Anandtech review up

[hughlle]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9219/the-surface-3-review

The Surface 3 is a great device. The build quality is really at the top level of any OEM out there. The form factor is finally the right one after two previous generations that got it slightly wrong. The weight is lighter than any previous Surface, and just as balanced. Performance of the x7 Atom CPU is great for light tasks, and if you need more than light tasks then this is not the device for you. As a tablet, it is great to use in either orientation, with the portrait mode being especially good now for browsing the web. The kickstand is improved, they keyboard is improved, the base tier steps up to 64 GB of storage, making it actually useful without immediately adding micro SD to the mix.

Sounds like it is going to be well received by the public. 5.5 hour charge time though, ouch! The battery/charging section of the review makes it sound doubtful as to whether your spare phone charger will be able to charge this device at all.

Positive review though!

 

[GreyFox7]

Good to finally see this published, they took their sweet time.

 

[hughlle]

They've always been late on the ball with reviews, but tend to offer the most comprehensive once they do. However since the purchase by purch it seems that they are taking even longer and reviewing even less. I'd much rather wait for anandtech than settle for engadget or cnet though.

 

[TPadden]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9219/the-surface-3-review



Sounds like it is going to be well received by the public. 5.5 hour charge time though, ouch! The battery/charging section of the review makes it sound doubtful as to whether your spare phone charger will be able to charge this device at all.

Positive review though!

Not necessarily; the stock charger is about the same (13W) as almost every phone charger I have 5V / 2.4A (12W); the same output as my external batteries . Even my Apple chargers are 12W.

 

[irogos]

I would be curious if the device was powered off before they did the charging. Isn't it with windows laptops that when you plug them into a power cord that they go into a higher power mode where the brightness goes up and other process stay going rather than being in a low power mode.

Considering the iPad Air has a 30watt hour battery and a similar 10 or 12 watt charger, maybe if the Surface 3 is turned off completely before charging it will charge a lot faster.

 

[GreyFox7]

Not necessarily; the stock charger is about the same (13W) as almost every phone charger I have 5V / 2.4A (12W); the same output as my external batteries . Even my Apple chargers are 12W.

5.5 hour charge time though, ouch! The battery/charging section of the review makes it sound doubtful as to whether your spare phone charger will be able to charge this device at all.

"Microsoft has shipped it with just a 13 watt charger, and when it is charging, only about half of that is available to the battery with the rest designated to power the system."

A 1 amp charger is likely to do nothing and I have a couple of them. 13W comes to 2.6A half of that is 1.3A
A 1.5A charger would just give you a trickle charge or would that be a tickle You probably need a minimum of 2.0A charger and even then it will increase the charge time by 25-50%. The only way you'll get anything out of a 1A charger is to turn the device off.

Might be better to carry a great backup battery.
3A capacity
4A capacity

 

[Johnny365]

It was a good review. I like how they weren't biased toward any other tablet (cough iPad), but it would have been more beneficial to review the 4GB/128GB model. Their overuse of the word "But" in various subsequent sentences was annoying too. Maybe I'm the only one that noticed

Also, perhaps they went with the 2GB/64GB to be different as most other reviewers are going for the other? Who knows!

 

[GreyFox7]

It was a good review. I like how they weren't biased toward any other tablet (cough iPad), but it would have been more beneficial to review the 4GB/128GB model. Their overuse of the word "But" in various subsequent sentences was annoying too. Maybe I'm the only one that noticed

Also, perhaps they went with the 2GB/64GB to be different as most other reviewers are going for the other? Who knows!

At least your performance will not be worse than what they state, 4GB/128GB will only improve it.

 

[GreyFox7]

They've always been late on the ball with reviews, but tend to offer the most comprehensive once they do. However since the purchase by purch it seems that they are taking even longer and reviewing even less. I'd much rather wait for anandtech than settle for engadget or cnet though.

They do great reviews no question about that. One thing that does annoy me is the inconsistent usage of systems in the benchmark comparisons. lets spin the wheel and see which ones we will include on this benchmark, on the next benchmark we will spin again or just drop or add some. Like the Asus T100 is listed on 3 tests and absent on the rest in the System Performance section.

 

[Johnny365]

They probably didn't want to show skewed results too much with having an under/over performing system in the benchmark categories all the time.

 

[hughlle]

That or they don't do any tests other than on the review item, and depending on what tests are being run, they see what machines they've already got benchmark information for. While they use a standardised testing method, it evolves, so might be that they just can't be bothered to update the list of benchmarks on older devices. Who knows. I always found it odd that you'd be looking at the benchmarks in a phone review, say the M9, and suddenly you see it being compared to things like the nexus 9 or ipad air.

 

[zhenya]

Battery life is a bit of a let-down, and the charging time even more so. I'd say that's borderline unacceptable. It really illustrates the fact that they should have just bit the bullet and gone USB-C for charging. They could have gotten normal charging performance, and when they have to inevitably make the change anyhow in the not-too-distant-future it will be one less variation of charging style for a lineup that has already had too many revisions in its short life.