Launched in May 2014, the Surface Pro 3 is Microsoft's third incarnation of the slate-like Windows 8 device. Following on from the Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 designs, the Surface Pro 3 takes on board many of the criticisms of the first two designs to build a better machine and adds in some brand new problems to keep things fair.
The Surface Pro 3 also benefits from a better focus from Microsoft's design team about who the Surface Pro 3 is targeted at. For all the advertising and marketing, the Surface Pro 3 has a narrower target audience and the device is all the better for it. It makes for a machine which understands why it exists, and that (in turn) improves the all-round acceptance of the device.
By sacrificing a touch of utility and not trying to appease everyone, the Surface Pro 3 becomes a much better machine.
I've been living with a Surface Pro 3 for the last few months (the 'middle of the portfolio' Intel i5 unit with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage), and it's time to talk about this intriguing, interesting, inventive, and innovative, machine.
One of the biggest advantages the Surface Pro 3 has is that it realises it is a tablet first. Previous Surface devices (and I've spent time all of them, especially the Surface Pro 2) have been caught in a strange space where they try to prove they could be everything... a tablet on the move, a laptop at your office, the power of a desktop when you needed to do some heavy lifting, and the accessibility of a phablet or smartphone so you could dip in and out of your information.
(Read my review of the Surface Pro 2 here on Forbes).
Every consumer electronics device has to deal with compromise, there is no device that is the perfect device that will do everything of everybody. By focusing the compromising of the Surface Pro 3 on the already weak areas from the previous Surface devices, Microsoft has created the first Surface Pro that I feel I could offer a general recommendation to the 'average' user.
That's mostly down to the utility of Windows 8. There is a sweet spot to the Surface Pro 3, and if you fall into that area, then Microsoft has built you a wonderful machine
For all the talk of a larger screen (the Surface Pro 3 ups the size to 12 inches on the diagonal of the 3:2 ratio screen) and the improved Type Cover, the biggest win on the Surface Pro 3 is that it has biased the design and ergonomics towards being a tablet. Rather than try to occupy the tablet, slate, ultra-portable, and laptop spaces, the target of the Surface Pro 3 feels far more focussed on the tablet space, with the ultra-portable model the next. Slate mode operation (by that I mean running full Windows 8 apps on a slate, not the tablet-like touch focused apps) and attempting to be a full laptop are less important than portability and content creation.
It's not a tablet, though. It might have been put on a diet since the Surface Pro 2 to get the thickness down to an acceptable 9.1 mm and the weight to 800g, but it's still heavy when compared to your bog-standard Android tablet, and the iPad Air outclasses this in terms of svelte size by a mile.
The screen might offer you far more information with just enough bezel space to hold the Surface Pro 3 comfortably as a tablet in one hand, but it is the wrong side of awkward. While it does allow Windows 8 far more room to breath and exploit the UI touches that make is a solid touch-based interface, the physical size makes the Surface Pro 3 awkward to hold while standing for long periods.
That said, it is usable for long periods, primarily because of the reduced weight compared to previous Surface units, but also because the Windows 8 touch-based environment, and the touch-focused first-party apps that are available for the Surface Pro 3, go a long way to creating a usable space for creatives.
I still can't believe that Microsoft does not offer any sort of Office 365 subscription out of the box. Even a six month subscription would help sell the hardware and bring people into the subscription based model without losing too much revenue.
Alongside the 'be more tablet' focus on the hardware, the Surface Pro 3's detachable keyboard puts the focus on keyboard based computing. It turns the Surface Pro 3 into a solid ultra-portable that can be used for data entry and content creation with ease. I find that while typing, the addition of the touchscreen keeps me in the same tactile mode of big presses with my fingers - the Windows 8 touch environment is geared towards the same movements as typing so it's a simple matter to reach out and touch the options, all of which have large target areas in the forgiving UI.
Switching to the trackpad for mouse inputs, or picking up the Surface Pen, is ergonomically time-wasting. Having a touch-enabled screen next to a good keyboard is very efficient.
The keys on the Type Cover are an improvement over the covers for the previous Surface devices. There is a little bit more travel in the keys, the keys feel more 'isolated' from each other, and there's a good physical feedback when typing. It's not as easy to use or as speedy to type on as my external bluetooth Apple keyboard, but it is the best I've come across on a Windows 8 machine.
The extra fold on the Type Cover to raise the back of the keyboard up by half an inch and giving the Type Cover a touch of rake that was missing on previous Surface keyboards creates a much better environment for long periods of typing.
This is why I think the Surface Pro 3 team has been focusing on the Enterprise marketing. Not just because Enterprise is one of Microsoft's remaining strongholds in the 21st century, but because the Surface Pro 3 is an excellent ultra-portable laptop for creating content on, and in the tablet mode it has the full weight of Microsoft's enterprise software available in the modern-day tablet form-factor.
(Here's why I love the Apple keyboard).
Just like the missed promotional step of no Office 365 subscription, the Surface Pro Type Cover is an optional extra. At a cost of £110/$130, it is an expensive peripheral. Yes it does turn the Surface Pro 3 into a worthy challenger to the price-comparable MacBook Air devices, but it's another expense that is added on and gives the impression of Microsoft nickel-and-diming the consumer.
The other feature that Microsoft has been pushing with the Surface Pro 3 is the Surface Pen. First up, it's a vast improvement on the pen shipped with the Surface Pro 2. The new pen connects via BlueTooth for increased accuracy both of the tip of the stylus but also for the level of pressure you are exhorting with the pen. It has two 'mouse-styled' buttons for selecting objects and calling up context sensitive menus, and a shortcut button at the top of the pen that calls up a blank sheet of paper (from OneNote) to write on, even when the Surface Pro 3 is in standby mode.
I think the Pen speaks to the other area that the Surface design team has decided to focus on. Enterprise is the first, but the digital artists and creatives are the second group. Previous Surface Pro devices have been well received by the artistic community, especially the support on offer by the pen in their art packages. The Surface Pro 3 extends that functionality with more pressure sensitivity, a more realistic feeling pen with heft and styling that you would expect from a linear ink-dispensing pen, and more accuracy thanks to the data passing over the bluetooth connection.
I'm a creative who uses words, so the Type Cover is more my thing, but the Surface Pen is the UI for the designers, and they love it.
I just wish that Microsoft had found an elegant way to store the pen within the Surface Pro 3 while travelling. A stick on fabric loop is not the answer you expect on a computer that could cost upwards of one thousand dollars.
The Surface Pro 3 is also a showcase for Windows 8.1 Pro. Much like the Surface hardware, Windows 8.1 Pro is an iteration of the initial release which addresses many major concerns. Windows 8.1 is effectively the service packed version of Windows 8, while the 'Pro' nomenclature notes the extra facilities over and above Windows 8.1 (notably remote desktop operations, participating in a Windows Server Domain, encrypted file systems, and group policy implementations).
Unsurprisingly the strengths of Windows 8.1 are maximised in the Surface Pro 3. The use of the touch screen is one I've already noted, but the general feeling of being able to touch, swipe, and slide around the screen does work.
It doesn't vindicate Microsoft's attempts to give this interface to everybody while also retaining the Windows 7 styled desktop 'for compatibility', but it does illustrate why Redmond thought it was necessary. It's wonderful to have the full desktop facility on the Surface Pro 3 (and the larger screen and solid keyboard means it is far more workable and usable than on the Surface Pro 2), but it still feels a touch schizophrenic.
Luckily, time has passed and more apps are running in the touch focussed world of Windows 8, which means the Surface Pro 3 is reaping the benefits of developers getting to grips with the OS.
The larger screen also means that one of Windows 8's party pieces - the split-screen mode allowing you to run two apps side by side works even better here on the larger screen. Having looked at an eight-inch tablet from Linx last week, the Surface Pro 3 effectively can run two of those tablets side by side. It's a great way of working, and especially useful when you need to be constantly referring to content while creating a report (or a review) to put the document on one side of the screen and use the second side of the split for the information you are using.
And again, swiping in tabs and apps to make the split screen work is a simple finger based operation. There's no complicated set-up you just shift an app to one side, and into 'split screen' you go.
Finally, the usability of the Surface Pro 3 is aided immensely by the kickstand. Unlike previous models, the kickstand is on a friction hinge and can be set at any workable angle. Over the months the friction hinge has maintained its bite and held the Surface Pro 3 where I needed it to be.
It's not as versatile as a laptop's screen hinge, and it's still a bit of a balancing act to use a Type Cover enabled Surface Pro 3 in your lap while at a conference - but I guess the argument there is you'll be using the device as a tablet and not a laptop. It's still a loss of a form factor that many people often use. If you have a big enough lap, then it's viable, but it's not going to be achievable by everyone. That said it's a heck of a lot more viable that the Surface Pro 2 with its two-position-only kickstand.
The Surface Pro 3 is a solid piece of hardware. It's one of the finest Windows 8 devices available to buy, and it proves that Microsoft can engineer a stylish and usable product.
It's nice to see that the Surface Pro 3 has been designed to work well with a number of target audience members, and this has improved the overall usability of the machine. Outside of 'enterprise' and 'artistry' the Surface Pro 3 can be seen as a rather large tablet, or a rather small ultrabook with excellent portability.
I'm still not sold on the twelve-inch screen. It does allow Windows 8 to breath, but the inclination for Microsoft to place so many of the controls around the edge of the screen mean that it's hard to see all the Ui elements in a single glance, and there is a lot of screen real-estate to traverse even with some basic operations. The ten-inch Surface Pro 2 with the same UI never feels too big, but the Surface Pro 3 can at some times feel a little bit too spaced out.
What the twelve-inch screen (with a 3:2 ratio) does do is present information incredibly well. That makes it a great Enterprise device, especially for PowerPoint presentations and displaying video; it provides a huge canvas for digital artists; and it allows creatives to use the split screen to write on one side and investigate and present information on the second.
It works well in a desk-based environment, and can run in tablet mode while walking. The much vaunted Type Cover still doesn't solve the lap issue, but it does give it a lot of power and flexibility when you can find a flat surface.
The Surface Pro 3 is clearly the best Surface machine that Microsoft has put together and put on sale. There are some obvious weaknesses that means it's not the very best Windows 8 device out there. A high-specced laptop with an eye on fashion and thinness would still beat out the Surface Pro 3, but there are circumstances where the Surface Pro 3 can deliver better than any other Windows 8 device out there.
As a general Windows 8 computer you will not be disappointed in the Surface Pro 3, but the same could be said for many devices. The Surface Pro 3 is a machine for the creatives - be it artistic in graphics, writing, or enterprise. It delivers on the recent promises of Microsoft at the launch event in May, although it doesn't fully deliver on the promise of Windows 8.
There is still room for improvement, and there is still room for Microsoft to deliver a true all-round reference design for Windows 8. For now, the Surface Pro 3 is one of the best devices out there, but with some focus and dedication a better tablet, a better ultra-portable, a better laptop, could all be manufactured. But if you want all of those in a single package... best head for a Surface Pro 3.
Disclaimer: Microsoft provided a Surface Pro 3 for this long-term review.
