Microsoft Surface 3 review

SURFACE PEN

One of the main reasons why Microsoft adopted a 3:2 display for last year’s Pro 3 was because every tablet came with a bundled Surface Pen stylus, making it ideal for drawing in similar dimensions to an A4 sheet of paper. Sadly, the Surface Pen is now an optional extra with the Surface 3, so you’ll have to pay another £45 for it if you want to take advantage of it.

If you’re a digital artist, though, it’s well worth the extra expense as it’s easily one of the best and most accurate styli we’ve ever used. It’s pressure sensitive, so the thickness of your lines will vary depending on how hard you press down on the screen, and the Surface 3’s built-in palm rejection means you can actually rest your hand on the screen without making accidental marks on the page. It makes for a very natural drawing experience, and is a great tool for artists who want to be able to draw directly on the screen.

^ Part of the reason why Microsoft isn’t bundling the Surface Pen in with the tablet is because they’re now available in multiple colours

The Surface Pen also works brilliantly with Microsoft’s bundled OneNote application, as you can open the program simply by pressing the button on the end of the pen – even when the tablet’s in sleep mode. This means you don’t have to sign in to your Microsoft account and open the program manually from the Start screen if all you want to do is jot down something very quickly, and it’s this kind of convenience that helps set the Surface 3 apart from other Windows tablets.

Alternatively, a double tap of the end button will grab a screenshot of your desktop and automatically open it in OneNote, allowing you to add your own hand-drawn doodles to it. Everything’s automatically saved in the cloud, too, so you can access all your OneNote documents from your other Windows devices.

We worry that the Surface Pen will be prone to getting lost, though, as there’s nowhere to store it once you’ve finished using it. Previous Surface Pro tablets have always included a loop of material for it on the Type Cover keyboard, but sadly the Surface 3’s keyboard doesn’t come with one at all. Instead, you’ll have to buy one from Microsoft that sticks onto the side for another £4.50, which is pretty cheeky if you ask us.

PERFORMANCE

Inside, the Surface 3 is powered by one of Intel’s new Cherrytrail Atom processors, the quad-core 1.6GHz X7-Z8700. It’s fanless, too, so it’s virtually silent to run. This does come at the expense of performance, though, as it can’t dispel any excess heat to run its CPU at full speed for long periods of time. That said, it still scored a respectable 30 overall in our application benchmarks, which puts it almost ten points ahead of older Atom-based tablet hybrids such as the Asus Transformer Book T200TA.

We were particularly impressed with the X7-Z8700’s respective scores of 34 and 32 in the image-editing and video rendering sections of the test, so it’s perfectly suited to general tasks such as browsing the web, composing Office documents and watching videos. However, even our model, which had 4GB of RAM as opposed to the £419 model’s 2GB of RAM, struggled slightly with the multi-tasking section, scoring just 27, so it may start to slow down if you’re running lots of demanding programs at the same time.

^ The Surface Pen works brilliantly with One Note, but it’s probably only worth buying if you have an interest in digital art

Unsurprisingly, the Surface 3 met its match with our new 4K benchmarks, scoring just 15 overall. This was mostly down to its pitiful score of 3 in the multi-tasking section of the test, but its scores of 28 and 26 in the image and video sections weren’t bad at all considering the Surface 3’s size and low-powered chipset.

It’s not best suited to playing 3D games either, as its integrated Intel HD Graphics chip failed to produce even 15fps in our Dirt Showdown test at 1,280×720 on High quality settings and 4x anti-aliasing. This isn’t surprising, but setting the graphics to Low didn’t help matters either. However, we were able to play 2D indie games such as Kalimba, Papers Please and Fez as long as we tailored the resolution, so it’s not a complete loss if you fancy a quick game while you’re travelling.

BATTERY LIFE

You’ll probably want to keep any gaming sessions fairly brief if you’re away from the mains, though, as the Surface 3’s battery life will only just about get you through the day on a single charge. Microsoft says the device is rated for 9 hours of video playback, and in our light use test, which scrolls through a web page and plays a 12-minute video every half an hour, we managed 8h 54m. This isn’t bad for a Windows tablet, but it also shows that Microsoft’s figure is a little optimistic, so you’ll need to keep an eye on the battery meter if you’re on the move for a long period of time.