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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Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Here's an idea. Dont spend millions trying to push this product through the "hollywood backchannel", and then try to pay for all that spending by charging $300 for $22 worth of NAND and $34 worth of RAM and calling it an upgrade. Only a fool agrees to be raped like that. So the only way you can judge the value of this product is by the base model. And the base model is extremely underpowered for $800. But dont worry, after it flops it will be on sale for $500 and at that price it is not bad.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I hope you posted your words in every apple product review page everymcpa - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Now please show me the laptop with an ssd and hi-res display that sells for $500. History shows that Microsoft isn't discounting these tablets. When a new one comes out, they discount the previous one by $100 and stop making it. Within a few months they are not on sale anymore. Microsoft made a mistake with the original surface and made too many of them. They didn't make that mistake with the second version and won't make it with this latest one.kyuu - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
I'm sorry, but even going from the base 64GB to the 128GB model, we're talking about a 64GB SSD. Please show me where you can get a 64GB SSD for $22, or where the difference between an SSD's 64GB and 128GB models is $22. We're talking about full-blown SSDs here, not cheap eMMC NAND that you find in Apple and Android tablets.Yes, you are paying a bit of a premium, but *nobody* sells upgraded internals at cost. It's certainly way less gouging than Apple, who charges $100 *just* for 32GB of cheap eMMC NAND. If you're paying $300 more for an upgraded SP3, you're not only getting a bigger SSD and more RAM, but also an upgraded processor.
maliaobama - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Really bummed about the lack of a touch cover. What no one really understands about the touch cover is that it's a paradigm shift. It required a learning curve, but the lack of keys and the lack of a need to depress them makes it extremely ergonomic. I wrote my last novel on the Surface Touch keyboard and I have terrible RSI and the Touch keyboard has eliminated that. It's incredible. Microsoft needed to tout both this benefit and the notion that the learning curve was worth it. I've owned a Pro 1 and a Pro 2. A Pro 3 is a non-buy for me without the Touch cover.beggerking@yahoo.com - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
excellent review, this is the best ultrabook tablet out there, bar none, will be getting one to replace my SP1.the only con is: still can't charge via Micro usb...
kyuu - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
MicroUSB simply doesn't provide enough current to charge the battery fast enough. You'd be talking 6+ hours to get to 90% charge at the very least, instead of getting to 100% in about 2.5 hours. It's a necessary trade-off.Chakkra - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Do Surface Pro 3 come with MS Office ?joaoasousa - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
No.basroil - Thursday, June 26, 2014 - link
Yes, in Japan (where the price is $200 more after tax is included)