Should you make the switch? - Microsoft Surface Laptop 3
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2020-05-05
·
1,949 words · ~9 min read
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- This right here is the Surface Laptop too. And I'd consider probably the best laptop on the market,
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which might make you think, why has this Surface Laptop 3,
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which should be better in every way not made it into my hands yet.
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Well, it has and we just didn't really bother to cover it.
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So let's take a look at why 'cause I actually do think this might be the best laptop out.
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Just it would have been a lot better if it came out two years ago,
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we just get to unbox it here, that's fun.
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There we go, it's a laptop, wow.
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Who would've thought? And just, I really liked the finish on this one.
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It's a bit, I don't know what you'd call it, a bit Applely for my taste almost,
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but overall I'd say I really like it. You do have other options of course.
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I really liked this one.
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Moving on, you get your typical power cord
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I actually really like this. it's basically just mag safe except not.
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So you get the classic, you put it in here,
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you go and you trip over it, laptop's not dead, perfect.
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Then what else do we have, a little box that says Surface Laptop,
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getting started, plugging the power cable
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press power button Windows will guide you, sure.
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So here we have it, the Surface Laptop 3,
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really the most interesting thing that I can see from just right here is that it has USB-C.
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Who ever would have thought to include that on a laptop in 2019?
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Not Microsoft the first try around. I've had trouble working with like my TV and stuff,
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getting high quality dongles for it, It's just not that simple.
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Opening it up though and we'll see their main reason
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why I don't like this one too, oh, wow, it's already open. So Windows Hello is awesome.
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If you couldn't tell I've already installed stuff on this
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'cause we don't wanna spend the next hour just updating Windows that would be a pretty boring video,
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but Windows Hello is so quick on this thing. That's maybe my favorite feature of these
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because it's just so simple. You're just immediately in
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and you're able to get to your work, but the big problem that we have here,
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where did the Alcantara go? It is an option but I just don't know
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why it's something that you want to give up. This just feels so smooth and it feels so great on the hands
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when you're typing, this feels well, it feels great,
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but it feels like every single other laptop on the market.
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So I'm not totally sure why Microsoft would want to give you the option to have a not very surface Laptop feel,
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looking at the track pad. It's kind of the first thing that you can see.
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It's just bigger. They have a little bit of space here
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and they have just used it up. And as far as I can tell the rest is all preserved.
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This thing is great. The overall feel of the chassis is actually excellent.
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I think it's slightly stiffer than the old model. Although oddly enough, it doesn't feel quite as premium
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just going back to the whole Alcantara thing, I really like this stuff,
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and yeah we have the same 2256 by 1504 resolution display.
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It's four by three, which is freaking sweet. You can see so much on the screen that's right here.
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One thing that a lot of people say all the time,
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when I talk about how much I love high aspect ratio screens
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is, but then all that you get her more black bars
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on the top and the bottom, which is stupid because I would respond to that with,
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you get the same amount of screen for like your 16 by nine or two by one content here.
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And then you just get more on the top and the bottom.
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It still needs to be a certain height for it to be comfortable to use with their hands
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because otherwise your palms just kind of fall off the edge,
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moving on, what does it have for a processor in it?
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Let's see here, an i7-1065G7
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which I don't know, that's pretty good. It seems pretty fast to me,
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that has the Intel Iris plus graphics. So we might actually be able to game a bit on this,
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that was definitely out of the question on the Surface Laptop 2.
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But speaking of gaming, there's another one right here.
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It's the 15 inch version, I guess we're here now or unboxing this one too.
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Same basic thing, I'm not really gonna get into this one too much because it's exactly the same unboxing experience
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as the last one, but it's a lot bigger. They have the Surface Book for when you want
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to have something that's larger and this just feels not quite as good when I press it.
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The chassis just leaves a tiny bit to be desired.
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I don't know, I don't really get the trade-off here because for me I don't need a screen that's slightly larger,
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maybe if you're, I don't know old, see how heavy they are.
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It's okay, it's actually not all that much heavier.
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Maybe the most interesting thing about this one though, is that it's not rocking an Intel processor.
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This one has the AMD Ryzen 5 3580U
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Microsoft Surface Edition. It also uses up two gigabytes of your memory,
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which isn't really a problem on this one because it has 16 gigabytes,
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but you definitely don't wanna be buying an eight Gigabyte version of this if it's available,
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they probably don't even have that. Maybe my favorite part of the Surface Laptop too,
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is just that this keyboard is exceptional. There's something about it that I just really love.
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It almost feels like the actuation distance is just a little bit shorter, I can't entirely tell.
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It's like if this laptop here is a 10,
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then I'd have to give this one like a nine and a half. There's nothing that I can really complain about,
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about the keystrokes, it's just slightly different,
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and maybe not quite as far of an actuation.
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Moving over to the 15, it should have the same switches,
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but I guess I've been wrong before a couple of minutes ago.
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Oh, this is worse, okay, it's not very good
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compared to what are probably the two best laptop keyboards on the market,
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but why would you give that up when you could just buy the 13 inch model
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and not have this.
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It's just not quite as good. It might just be that the chassis isn't quite as stiff.
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I'm sure that you guys have already seen stuff about how the AMD version of this one isn't quite as good
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in a lot of ways, and one of the main reasons
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is just this Wi-Fi adapter. If we look at it. on the Intel one we get Wi-Fi six,
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on the AMD one we do not. Files just copy a bit faster on the Intel one,
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even when they're both on Wi-Fi five, I'm gonna just retire that one for now
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because I don't get why it needs to be bigger,
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and the keyboard worse, the biggest problems with the Surface Laptop 2
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is that everything is glued together. There's no screws down here, if you want to get into it,
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you just use a heat gun and you absolutely destroy
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all of this, apparently the Surface Laptop 3
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can be taken apart so let's see how that goes.
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I have a nice mat here so we don't scratch it up.
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I don't think this video is a sponsored by iFixit, but they are what we're using here today,
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this is easily the most difficulty I've ever had just getting feed off of a laptop.
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I'm like genuinely concerned for this thing even though I know it's just a little bit of rubber.
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There we go, we finally did it, that was really tough.
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- [David] Wow, you're so good at taking laptops apart, Alex. - Thank you, David, this is always my least favorite part
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of opening a laptop, you just kind of have to jam
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like a guitar pick in and hope you don't accidentally destroy something.
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Oh, seems to be coming apart just fine though.
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Wait a second, I know how this works.
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Flip it over, open it up, we should really turn this off.
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(both laughing) When it comes open here.
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Is the keyboard just kinda come off? It looks like it, oh, there's only one cable too.
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That's perfect. So this guy right here
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is what we have to be really careful of. Oh wait, oh my God, that was so easy.
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(both laughing) So we have three batteries here.
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I think that together they gave you a total of 48 watt hours which is a bit lower
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than what you'd find in the competition. Is that the SSD?
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That thing is tiny, look at this 256 gigabytes
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just right here, this is the first time that we've been able to upgrade
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the storage in a Surface Laptop, but I don't know how much you can upgrade it given the size of this thing, jeez, what else is under here?
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I'm just gonna take off the sealing, that one might not be going back on.
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So we've got heat pipes to here and also heat pipes over here, what's this one doing?
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It's bending heat pipe, let's not do that. Let's put that back together.
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Okay, as far as I can tell
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there's absolutely no way to upgrade the RAM.
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Not that that's really expected in thin and lights these days, it's just a nice to have.
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I'm going to say though this is such a huge improvement over the last generation.
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Like you spill a bunch of Coca-Cola on your keyboard
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and it gets all sticky and garbagy. You can replace it on this one,
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on this one right here, no beans.
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So I don't know, I guess we're done. I don't really feel like putting this back together, do you?
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- [David] No. - Yeah, I really like it, overall I'd say it's just an incremental improvement
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on what was already a fantastic laptop. They've come down in price
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since the first and second generation. So the value proposition is actually not horrific.
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It's not fantastic but I'm going to use it because you just have a bit more screen real estate.
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The area right here is just more comfortable to rest your palms on, I don't know.
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I just really like it as a daily laptop, I guess that kind of comes down to it.
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Elena says I'm a fun boy, but I don't know. Screw that guy. Thanks for watching, subscribe I guess.
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Do we have enough trial for this? Is that a thing?
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Oh, we should probably put it back together.