The Microsoft Surface Book 3: A Laptop for Creatives and Power Users

When it comes to laptops, Microsoft's Surface Book series is often associated with powerful productivity and creativity tools. The latest iteration, the Surface Book 3, takes this promise to a new level with its impressive specs and features. In this article, we'll take a closer look at what makes the Surface Book 3 a top choice for professionals and creatives who need a reliable laptop that can handle demanding tasks.

One of the standout features of the Surface Book 3 is its graphics capabilities. The 15-inch model comes equipped with an NVIDIA GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU, which may not be powerful enough to make this a dedicated gaming machine, but it's more than sufficient for playing most games at moderate settings. For creatives who need to work with demanding software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, the Surface Book 3 is a great option. The laptop's ability to handle video editing tasks is also impressive, making it an excellent choice for those who need to work on-the-go.

The keyboard is another area where the Surface Book 3 excels. With its spacious and comfortable design, it's one of the most enjoyable laptops to type on. In fact, many users have reported that it's the most comfortable keyboard they've ever used. The trackpad is also responsive and has a nice grip, making navigation and scrolling a breeze.

However, not all aspects of the Surface Book 3 are without criticism. One potential drawback is its port selection, which includes two USB-A slots, an SD card slot reader, but lacks Thunderbolt support. While this may not be a major issue for some users, it's worth noting that this means that the laptop won't be compatible with certain peripherals and monitors.

Another design-related aspect of the Surface Book 3 is its fulcrum hinge, which allows the tablet to detach from the base. While this feature can be useful in certain situations, it also has a downside: the laptop may not seal completely when shut down, potentially allowing dust and debris to enter. Microsoft has implemented a battery in the screen and a secondary battery in the base to mitigate this issue, but users should still exercise caution when using their Surface Book 3 in dusty environments.

In terms of pricing, the Surface Book 3 is definitely on the higher end of the spectrum. The 13.5-inch model starts at $1,600, while the 15-inch model begins at $2,300. This may be out of reach for some users, but for those who need a powerful laptop that can handle demanding tasks and provides a luxurious tablet-laptop hybrid experience, it may be worth the investment.

Ultimately, the Surface Book 3 is an exceptional device that offers a unique blend of power, portability, and luxury. While it may not be the most affordable option available, its impressive specs and features make it an excellent choice for professionals and creatives who need a reliable laptop to get their work done on-the-go.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe Microsoft Surface book 3 if you see one of these before you're probably disappointed that it looks exactly the same as the previous two if you haven't seen one of these before you're probably thinking what's the deal with that freaky hinge and yeah it is definitely a bummer that the surface book three looks identical to the surface book one and two before it but if you're new to the game you just want to know what to do with this weird hinges it's because this laptops claim to fame is its ability to do this there are a lot of laptops that are also tablets out there too and ones as they're called most cases will say the Dell XPS 2 and 1 you've got a clamshell laptop and you can fold the keyboard behind the screen to make a tablet then you have another class of hybrid your iPad pro your windows surface pro 7 to many services not enough time number right I'm so sorry but those give you powerful tablets and then you can attach a clip-on keyboard to it to make kind of a computer this is the only thing on the market which is a dedicated clamshell laptop really powerful one to where you can detach the screen and this becomes a standalone power tablet with its own battery and speakers and such the thing with the tablet function though is that it's mostly for creatives so works really well if you've got the surface pen which will cost you another 99 dollars by the way not included I have pretty big hands and even the 13.5 inch model using that as a tablet I was borderline too big for me for reading purposes the 15 inch you might as well just be reading off an actual stone tablet as it's a very large tablet which you know again great for creatives one of the best things about the laptop itself is the screen which is a 3 by 2 ratio 3000 by 2,000 pixels it's a beautiful screen so it works great as a tablet if you can hold it comfortably to get the separate laptop from base situation working Microsoft has made some compromises though firstly in the processor no matter what processor you get the 13-inch comes with the i5 or an i7 the 15-inch only i7 but no matter we should get it'll use because the processor is in the screen and not the base it will use a 15 watt processor not the standard 45 watt processor for more powerful computers what that essentially means without getting too technical is that competing laptops with similar specs but with more what's the traditional 45 was will be better at running multi-core processors than this guy it's not a huge deal it's not a really big difference but it's a difference and you're paying a lot so you know it's the thing another compromise is the speakers like the processor Microsoft has put the speakers in the top bit and not the bottom and as a result they're kind of underpowered especially on the 13.5 inch model which not only is it other speakers in my entry-level 2017 MacBook Pro better the speakers in my phone are also better than the speakers in the 13.5 inch model which is pretty disappointing although the 15 inch fares quite a bit better change is the essential process of all existence commander Burnie but everything I've just said more or less applies to the seventh book one and two so let's change with the new one obviously I'm not its design it's all in the internals but even then it's not a huge overhaul first we have the 15 inch model inside this is an nvidia 16 60 TI at max q ship that's good for a laptop of this size but not really great you can however get a 15 inch model with a Quadra r TX 3000 card in it although that's kind of a different thing Microsoft classifieds that as service books for business it's kind of only for professional creatives who do really GPU intensive stuff and that's reflected in the price starts at $3500 more interesting are the graphics in the 13.5 inch surface book 3 because there's actually really unusual for a 13-inch laptop to have a discrete graphics card much less one that's as powerful as the one in here it's an NVIDIA GTX 1650 max-q GPU that GPU isn't powerful enough to make this a dedicated gaming machine per se but it is powerful enough to play most games even the more demanding ones if you switch down the graphics settings most priceless laptops will let you do some photo editing on the go but the graphics power on this also means that you can do some video editing on the go that's really handy for a 13-inch laptop and loftily apart from all the bells and whistles and there are a lot of those these are just with really good laptops they get a lot of flack for being kind of thick and wide at the base and they definitely are but the upside to that is that the keyboard is phenomenally spacious it's actually the most probably the most comfortable keyboard I've used them a 13.5 inch laptop and the 15 inch one is great too that's kind of like a boring detail I guess because keyboards aren't particularly sexy I can't understand the importance of a good keyboard though the trackpad is super responsive and has a really nice grip only complaint is it's a little bit small the port selection is not the best but they're pretty good especially if you're used to living in math book land you've got two USB a slots here as well as an SD card slot reader big deal for some there is a USBC flaw however it is not Thunderball which means that the service book three both models won't be compatible with certain peripherals and monitors that is a bummer but Microsoft says that it didn't use thunderbolt because there are certain security risks associated with it so yes it does suck that depends how much weight you put in what microsoft says one quick note of the design though there is a clear disadvantage to the fulcrum hinge that connects the tablet to the base it stops the laptop from sealing completely so dust and other bad stuff can still get through even when you shut it one of the Nicci things Microsoft has done is that they put a battery in the screen and a second battery in the base what that means is you can detach the screen go on out there netflix and chill' live your life and then you come back and you reattach it and then you run off the battery in the base despite having a depleted tablet battery although when they're connected the battery will deplete and charge at the same time so it's not like you get twice the battery life of a normal laptop although the battery life is solid I was able to get a full workday out of this guy pretty easily but not best-in-class both of these are exceptionally well made devices you can feel the build quality basically from the second you touch them they're super good clamshell laptops and the unique detaching screen is really well done and really helpful with if you're after that but who should actually buy this an important part of that answer is the price obviously so these ain't cheap the 13.5 inch laptop starts at $1,600 but that's what the model with an i5 processor and with integrated graphics you're really if you're gonna splash out this much better off spending the extra four hundred dollars taking it up to two grand and then I'll get you the 13.5 inch model with the Nvidia graphics card inside and you've mi7 and double the RAM and double the storage the 15 inch line starts at twenty three hundred dollars and if you're after the super powered business line that starts at $3,500 so either way where there's thirteen point five inch 15 inch or business line you're spending some pretty serious cash it's not that these computers are overpriced it's just that the average person who uses that computer for Facebook Netflix microsoft office etc what really used most of the features that make it expensive so if you are just looking for a decent laptop to draw those things on you don't really need to spend the money that this costs however if you're in need of the portable power or you're after a particularly luxurious tablet laptop hybrid the surface book three line won't let you down let's just hope that this is the last time a surface book looks exactly like this youthe Microsoft Surface book 3 if you see one of these before you're probably disappointed that it looks exactly the same as the previous two if you haven't seen one of these before you're probably thinking what's the deal with that freaky hinge and yeah it is definitely a bummer that the surface book three looks identical to the surface book one and two before it but if you're new to the game you just want to know what to do with this weird hinges it's because this laptops claim to fame is its ability to do this there are a lot of laptops that are also tablets out there too and ones as they're called most cases will say the Dell XPS 2 and 1 you've got a clamshell laptop and you can fold the keyboard behind the screen to make a tablet then you have another class of hybrid your iPad pro your windows surface pro 7 to many services not enough time number right I'm so sorry but those give you powerful tablets and then you can attach a clip-on keyboard to it to make kind of a computer this is the only thing on the market which is a dedicated clamshell laptop really powerful one to where you can detach the screen and this becomes a standalone power tablet with its own battery and speakers and such the thing with the tablet function though is that it's mostly for creatives so works really well if you've got the surface pen which will cost you another 99 dollars by the way not included I have pretty big hands and even the 13.5 inch model using that as a tablet I was borderline too big for me for reading purposes the 15 inch you might as well just be reading off an actual stone tablet as it's a very large tablet which you know again great for creatives one of the best things about the laptop itself is the screen which is a 3 by 2 ratio 3000 by 2,000 pixels it's a beautiful screen so it works great as a tablet if you can hold it comfortably to get the separate laptop from base situation working Microsoft has made some compromises though firstly in the processor no matter what processor you get the 13-inch comes with the i5 or an i7 the 15-inch only i7 but no matter we should get it'll use because the processor is in the screen and not the base it will use a 15 watt processor not the standard 45 watt processor for more powerful computers what that essentially means without getting too technical is that competing laptops with similar specs but with more what's the traditional 45 was will be better at running multi-core processors than this guy it's not a huge deal it's not a really big difference but it's a difference and you're paying a lot so you know it's the thing another compromise is the speakers like the processor Microsoft has put the speakers in the top bit and not the bottom and as a result they're kind of underpowered especially on the 13.5 inch model which not only is it other speakers in my entry-level 2017 MacBook Pro better the speakers in my phone are also better than the speakers in the 13.5 inch model which is pretty disappointing although the 15 inch fares quite a bit better change is the essential process of all existence commander Burnie but everything I've just said more or less applies to the seventh book one and two so let's change with the new one obviously I'm not its design it's all in the internals but even then it's not a huge overhaul first we have the 15 inch model inside this is an nvidia 16 60 TI at max q ship that's good for a laptop of this size but not really great you can however get a 15 inch model with a Quadra r TX 3000 card in it although that's kind of a different thing Microsoft classifieds that as service books for business it's kind of only for professional creatives who do really GPU intensive stuff and that's reflected in the price starts at $3500 more interesting are the graphics in the 13.5 inch surface book 3 because there's actually really unusual for a 13-inch laptop to have a discrete graphics card much less one that's as powerful as the one in here it's an NVIDIA GTX 1650 max-q GPU that GPU isn't powerful enough to make this a dedicated gaming machine per se but it is powerful enough to play most games even the more demanding ones if you switch down the graphics settings most priceless laptops will let you do some photo editing on the go but the graphics power on this also means that you can do some video editing on the go that's really handy for a 13-inch laptop and loftily apart from all the bells and whistles and there are a lot of those these are just with really good laptops they get a lot of flack for being kind of thick and wide at the base and they definitely are but the upside to that is that the keyboard is phenomenally spacious it's actually the most probably the most comfortable keyboard I've used them a 13.5 inch laptop and the 15 inch one is great too that's kind of like a boring detail I guess because keyboards aren't particularly sexy I can't understand the importance of a good keyboard though the trackpad is super responsive and has a really nice grip only complaint is it's a little bit small the port selection is not the best but they're pretty good especially if you're used to living in math book land you've got two USB a slots here as well as an SD card slot reader big deal for some there is a USBC flaw however it is not Thunderball which means that the service book three both models won't be compatible with certain peripherals and monitors that is a bummer but Microsoft says that it didn't use thunderbolt because there are certain security risks associated with it so yes it does suck that depends how much weight you put in what microsoft says one quick note of the design though there is a clear disadvantage to the fulcrum hinge that connects the tablet to the base it stops the laptop from sealing completely so dust and other bad stuff can still get through even when you shut it one of the Nicci things Microsoft has done is that they put a battery in the screen and a second battery in the base what that means is you can detach the screen go on out there netflix and chill' live your life and then you come back and you reattach it and then you run off the battery in the base despite having a depleted tablet battery although when they're connected the battery will deplete and charge at the same time so it's not like you get twice the battery life of a normal laptop although the battery life is solid I was able to get a full workday out of this guy pretty easily but not best-in-class both of these are exceptionally well made devices you can feel the build quality basically from the second you touch them they're super good clamshell laptops and the unique detaching screen is really well done and really helpful with if you're after that but who should actually buy this an important part of that answer is the price obviously so these ain't cheap the 13.5 inch laptop starts at $1,600 but that's what the model with an i5 processor and with integrated graphics you're really if you're gonna splash out this much better off spending the extra four hundred dollars taking it up to two grand and then I'll get you the 13.5 inch model with the Nvidia graphics card inside and you've mi7 and double the RAM and double the storage the 15 inch line starts at twenty three hundred dollars and if you're after the super powered business line that starts at $3,500 so either way where there's thirteen point five inch 15 inch or business line you're spending some pretty serious cash it's not that these computers are overpriced it's just that the average person who uses that computer for Facebook Netflix microsoft office etc what really used most of the features that make it expensive so if you are just looking for a decent laptop to draw those things on you don't really need to spend the money that this costs however if you're in need of the portable power or you're after a particularly luxurious tablet laptop hybrid the surface book three line won't let you down let's just hope that this is the last time a surface book looks exactly like this you\n"