this is harold hello harold has a hard time making decisions i wasn't sure so i
bought everything lttstore.com that's why harold got the surface book
3. it's a laptop it's a tablet and it's as powerful as a desktop
well yes but actually
no the surface book has been promising to
be the do everything device since 2015
but the core of the design hasn't been updated since
well 2015. and i'm just not sure if it still holds
up five years later who do you think you are microsoft Intel
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in 2015 i called this the first truly premium Windows machine and it does have
a lot still going for it the feel of the device is exceptional
and despite its all all-metal not to mention rigid chassis it somehow feels
soft to the touch the problem is that the bezels trackpad size and the overall
design haven't aged well compared to the macbook pro 16 or the new dell xps 15.
of course that ignores the surface book 3's classic party trick
that never gets old in theory this is it
the best of both worlds need to quickly go and take some notes
grab the tablet and the pen which oh just
so delightfully magnetically attached to the side and you're good to go need more
power well additional battery capacity bring it up to nearly 12 and a half
hours in our tests and a dedicated
graphics card are stored in the base along with what we describe as
fairly decent i o the dual usb type a's
are welcome although we do wish they would have done something about the
incredibly poorly positioned headphone jack one notable i o improvement though
is that the surface dock accessory now supports dual 4k 60hz displays if you
don't mind shelling out for that back to the tablet releasing though
honestly on the previous models i didn't find it very useful because i'm an
impatient kind of person for the tablet mode to be useful for me the detach
needs to be quicker than just unplugging the power mouse and display
that i have connected to the surface book at my desk and this is finally the
case on the 13 and a half inch model the tablet releases twice as fast and on the
15 inch it releases three times faster
maybe more importantly though it does so consistently
previously you'd have to close down any apps that were using the dedicated GPU
whereas now apps are automatically switched over to the integrated GPU
without you having to think about it for the most part it's pretty slick to
really put the surface book 3's versatility to the test though we came
up with an idea alex our laptop reviews editor recently had an unfortunate
failure in his desktop and it's actually broken right now so
why don't you try replacing him with this for a bit for the first part of his job writing
the surface book 3 is exceptional both
microsoft's book and laptop products are equipped with the killer one-two punch
productivity combo of an incredible keyboard and a 3x2 display that back in
2015 microsoft whooped the competition
with since then though dell and hp have
really improved their keyboards and apple has well they've really really
improved their keyboard so the surface book is now an a plus keyboard in a
crowded field of a or a plus keyboards instead of a clear winner as for the
display the 3240 by 2160 resolution
monitor is essentially a 4k display with
the sides chopped off and i gotta say it
still looks really sharp and because it's a laptop and a tiny screen i didn't
miss the extra pixels at all now you are giving up the vivid colors and the
perfect blacks of the OLED display options on some of its competitors but
you are gaining what is still the best touch and pen input available on Windows
like you can probably barely see it but there's just a tiny bit of spring in the
pen tip that gives it a really close to pen on paper feel
instead of you know pen on glass like
what you get from hp or dell's pens
another area that microsoft has lost ground compared to the competition
though is the trackpad when the microsoft precision touchpad drivers
were first introduced on the surface pro 2 they were a statement they said hey
hello guys how have you still not managed to figure
this out well whatever we did it for you
mic drop out it was the first time we'd used a
Windows touch pad that was comparable to the precision and feel of apple's
offerings since then microsoft's precision drivers have become available
on so many more devices though that microsoft no longer has enhanced
precision going for them and despite having ample space to grow the surface
book still comes with a tasting menu size track pad when i could get the full
meal on the new xps 15. make sure that you're subscribed by the way we're gonna
have a full review of that coming soon while we're on the topic of things that microsoft made that was awesome just for
everyone else to do it better Windows hello facial recognition
it is awesome i love it and it returns to the surface book 3 right there baby
but it's also now available on other devices in a super slim module allowing
for much smaller bezels where microsoft is leading the competition though is in
the inclusion of a 1080p webcam that
means that on video calls you will actually look like a person instead of a
smeary mess of pixels thank you microsoft now i have someone credible to
point to when i yell at other laptop manufacturers about their crummy webcams
this really does look good doesn't it on to specs the 13.5 inch and 15 inch
models get up to gtx 1650 and 1660 ti
options respectively both are max q variants but that's still plenty of
oomph for mid-tier gaming as long as you turn the resolution down the one we were
really curious about though is the new surface for business version with a
quadro rtx 3000. for professionals whose
programs require the quadro drivers this one is a no-brainer and for those that
also enjoy gaming remember this is the same tu-106 chip as the rtx 2070 just
with reduced shaders and clocks to bring the TDP down to 80 watts in our testing
the GPU handled our typical solidworks models well and even managed our 8 000
part lego millennium falcon benchmark huge shout out to ryan cole for this
ridiculous model by the way the GPU also held up well in gaming even if we can't
say the same about the display this thing was clearly optimized for picture
quality and not for response time although as long as you're a city
skylines or anno player rather than a rainbow six siege fanatic you'll be fine
otherwise just please buy something else and the CPU is
well it's another problem the fastest model
that you can get in the surface book 3 is the Intel core i7 1065 g7 and that's
the same four core processor as the surface laptop three in most of our
testing the book three was still very responsive but as the competition is
moving to six and even eight core processors the surface book three is
left in the dust if you plan on rendering large video projects exporting
edited pictures running simulations or even just being careless with your
multitasking and your junk running in the background there are just much
faster machines out there not to mention the thermals during a blender render the
temps got into the high 90s with core clocks dipping below 3 gigahertz
in practice the i7 1065 g7 still feels
more than fast enough outside of intense all-core loads but given that we don't
need the tablet functionality that badly a more powerful CPU makes our job easier
even when connected to a 5 gigabit Ethernet dongle and using GPU
acceleration the poor CPU of the surface book 3 struggled to play back red
footage from our server at 1 8 resolution that's a deal breaker for us
even if it has no applicability to you whatsoever
the other deal breaker for some folks is going to be the lack of serviceability
on this machine and the lack of Thunderbolt 3. i sort of imagine this
large overlap between people who need a quadro on their laptop and people who
would care about things like serviceability and connectivity but
microsoft did actually address the lack of Thunderbolt 3 quite recently
apparently it's due to security concerns related to Thunderbolt's direct access
to memory something that cannot be patched by software in any way and they
use the same logic to explain why the RAM can't be removed and upgraded
fair enough i guess so for those of you who are genuinely
concerned that someone is going to open up your laptop while it's still powered
on use liquid nitrogen to freeze the memory and then use a special reader to
access the data this is the laptop for you for those of us
who aren't the unfortunate scientist in mission impossible
i would rather just be able to upgrade the memory on my device down the line
and use Thunderbolt 3. which brings us to the toughest part of this review do i
recommend the surface book three most of this time has been spent talking about
how now five years later the competition has caught up to the book three and clearly
microsoft needs to invest in a complete redesign in the coming years but the
2020 book 3 is still a compelling device for the right user
someone well basically anyone who needs the tablet function
because no one else is going to pay that premium
the first in our mind properly equipped config for
this thing well for the 13 and a half inch model actually is around 2 000 us
dollars and our quadro equipped 15 inch that weighs in at around 3 400. that's a
tough pill to swallow but at the same time what else are you gonna get an ipad
pro with the magic keyboard for people who need both good pen support and the
muscle for real professional applications the surface book 3 is just
really your only option assuming you need a bit more portability than the
acer concept d7 for those that can live without the tablet functionality and
want a couple more CPU cores and don't need a quadruped GPU
hey again maybe wait for the full review of the xps 15 and 17 before pulling the
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enjoyed this video and you're looking for something else uh alex says shoot
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