Microsoft's Surface hybrid tablet line-up may have been met initially with a lukewarm reception on the company's first effort out of the gate, costing them a cool $900 million once upon a time, but there is little question that Redmond has been making significant improvements to the product and fleshing out its ecosystem better with each iteration. It also can be said that, from a hardware standpoint, Microsoft's Surface and Surface Pro lines have always offered a premium experience, with excellent build quality and top shelf components. Now it appears Microsoft's design expertise has been underscored by research firm DisplayMate technologies, that cited the Surface Pro 3 as sporting the best tablet display on the market currently in a number of key metrics.
When HotHardware reviewed the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 back in March upon its release, we came away impressed by not only the build quality and performance of the device but also that the display offered Microsoft's extra effort in color-calibrating the Surface Pro 3’s screen. We noted that, "in real-world use, the Surface Pro 3’s screen is excellent. It's bright, rich, sharp, and uniform. It is definitely one of the Surface Pro 3’s strong suits."
The folks at DisplayMate Technologies have gone a step further beyond our analysis with specific, measurements in color gamut reproduction, sharpness, and subpixel accuracy. DM noted: "The Surface Pro 3 also has the most accurate on-screen colors of any Tablet or Smartphone display that we have ever measured for the sRGB/Rec.709 Standard that is used in virtually all current consumer content for digital cameras, HDTVs, the internet, and computers, including photos, videos, and movies. " And with respect to viewing angles, DisplayMate offered: "The Surface Pro 3 has a high performance IPS / PLS LCD display, so we expected it to show very small color shifts with Viewing Angle, and our lab measurements confirmed its excellent Viewing Angle performance, with no visually noticeable color shifts."
The detailed report goes on to characterize the high res 2160x1440 12-inch panel on the Surface Pro 3 as being "one of the very best and most accurate displays available on any mobile platform and OS." That's a lot of praise from a firm that dedicates almost its entire mission effort on rating computer, professional and consumer electronics displays almost exclusively. Other tablet offerings like Samsung's recently introduced Galaxy Tab S were also cited in the report and though Samsung's Super AMOLED displays offer killer saturation and brightness, they still couldn't keep up with the Surface Pro 3's overall accuracy.
If there's one thing Microsoft has always seemed to do well with their hardware offering, it's to consistently launch quality-built products that typically highlight design and build quality over component cost. Though Microsoft still has some work to do with image and font scaling for apps within Windows 8 on these high res panels, there's no question the Surface team has a lot to work with and the product will likely only improve over time, as more developers and Microsoft themselves optimize the experience across a wide range of resolutions.
