the use of an ICC profile, so that means the hardware is being calibrated directly. ICC profiles can fix some issues, but not all programs respect them so having it done in hardware is a much better option.
Calibrated
Since this is a full x86 Windows operating system, we can also calibrate the display with the CalMAN software. Even though it was very good out of the box, the calibration pulls it even closer to perfection.
Surface 3 has one of the most accurate displays we have ever tested, which is great to see in what is considered the value member of the Surface family. Microsoft promised an accurate display and they have delivered.
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MrSpadge - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
Using legacy apps (which are still called programs) should be fine with the pen. Except for the high DPI display - depending on how legacy the app exactly is.Alexvrb - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
It runs touch-friendly modern apps (including Universal apps which will be getting a boost in the near future) as well as more traditional software. You can use just about any external accessory that you can with a regular PC. If you use the dock and a larger monitor this can even replace the desktop for many users. In many ways it is more versatile than the devices you mentioned.stephenbrooks - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link
Actually a lot of programs designed for mouse input (click and drag) work pretty well on a touchscreen Windows machine. The main problem is the buttons tend to be too small for fingers.It would be great if Microsoft could have an option to magically enlarge GUI elements a bit when in touch mode.
jaydee - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
When I say lack of apps, I mean as designed as portable tablet. That's what MS is touting, it's a tablet and laptop in one.Of course it has tons of apps as a Win8/10 device, but if that's all you're really after, why buy something that straddles the line between laptop and tablet? Why not an XPS 13 or Spectre x360? Proportionally few of those Windows apps tend to run real well on a 10" touch screen with a resolution of 1920x1280.
It just seems to be in an odd place. I'm not sure what it does really well, other than its display. CPU/RAM/SSD are all compromised as a laptop and it's too expensive for what it does as a tablet. It's not "bad" by any means, I really do *want* to like it, it just doesn't seem to do the laptop thing well enough, be a tablet at a low enough price point. And I'm someone who would like to replace my iPad Air with something convertible like this. But if I'm going to buy a laptop that can also be used as a tablet, it's either going to have to have higher performance, or be cheap enough to not feel bad replacing in a couple years, and I don't feel either with this (particularly with accessories). I'm much more apt to get the i5/8GB/256GB HP Spectre x360 @$1,000, while more expensive, I feel much better about thinking about using for the next 5 years, compared to the Surface $600 + type cover + dock @ $930 and still has a tablet mode. The Surface Pro 3 is nice, but I'm not sure what it offers over the Spectre x360, at a sales price of ~$1,130 (retail $1,300), not to mention being a gen behind with Haswell still. If history is any indication, I will like the SP4 as a product, but probably not at it's price point.
Impulses - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
If the base model included 4GB and/or they at least threw in the pen for free with certain combos, it'd be more enticing. It's still an attractive package for people who just want a secondary system, but a lot of those are just gonna end up with cheaper tablets or more capable laptops.Even tho it's significantly cheaper than SP3, and it's exactly what a lot of people said the base Surface should've been all along, it still feels like less of a value proposition than SP3. Better storage and Type C might've made it more appealing...
As it is it feels too much like something they'll refine significantly for the next rev... Big EDU discounts could sway things tho. A simple $100 student discount would make it a $530-630 hybrid competing against $400-500 tablets and $750+ laptops, much better sweet spot.
simard57 - Thursday, May 7, 2015 - link
Costco has a bundle that includes keyboard and pen for $100 more over the 2GB and 4GB modelsillegaloperation - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
How much is portability worth to you?The HP Spectre x360 weigh over twice that of the Surface 3.
Also, why is the Dock being factor into the price? The Dock is nice to have, but it's hardly essential.
The0ne - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
Just curious, what apps are you missing one the Windows platform? For someone like me who would use this for work, I can't imagine an app that is not available that I would use. You mean it doesn't have the hundreds and thousands of useless apps that are in all markets? Always confused by this statement.jaydee - Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - link
In order for it to be considered a good "tablet", it has to do all those things that tablets are known for. Apple and Android have this tremendously large ecosystem that many people are vested in and there's a huge selection for. Obviously "entertainment" apps are going to be useless for people who use this for work. Just like the "productivity" apps aren't useful for those who use it for entertainment, etc. Certainly, the Windows tablet is a better match for a certain type of productivity user like yourself, then a gamer per se. What a tablet has come to be, for many people though is a ubiquitous device that transcends both genres and I don't see that in the Windows platform. Not to mention the fact that Apple/Android tablet users are going to have a hard time switching over if they've invested a decent amount of money into their Apple/Android apps.Like I said, I really want to like this device, but it just feels like too many compromises as a laptop and a mixed bag as a tablet. Does that mean that it's not a great device for some people? Absolutely not! I just don't see it doing one (laptop) or the other (tablet) well enough to break through mainstream and be a big seller at this price point. As other people have mentioned, if it were a lower price or included accessories or faster storage or Core-M instead of Atom were here, I would probably feel much different, but it's too many compromises as is.
Gigaplex - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link
With Windows 10, Microsoft is aiming to bridge the "App gap" by making porting of iOS and Android apps to Windows fairly trivial.