Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 23, 2014 3:55 AM ESTTablet Performance
The tablet performance comparison is as ridiculous as it's ever been. Surface Pro 3 is substantially faster than any ARM based tablet on the market. Web pages load quicker and you can play a completely different caliber of game on the device.
Tablet GPU Performance
All news isn't good though on the tablet front. Surface Pro 3 still struggles to behave completely like a tablet, despite finally gaining support for Connected Standby. Waking up the device from sleep still requires around 1300ms, a period that sounds small but feels like an eternity compared to an Android or iOS tablet.
WiFi
Marvell remains Microsoft's partner of choice when it comes to the WiFi implementation on Surface Pro 3. The updated design features a Marvell Avastar 88W8897 SoC supporting 2-stream 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0. The SoC also features NFC support but it's not leveraged in Surface Pro 3.
WiFi performance is better than on Surface Pro 2. Peak performance improves from around 160Mbps to 260Mbps when connected at an 866Mbps link rate. I didn't notice any weird behavior or poor performance when connecting to WiFi networks, although as 2-stream 802.11ac implementations go this is hardly the fastest.
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dupawow - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Great review! Can't wait till i get mine.drmyfore - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
WEIGHT:Surface Pro 3 / 800g (+295g TypeCover=1095g)
Macbook Air 11 / 1.08kg
Macbook Air 13 / 1.35kg
RES:
Surface Pro 3 / 2160*1440
Macbook Air 11 / 1366*768
Macbook Air 13 / 1440*900
THICKNESS:
Surface Pro 3 / 9.1mm (4.8mm TypeCover=13.9mm)
Macbook Air 11 / 17mm
Macbook Air 13 / 17mm
BATTERY LIFE (OFFICAL):
Surface Pro 3 / 9H
Macbook Air 11 / 9H
Macbook Air 13 / 12H
Why not compare with Air 11?
dylan522p - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Because it is luster in terms of screen size and real estate.dylan522p - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Bigger*rodolfcarver - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
It sure is an fantastic tablet. For work, I don't see how you could get anything better (but for other things there are, see http://www.consumertop.com/best-tablets/ ). I've had mine for a couple of weeks and couldn't be more pleased.bestllc - Monday, July 8, 2019 - link
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MarcSP - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Then, why compare it with the even bigger MBA13? :-]darwinosx - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Bigger? By what? Oh, pretty much nothing.basroil - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
"Bigger? By what? Oh, pretty much nothing."I suggest you pull out a calculator and do the math, that 2" increase is a 40% increase in area!
With 40% more area you get a hell of a lot more room to dissipate heat and that much larger battery (54W vs 38W). When comparing surface pro's 7.58 hour life to the 13" MBA the difference is only 22% despite a 29% decrease in battery size (both on windows, . Compared to the 11" MBA (about 8.5hours on OSX) the SP3 should be very competitive, and should last substantially longer in heavy use tasks.
retrospooty - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
You are also comparing a laptop to a convertible. Not really in the same category. The SP3 kicks the MBA's ass IMO.