New Surface 3 starting at $499

Erasmus354 said:
Again, a completely unsubstantiated claim. Show me one test of the Atom x7 battery efficiency. Don't mind me if I am not holding my breath.
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Review units of the Surface 3 are supposed to be in reviewer's hands this week so you may not have to hold your breath as long as you think.

I tried out one of these at a Microsoft Store Saturday. It Microsoft's claim of 10 hours of continuous video playback in XBox Video is close I don't know of too many other 1.37 lbs. x86 devices that can do that. Even with the Type Cover it's still shy of 2 lbs.
 
heatlesssun said:
Review units of the Surface 3 are supposed to be in reviewer's hands this week so you may not have to hold your breath as long as you think.

I tried out one of these at a Microsoft Store Saturday. It Microsoft's claim of 10 hours of continuous video playback in XBox Video is close I don't know of too many other 1.37 lbs. x86 devices that can do that. Even with the Type Cover it's still shy of 2 lbs.
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I certainly look forward to it, however the Atom and Microsoft do not have the best history when it comes to power efficiency. Not sure why you felt the confidence to make such a bold claim with exactly zero evidence to back it up. 10 hours of battery life isn't really all that impressive unless the battery in this thing is minuscule.
 
Erasmus354 said:
I certainly look forward to it, however the Atom and Microsoft do not have the best history when it comes to power efficiency. Not sure why you felt the confidence to make such a bold claim with exactly zero evidence to back it up. 10 hours of battery life isn't really all that impressive unless the battery in this thing is minuscule.
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I have several Bay Trail tablets, the latest one being a Toshiba Encore 2 Write. It easily hits 10 hours of continuous mixed used operation at 1.2 lbs. and the performance is pretty solid for mainstream desktop application use. However it is only driving a 1280x800 screen compared to the Surface 3's 1920x1280 display.

It's the combination of weight, battery life and overall performance that will make or break the Surface 3. 10 hours of mixed use for a pen capable hybrid that weights 2 lbs. (that's including the Type Cover) and has solid mainstream desktop support at this price point is going to sell well enough and have good margins.
 
heatlesssun said:
I have several Bay Trail tablets, the latest one being a Toshiba Encore 2 Write. It easily hits 10 hours of continuous mixed used operation at 1.2 lbs. and the performance is pretty solid for mainstream desktop application use. However it is only driving a 1280x800 screen compared to the Surface 3's 1920x1280 display.

It's the combination of weight, battery life and overall performance that will make or break the Surface 3. 10 hours of mixed use for a pen capable hybrid that weights 2 lbs. (that's including the Type Cover) and has solid mainstream desktop support at this price point is going to sell well enough and have good margins.
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Driving a larger resolution should be neglible. The majority of screen power usage goes to the backlighting. You might see a slight increase in CPU/GPU usage. But I'd imagine it'd be about the same if the screens are the same tech and size.

I really like the direction MS has taken their tablets. Right now, they're at about the point where they can be desktop replacements (with the docking station). One more generation of Intel and that will be even more true.
 
If you hold everything else constant than you need a stronger backlight to actually have identical viewing brightness for a higher resolution display.

Subpixels are not actually edge to edge so typically you will get more light filtered out if the only advancement is simply smaller and more numerous sub pixels in achieving a higher resolution.
 
Spidey329 said:
Driving a larger resolution should be neglible. The majority of screen power usage goes to the backlighting. You might see a slight increase in CPU/GPU usage. But I'd imagine it'd be about the same if the screens are the same tech and size.
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The difference in battery life on the Dell XPS 13 from 1080P screen to 1800P is almost 40% less.
 
Early reviews are starting to come out:

The Surface 3's biggest competitor might actually be Microsoft's Surface Pro 3. The PC-tablet gives you a much more powerful processor and a bigger (12-inch) screen, adding just a half pound of weight -- but also adding $300 to the price tag.

Amazingly, speed and size are about the only two things you're sacrificing by opting for a Surface 3 over a Surface Pro 3. The two Microsoft tablets are so similar that the differences can be hard to spot: Some different button placement, a micro-USB charger instead of a magnetic charger, and a three-position kickstand instead of a "continuous hinge."

At $628 (technically, it starts at $499, but that's without a keyboard and we're assuming you want a keyboard), the Surface 3 is a good buy.

Can it get the job done? Sure. Can it serve as your only PC? For most people the answer is yes.

For a computer that's half the width of your pinky finger, that's pretty impressive.
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http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/08/technology/surface-3-review/index.html

Judging by other earlier impressions it looks like the Surface 3 is a winner. A great combination of features with decent performance and battery life in a high quality package that's not cheap but priced in line with other devices that might be better at certain things but not nearly as flexible.
 
Was thinking about this but wanted the dark blue keyboard since I have the black one for my Pro 3 already and I already have two spare sliver pens and wanted a different colored one to differentiate it from my SP3 pens.

That's almost half the difference for the accessories adding only $100 for the keyboard and pen instead of $180. While I know people are going to complain about these accessories not in the base price $100 for a quality keyboard and pen for any tablet is quite reasonable.
 
Micosoft stores have been good to me about keyboard color exchanges as long as it's sealed.
 
Reviews do not "a winner" make.

Let's see how it actually sells.

Q4 Results will be most interesting.
 
RandemTox said:
Reviews do not "a winner" make.

Let's see how it actually sells.

Q4 Results will be most interesting.
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Good reviews don't hurt. The main issue with the Surface 3 will be price, which has always been a big issue that comes up with Surface, even the Surface Pro 3. For what the Surface 3 is it's reasonably priced but there's the issue with the keyboard and pen, which is included in the Pro 3, being an additional $180 though there is a bundle from Costco that shaves $80 off that.
 
How big would 3:2 screen be compared to 16:9 10" tablets ?

Also anyone knows how that atom cpu compares to i3 in Surface Pro ?
 
Michaelius said:
How big would 3:2 screen be compared to 16:9 10" tablets ?

Also anyone knows how that atom cpu compares to i3 in Surface Pro ?
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Here's a side by side picture I took last week at a Microsoft Store with my Surface Pro 3 and a Surface 3 if that helps to give you a size perspective:
Surface%203%20Pro-Surface%203%20Side%20By%20Side.png


As the picture might lead you to believe, the Surface 3 seemed a bit bigger that I was thinking before I saw it in person. Sure it's not as big as the Pro 3 but neither the screen nor keyboard felt cramped to me. However the track pad kind of did in my 30 minutes of trying it out.

As for the performance compared to the Pro 3 i3, the Surface team did an AMA on Reddit last week and was basically saying that the Surface 3 should deliver somewhere in the 75% range overall as an i3 Pro 3.
 
Where are you going to find a device equivalent to Surface 3 with Core M for $100 more? Lenovo Helix2 is about the closest thing but it's ~$900. You're probably thinking of legacy clam shell laptops without touch and pen and crappier build quality where Microsoft > Lenovo (my threshold) > Dell/Asus.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Review is up at Ars: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/surface-3-review-smaller-slower-cheaper-better/2/

Battery life results are meh (30 minutes more than the QHD XPS13 which would put it significantly behind the FHD XPS13, definitely not best in class at all), performance results are pretty weak. Overall I think the Core M machines that are around $100 more expensive are a significantly better deal.
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The Surface 3 is a tablet, the XPS 13 as nice as it is a considerably larger and heavier laptop. The Surface 3 even with the Type Cover is still over 1/2 a pound heavier. And while that's not a lot in absolute terms for many it is kind of big deal for the type of crowd this is aimed at.
 
mi7chy said:
Where are you going to find a device equivalent to Surface 3 with Core M for $100 more? Lenovo Helix2 is about the closest thing but it's ~$900. You're probably thinking of legacy clam shell laptops without touch and pen and crappier build quality where Microsoft > Lenovo (my threshold) > Dell/Asus.
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T300 Chi, $699 including the keyboard dock, solid build. Less than $100 more than Surface 3 + Keyboard. For that you get significantly higher performance, same battery life, double the storage, double the ram, in a slightly larger package. Also Asus has shown that they have the best designs for Core M chips so far that get the most performance possible out of them.
 
Erasmus354 said:
T300 Chi, $699 including the keyboard dock, solid build. Less than $100 more than Surface 3 + Keyboard. For that you get significantly higher performance, same battery life, double the storage, double the ram, in a slightly larger package. Also Asus has shown that they have the best designs for Core M chips so far that get the most performance possible out of them.
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You can get a 4 GB/128 GB Surface 3 bundle from Costco for $699 that includes the black Type Cover and pen. The performance between the Atom x7-z3700 and Core M-5Y10 probably isn't significant enough where in general work load on the Surface 3 that are slow become significantly better on T300. The total weight of the T300 is 3.2 lbs. the keyboard while the Surface 3 and Type Cover is about 2 lbs., so that is a significant difference in relative weight. T300 is also 16x9 which is generally considered the worse aspect ratio for a tablet in portrait mode. The T300 does support an Synaptics active pen but those typically aren't nearly as good the N-trig in the Surface 3 and Pro 3. The T300 would probably be better for those are looking to use it as a laptop in the lap with it's keyboard dock.
 
heatlesssun said:
You can get a 4 GB/128 GB Surface 3 bundle from Costco for $699 that includes the black Type Cover and pen. The performance between the Atom x7-z3700 and Core M-5Y10 probably isn't significant enough where in general work load on the Surface 3 that are slow become significantly better on T300. The total weight of the T300 is 3.2 lbs. the keyboard while the Surface 3 and Type Cover is about 2 lbs., so that is a significant difference in relative weight. T300 is also 16x9 which is generally considered the worse aspect ratio for a tablet in portrait mode. The T300 does support an Synaptics active pen but those typically aren't nearly as good the N-trig in the Surface 3 and Pro 3. The T300 would probably be better for those are looking to use it as a laptop in the lap with it's keyboard dock.
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Basically you are getting a machine with 1/3 to 1/2 power in a package that is a bit smaller and lighter. The Core-M Yoga 3 Pro is roughly the same performance as the SP3, and the Ars review has the S3 at about 1/3 the cpu performance of the SP3, and about 1/2 the gpu performance. It is a huge performance disparity. Shoot, the Surface 3 was getting crushed by the iPad in single thread and gpu performance. This truly is a netbook class performance product, you really can't spin it as anything else. It is an EeePC in a nicer package.

If you need the smallest and lightest machine that is technically capable of running any windows application then the Surface 3 is a decent buy. If you are just looking for a portable machine in this price point, go for a Core M machine.

EDIT: Also the storage speed is complete shit. Complete and utter shit.
 
Erasmus354 said:
EDIT: Also the storage speed is complete shit. Complete and utter shit.
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Agreed. I'm hoping this is something they admit to and address quickly. It's so abysmal that it's go to be a defect or something that could be fixed with a software update. If it was a deliberate design compromise, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
 
CEpeep said:
Agreed. I'm hoping this is something they admit to and address quickly. It's so abysmal that it's go to be a defect or something that could be fixed with a software update. If it was a deliberate design compromise, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
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It is a design problem. It isn't a PCI-E or even a SATA drive, it is an SD interface. So you are stuck with storage that is 5-10x slower than the competition.
 
Yeah, the Surface 3 uses eMMC storage so it's going to be a lot slower than PCI-E or SATA storage. It's the level of performance that you get with current Bay Trail tablets and for mainstream tasks it's fine. The problem with benchmarks as [H] discovered years ago in testis process is that they don't necessarily tell you the real world story. Long time PC folks are so accustomed to the idea of "faster is always better" but there comes a point where it's "fast enough".

After trying out a Surface 3 at a Microsoft Store a couple of weeks ago I think Microsoft pretty well hit the nail on the head. Beautifully and well built, light, fantastic screen and seemed to be plenty fast of mainstream use. In looking at the reviews thus far they seem to concur. The biggest con I'm seeing is about the cost specifically related to cost of the keyboard and pen.
 
Storage I/O interface is an Intel issue since they have to gimp it to differentiate it from the higher priced Core M otherwise they're both 14nm and similar minus L2 cache size.

Anyhow, lets cut out the bull crap and stick to facts.

Synthetic benchmarks like Geekbench are useless and more so across different platforms. Pointless to compare performance to an iPad that doesn't run full Windows or full productivity software.

This product is priced to compete with iPad and upper tier Android tablets where it's equivalent in random read while being significantly faster in random write. Dell XPS 13 random read isn't much better.

For the segment this product is targeted at, primarily students, home and general users, it's plenty usable without scraping the lower tier quality of Dell and Asus.

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That storage performance is ugly.

If it were real 128GB SSD that would be huge argument for going with non-pro version.

But at 720 euro you can just as well go for i3 pro with micro sd card that costs 800 euros (and has pen included)
 
They didn't need to gimp the storage to differentiate. The processor itself differentiates pretty well. It is pretty much 1/3 the performance of the Surface Pro 3 in most of the CPU benchmarks. Really disappointing performance from the new Atoms.
 
Is it correct only the basic Surface 3 has mobile broadband support? For work purposes I need a Windows tablet with broadband, figured it was a good time to test a Surface Pro 3...
 
tec805 said:
Is it correct only the basic Surface 3 has mobile broadband support? For work purposes I need a Windows tablet with broadband, figured it was a good time to test a Surface Pro 3...
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Both the 2 GB RAM/64 GB storage and 4 GB RAM/128 GB storage Surface 3s will be available in LTE but the price and availability of the devices has not yet been set. I'm, suspecting sometime by late June and at $100 over the non-LTE versions.
 
That seems insane you would have only few gigabytes left after OS.

Or is Windows 10 smaller than 8.1 ?

Anyway with European pricing of 720 EUR for 128GB model vs 800EUR for i3 pro It doesn't make much sense to go for non pro.

For 80 EUR you get:
- pen included
- i3 cpu that runs around atom in single threaded apps
- real SSD (at the cost of 64 GB)
- bigger screen
 
Michaelius said:
That seems insane you would have only few gigabytes left after OS.

Or is Windows 10 smaller than 8.1 ?

Anyway with European pricing of 720 EUR for 128GB model vs 800EUR for i3 pro It doesn't make much sense to go for non pro.

For 80 EUR you get:
- pen included
- i3 cpu that runs around atom in single threaded apps
- real SSD (at the cost of 64 GB)
- bigger screen
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It's the same issue in Canada. MS seems to price MSRP based upon the exchange rate at product launch but doesn't adjust over its lifetime.

The USD has gained considerably relative to other currencies since the launch of the SP3. Technically it's the SP3 that is under priced based upon exchange rate changes and not that the S3 is over priced.

The strength of the USD is terrible for computer/electronics buyers in the rest of the world in general as those products tend to be pegged to it.

There are plenty of 32GB Win 8.1 tablets so the space is there. Win 10 is supposed to be smaller as well in terms of footprint.
 
limitedaccess said:
New rumor about possibly an even lower SKU with only 32GB of storage (2GB ram).
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The 32 GB version is only for schools and in that kind of environment where the devices will be locked down and probably using lots network storage, 32 GB should be ok. I have a 32 GB HP Stream 7 that has full Office installed along with dozens of modern apps and a couple of GB used for data and without the recovery partition there's still about 10 GB free.
 
heatlesssun said:
The 32 GB version is only for schools and in that kind of environment where the devices will be locked down and probably using lots network storage, 32 GB should be ok. I have a 32 GB HP Stream 7 that has full Office installed along with dozens of modern apps and a couple of GB used for data and without the recovery partition there's still about 10 GB free.
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Eh, still kind of pointless considering flash prices. They really aren't saving much by doing that.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Eh, still kind of pointless considering flash prices. They really aren't saving much by doing that.
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But the big competition for something like the Surface 3 is a lot of cheap Chromebooks that cut a lot of corners to come in at the prices they do, with local storage being the primary corner cut. And when these devices are being bought in bulk, $10 or $20 on cost of making the device can quickly add up.

Ultimately if you're trying to compete with Chromebooks the amount of local storage isn't going to mean a lot since Chromebooks eschew local storage. 32 GB I think is about the minimum necessary for Windows 8.1 to be useful and any way to cut costs against low cost devices like Chromebooks is just what you have to do.
 
I just did a preorder of a 128 Surface 3. I played with both the SP3 and the Surface, and I opted for the Surface. I have nearly two grand sunk into a editing/gaming rig already and cannot justify spending nearly $1000 on a tablet/hybrid that could never HOPE to replace my rig. The surface will be great as a full featured machine that will RDP, give me the full steam streaming experience, and pressure sensitive pen input for editing smart previews in Lightroom when I'm away from home.

I wanted a 10-11 inch tablet-sized, full Windows machine with excellent build quality and at least 4GB of system memory and pressure sensitive pen capabililty. The only options that were available that check all thses boxes don't offer the all the possibilities the the Surface do. The venue pro 8/10, Lenovo Thinkpad 8/10, and the Toshiba Encore Write have been in and quickly out of my rotation, but the Surface looks to really hit the sweet spot. Venues were okay but chunky and had spotty at best pen performance. Toshiba Write maxed out a 2GB of Memory, The Thinkpads were probably the closest to contenders, but were 16x9 like the others and charged a premium for the faster 3795 CPU that was actually SLOWER because of throttling.

This machine is looking to be pretty much perfect for me, because the the SP3 doenst fit in my camera bag's tablet pouch while this one does. 3:2 aspect ratio. MicroUSB charger so I can plug it in to my existing car charger ports. Light enough to mount to my tablet holder and install a turn by turn direction app and stop letting my phone calls interrupt my directions, lol. I look forward to using this tab as a companion to my main editing rig, Lightroom will be installed on both but I'll just be accessing my library remotely from the surface, and then gain the ability to use the pen for retouching of layers/masks.
 
Anandtech review is up. Basically confirming every other review. http://anandtech.com/show/9219/the-surface-3-review

Meh performance
Meh battery life
Meh price
Decent display
Terrible storage

Of note however, the mediocre battery life is a result of Microsoft making the device too thin and light or poorly optimizing use of space inside the device. It is actually the new top of the charts for efficiency. Just nudging out the FHD XPS13 in terms of battery per Whr. However, this is with the XPS13 completely shattering the S3 in performance. The S3 has a battery that is only 28Whr, that is the same as the iPad Air 2 despite the fact that the S3 significantly larger and heavier.
 
The Andandtech review was actually pretty positive. The battery life and charging speed were the biggest dings in this review but other reviews have posted better numbers on this subject but somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 hours of work use is about what to expect.

For what the Surface 3 is there's not really anything else like it overall:

I think though that the battery life is really the only real concern for the Surface 3. In the Windows space, there is no other tablet quite like this one, except maybe the Surface Pro 3, but that device is bigger, and heavier, and less useful as a tablet. It does have far more performance available, but for far more money up front.
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Probably the big issue for the Surface is pricing. PC buyers have for so long been buying solely on specs or price and while it would be nice if the price included the Type Cover and pen I don't think trying to squeeze the margins hard or reduce the build quality of the Surface is the way to go. There's enough OEMs pushing out other designs and more favorable pricing that the Surface doesn't need to race to bottom.
 
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