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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darwinosx - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
True since in a month or two it will be in the bargain bin because nobody buys it.at80eighty - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
that was hilarious usernameOSXbasroil - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
SP2 never changed in price since it's release, despite idiots claiming it would. The only time the device will drop in price is when the SP4 comes out.MarcSP - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Severely compromised, depending on your needs. I mean, for average office work, email, non-heavy programs it is more than adecuate. Surface 2 has half the RAM and a much inferior SoC, and I can work quite well with it.Sure, if you want to load 500MB raw images or things like that, it's not enough.
My main laptop has GB RAM and a 2 generations old Corei, and I never feel underpowered (of course, I don't play new games on it). I use Audacity, Gimp, Office and dozens of programs totally fine. Never had a "low memory warning" or anything similar.
The storage, somehow agree, but you can just get later a 128GB microSD. Not the same, but better than nothing and quite inexpensive. And the USB3 can help when at home with an external HDD/SSD.
MarcSP - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
"My laptop has 4GB of RAM""I never feel it underpowered"
Damn no "edit" :-/
mkozakewich - Monday, June 30, 2014 - link
I don't agree with the bundling. Everyone says it requires the keyboard cover, and I agree, but the packaging is far simpler if buyers have the option of choosing their cover separately, and in whichever colour they want. Or they could save $130 if they really don't care and already have a bluetooth keyboard.The proper way to handle this is to include the keyboard price in any discussion of the Surface family's pricing. For one, the chart of prices in this very article should have started at $928 for the base model, and continued from there.
Microsoft should really be talking about the price differently than it has, too. Like, show it for $928, then put some subtext about it being separate $799 and $129 purchases.
For $928, the base model is still a fairly good value.
euskalzabe - Tuesday, February 24, 2015 - link
No, what people are saying is that the type cover should be included in those $799, not bundled for more money.cryptech - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
^This. Any way I try to grock the Surface Pro it’s not appealing. Why would I wan’t an awkward ultraportable with terrible battery life or a heavy, hot and overpriced tablet with a fan?kyuu - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
What ultraportables have better battery life asides from the MacBook Air?Since when is something that weighs the same as an iPad 2 "heavy"? Why is something that has less heat issues than the iPad Air "hot"?
What other tablets with equivalent internals are so much cheaper that the Surface is "overpriced"?
You are right that it has a fan, though. Oh noes.
kyuu - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
My bad, I was confusing the iPad 2's thickness and weight. So the SP3 does weight about a quarter pound more than the iPad 2. Whoop de doo. Considering that drastic difference in what it can do, it seems a small price to pay. Same goes for fan noise (which is only an issue during intensive workloads, you're not going to hear it while web browsing).If you must have a super-light and passively cooled tablet, that's cool. There are plenty of those around. Even ones that run full Windows. The Surface Pro line isn't about competing with oversized smartphones like the iPad.