The keyboard is thin, but it has very good feel. The touch pad is also very good and provides a clock if needed.
Test Set Up
We used a couple of synthetic tests with the Surface, which included Office and gaming tests. It does claim to have gaming potential, so we tested it.
- Operating System: Windows 8.1 Pro
- Processor: Intel i5-4300U
- Chipset: Haswell ULT
- Graphics: Onboard Intel
- Memory: 8GB RAM DDR3 Dual Channel
- Drives: 256 GB SSD
Synthetic Tests
- PCMark 08
- 3DMark
Results
First up, PCMark08 and a reasonable set of results, except for the storage test which is exceptional. When you consider a Asus Rampage V Extreme Motherboard will score 4419 with a SanDisk SSD SATA III 128GB, that’s not a bad score at all.
The Surface uses its SSD to good affect, never freezing or slowing up during any operation. The rest of the scores will be masked by a very good SSD access times and performance.
Next, 3DMark and an unsurprising set of results. The Surface Pro 3 is nowhere compared to a true gaming laptop but does perform well on the Ice Storm test, an older test.
We did load up World Of Warcraft and it did play very well. So it won’t play lush modern games well, or at all, but something like World Of Warcraft worked well. Next, powered up and ready to go followed by the conclusion.
Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review
Package - 8.5
Performance - 9
Price - 7.1
Consumer Experience - 7
7.9
It's a piece of nerd porn, though it's expensive. It won't replace your laptop or tablet completely, and if you are happy to put up with a non mature product and have deep pockets, you may end up loving this. It is not quite there yet though.