Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2014 3:55 AM ESTBattery Life
Microsoft made no sacrifice in battery capacity in pursuit of Surface Pro 3's thin chassis design. The new tablet features an integrated 42Wh battery just like the previous two models. Charging duties are handled by an external 31W charger with a brand new magnetic connector. Microsoft never seemed to get a good MagSafe clone working in the previous models, so Surface Pro 3 abandons the previous design entirely in favor of something a bit more sensible.
The new connector no longer looks like an oversized MagSafe connector, and instead features a thin plastic insert that mates with the charge port on Surface Pro 3. Charge time hasn't changed, you can fully charge the device in around 2.62 hours:
The device-side connector features 40 pins but you only need 12 of them to charge the device. The remaining pins are used for Gigabit Ethernet, USB, DisplayPort (up to 4096 x 2304) and audio. Microsoft seems hell bent on avoiding Thunderbolt at all costs so instead of embracing the standard it has created a custom alternative of its own doing. The benefit to Microsoft's connector is it can obviously deliver more power than Thunderbolt can, the downside is that it can't send PCIe and thus you don't get support for any ultra high bandwidth external storage devices. I still would rather see Microsoft implement Thunderbolt as there's at least an existing ecosystem built around that but here we are three generations into Surface and if we haven't seen it by now I don't think we're ever going to.
The supplied power adapter includes a USB charge port capable of delivering 1A at 5V.
As Surface Pro 3 is designed to be both a laptop and a tablet I've run it through both our Windows laptop battery life tests and our tablet battery life tests.
Laptop Battery Life
As a laptop, Surface Pro 3 delivers comparable battery life to other optimized Haswell ULT designs. I threw in Sony's Vaio Pro 13 into the mix because it has a similar sized battery (37Wh vs. 42Wh) and is one of the most power efficient Windows Ultrabook platforms on the market. Surface Pro 3 manages to deliver similar battery life, which means it's a little less power efficient but the two are within the same range at least.
Compared to Surface Pro 1 and 2, Surface Pro 3 at worst delivers similar battery life and at best increases range on a single charge by up to 20%. We're looking at 3.75 hours - 7.6 hours of notebook usage on a single charge depending on usage.
It's worth noting that there's a substantial advantage in battery life if we look at the 13-inch MacBook Air running OS X. I only mention this because of Microsoft's insistence on comparing Surface Pro 3 to Apple's popular line of notebooks.
Tablet Battery Life
Tablet workloads are going to be far more display power bound than anything else. Here we see 7.58 - 8.03 hours of continuous usage, a slight regression compared to Surface Pro 2. Video playback remains more power hungry than web browsing, which is something I've noted in previous tablet-evaluations of Intel's Core silicon. I don't believe Intel's Core processors are very optimized for video decode power consumption. If anything is going to change with the move to Broadwell and Core M I suspect video decode power may be it.
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Imaginer - Thursday, June 26, 2014 - link
One thing that was not mentioned in the article BUT was mentioned in the FIRST Surface Pro review by Anandtech, was how the rear camera was tilted to match the kickstand so that when on the kickstand, the camera faces directly at the opposing person, if two people sat across from another on a table.This camera position was maintained for the first kickstand angle with the Surface Pro 2.
BUT with the Surface Pro 3, the rear camera is dead on facing if you hold the device perpendicular with the table. On the kickstand, the camera will actually be pointing downward, even on the highest kickstand angle in the variable mode - which would leave the device not in a typical tilted angle for same laptop usage, being at a perpendicular level...
Some minor nitpick here.
jackseth - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Hi All, I purchased a Surface Pro 3 on Friday. Returned it today. Sorry to say. I was eager to purchase and looked forward to an awesome hybrid. It does not fit well on an airline seat tray. It is cumbersome to open. The cover-keyboard is prone to stains and dirt. It is thin and does not come close to a laptop keyboard. Overall once up and running it feels fine, as the article says over and over a compromise. I will keep my Dell 8,1 laptop and carry my droid tablet. What a bummer.nerd1 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I have no idea what you are comparing SP3 to... compared to other ultrabooks SP3 fares very well, and I have used many of them myself. And I'd rather use it as a tablet during flight.MarcSP - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
You used it 2 full days!! You really tried hard to get to uderstand the new form factor and explore its advantages, as well as its disadvantages... :-]I thought this impatience was just a "disease" of most tech reviewers, haha. At least they have the "excuse" of being the first to publish the article.
Well, maybe it was just not what you need. Different people different needs, but could you not try it a little longer? Was it sooo painful to use??:-/
vision33r - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I've had the Surface Pro 2 for a full 2 months. While the SP3 does address many of my gripes, it has not won me back. The $129 you pay for a keyboard cover could buy you a Chromebook refurb.The keyboard and touchpad still feels too compromised and the lack of real estate on the touchpad is very difficult to adjust to coming from a macbook air that has a huge touchpad.
If the SP3 cost only $499 and $799 for the i7, I think most folks like me wouldn't have that much problem but at $1500+ for i7 that barely can best my $599 15" Notebook with a $89 240GB SSD it's hard to justify.
Imaginer - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Touchpad? The touchscreen plus pen makes sliding and dragging a cursor a moot point as another commenter mentioned.The trackpad/touchpad for me, in the Surface Pro 2 I used, remains to be a contingency device, some websites insist on mouse over menus that aren't handled well with a finger touch on the screen. Pen in hand though, hover cursoring is just as possible which makes the touchpad moot too.
Which goes to say, is there any $500 device with the same specifications and digitizer pen (Wacom/N-Trig otherwise) as configured? How about an i7?
bkydcmpr - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
so you are not sp3 targeted customer.bkydcmpr - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I'm waiting for my i7 pre-order. played with it at microsoft store and love it. I know I'm going to keep it in spite of the throttling issue. for me that's one major issue for sp3 to be perfect, but still better than any other option out there.kgh00007 - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Maybe I missed it, but what is tent mode?MarcSP - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I think he means open the kick stand at the maximum aperture (150º?), so when putting the tablet on the table it is like an drawing desk.