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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
274 Comments
View All Comments
Drumsticks - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Heavier isn't a bad thing. The SP pen is light in my opinion, I've yet to see somebody say the pen was uncomfortable. Again, on the pen, from above:"Overall I have to say the new pen is an improvement. You get a much thinner display, an unnoticeable impact to pressure sensitivity, improved latency and the experiential improvements are substantial (one click wake/OneNote launch is useful)."
I'm not saying this as an artist. But as a user, note taking (which is my primary thing as a college student) seems to be improved.
Upgrade the GPU to what? They weren't going to get dedicated graphics in here, and the i7 model uses an HD5000. The throttling is meh, as Anand again mentioned.
I'm not saying it's perfect. I want this with Broadwell, badly. But it's a big improvement. It's not like it's going to be lacking for performance for what it's needed for. I don't expect mobile gaming out of this device, and that's the only time it really saw throttling.
ymcpa - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Most reviews praised the pen for being heavier and more comfortable to hold than the original pen. Gabe from penny arcade never mentioned that the N-Trig was less accurate. I will take an artist opinion over yours. I have read several reviews where it was stated that the Wacom digitizer in the pro 2 wasn't very accurate near the edges.mkozakewich - Monday, June 30, 2014 - link
As someone who's suffering with the edges of my Pro, I'd like to hear about how the NTrig handles around the edges. As it's a different technology and doesn't rely on something behind the screen, I don't think there'll be any problems.Imaginer - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
As an artist, and someone who regularly uses OneNote for notes on a previous Surface Pro 2, and after using a Surface Pro 3...With Wacom pens, they are hefty like a light pencil, and handle as such. The N-Trig pen of the Surface Pro 3, feels like a quality solid inking pen in weight.
The time measured lag, is for long, prolonged strokes of quick length, instead of short and slow velocity movements. Most of the time, in writing, one isn't writing in big letters. The only time this MAY come up, is one doing quick, very long lines of strokes. Most of the time in drawing, such strokes are not too often and few in between in sketching and painting.
My only gripe, is that with the default Pro 2's pen, is that the eraser end is pressure sensitive as well, and can be flipped to erase. The Pro 3's pen, uses a second button on the side for erasing, which isn't as comfortable for me, and an adjustment of such. Here is hoping a second more "pencil" like pen that has a pressure eraser end is released. (along with lack of Wacom's radial like menu).
In the forums, I made an image showing handwriting aspects of pen comparisons - something that I felt would be a nice touch in the pen mentions - as it is not hard to pull a comparison between the two.
ymcpa - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
This was explained by Microsoft. A human can't possibly replicate 1028 points of pressure. They can't even replicate the 256 points that the N-trig has. It's really about the pressure curve that they use. Microsoft said they will have an update that will allow users to alter the pressure curve to fit their usage.basroil - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
No, Microsoft explained that even though Wacom's pen supports 1024bit, the actual useful resolution is much smaller because of how the pressure curve is set up (it's linear rather than semi-exponential like the n-trig)basroil - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
1024 levels (10bit), not 1024bit (which would be a ridiculous number)ymcpa - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
They talked about the pressure curve but the blog also mentioned that the human hand can't reproduce 1024 different levels of pressure. That is why it won't matter if the N-trig digitizer has less levels of pressure.theuglyman0war - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
Even if an artist can not replicate 1024 levels of pressure in a single stroke ( wonder how u prove as much as humans are scary amazing beings at times ) An artist can easily need as much "threshold" in many stokes... Working very light where details build up in whispers. In which case 256 levels unutilized is complete hogwash.mkozakewich - Monday, June 30, 2014 - link
It's not even about what the artist touches on themselves, and more about the range. I'd like my pen to to be able to step from size 1 to size 255 in 1-step increments, in which case the sensitivity levels would work fine and I'd still have a pen with a massive brush. (Honestly, I'd probably not use 255 levels. More like 64.)