Hi all, I'm just under 2 weeks into being a Surface 3 owner and whilst looking for some sources of information stumbled across this site, you seem a friendly and helpful bunch so it seemed rude to just read all the info available here and not join.
I've been using a budget Bay Trail powered tablet for the last 6 months and as I've found myself using this more and more for my daily/general Windows based tasks I thought I'd treat myself to something a bit better,
I thought about getting a SP3 but having two desktops (one a media server and HTPC, the other a games machine) I couldn't really justify the cost when I have those for the CPU intensive tasks I may wish to carry out.
Everything on my old tablet was adequate, the 720P screen was ok but nothing special, the wifi was ok, it picked up a reasonable signal but was only single channel, battery life was passable for a cheap device but not great, about 5 hours general use and 3 1/2 hours playing HD video,
storage was only 32 GB (I added an SD card to increase this) and RAM 2GB, its type cover was just about usable but pretty annoying.
As I said I was using this tablet more and more so rather than faff around comparing this piece of hardware to that piece I thought I'd go for the best in the category.
I knew before I bought this I was paying over the odds for what the device is capable of but I love it,
its probably a combination of 2 GB's extra RAM, MS optimising the OS and drivers and an updated CPU but I've been pleasantly surprised how much faster and smoother this Cherry Trail device is over the Bay Trail one.
The screen is gorgeous, the type cover and touchpad surprisingly good and battery life whilst not quite what MS claim is around 75% longer than I'm used to.
Wifi performance has surpassed anything I expected, my Surface 3 picks up about twice as many local networks as my 3rd PC (bedroom media player) equipped with a high gain dual antenna adapter and it gives me 130 mbps on my 152 mbps internet connection and data transfers between devices that average 17 MB/s, which is pretty good for my getting old now wireless N router.
As far as something in this form factor can be the design and aesthetics are beautiful (it bloody should be for £600 lol).
For all my praise though I'd have a hard time recommending this to many people I know, its a great device but something I'd class as an expensive luxury, although I'd recommend it all day long over an equivalently priced Apple product if any of my friends or family asked what to get in this price range
I've been using a budget Bay Trail powered tablet for the last 6 months and as I've found myself using this more and more for my daily/general Windows based tasks I thought I'd treat myself to something a bit better,
I thought about getting a SP3 but having two desktops (one a media server and HTPC, the other a games machine) I couldn't really justify the cost when I have those for the CPU intensive tasks I may wish to carry out.
Everything on my old tablet was adequate, the 720P screen was ok but nothing special, the wifi was ok, it picked up a reasonable signal but was only single channel, battery life was passable for a cheap device but not great, about 5 hours general use and 3 1/2 hours playing HD video,
storage was only 32 GB (I added an SD card to increase this) and RAM 2GB, its type cover was just about usable but pretty annoying.
As I said I was using this tablet more and more so rather than faff around comparing this piece of hardware to that piece I thought I'd go for the best in the category.
I knew before I bought this I was paying over the odds for what the device is capable of but I love it,
its probably a combination of 2 GB's extra RAM, MS optimising the OS and drivers and an updated CPU but I've been pleasantly surprised how much faster and smoother this Cherry Trail device is over the Bay Trail one.
The screen is gorgeous, the type cover and touchpad surprisingly good and battery life whilst not quite what MS claim is around 75% longer than I'm used to.
Wifi performance has surpassed anything I expected, my Surface 3 picks up about twice as many local networks as my 3rd PC (bedroom media player) equipped with a high gain dual antenna adapter and it gives me 130 mbps on my 152 mbps internet connection and data transfers between devices that average 17 MB/s, which is pretty good for my getting old now wireless N router.
As far as something in this form factor can be the design and aesthetics are beautiful (it bloody should be for £600 lol).
For all my praise though I'd have a hard time recommending this to many people I know, its a great device but something I'd class as an expensive luxury, although I'd recommend it all day long over an equivalently priced Apple product if any of my friends or family asked what to get in this price range
