Microsoft Surface Laptop 3: a Windows laptop with MacBook qualities

Keyboard

The Microsoft Surface Laptop series has been around for a number of years, but now the company is launching a 15-inch version for the first time. The larger screen and the improved performance should make this laptop the best office mate. In this review you can read if the Microsoft Surface laptop 3 can live up to its expectations.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 (15-inch)

Price: € 1649
Screen: 15-inch 2496×1664 ips touchscreen
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3580U
Memory: 8 GB ddr4
Storage: 256 GB NVMe SSD
Connections: USB-C, USB-A and 3.5mm headphones
Weight: 1.5 kg
Techzle review score: 80/100

Pros

  • Good screen
  • Excellent finish
  • Stylish design

Cons

  • Moderate connections
  • SSD is too small
  • Moderate battery life

Design

Just like we are used to from Microsoft, this laptop is also very well put together. The relatively simple-looking metal housing is designed in black with our copy, but is also available in gray. With the laptop closed, it is clear that Microsoft has paid a lot of attention to the design and manufacturing process of the exterior. All seams fit together perfectly and it feels like a solid block of metal. It is striking that, partly due to the smooth finish, it is relatively difficult to open the laptop.

With the laptop open you can see that the beautiful finish is also being continued here. Among other things, the seams around the touchpad, a sore point with many other laptops, are very neat and will not let through much dirt. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not extended this beautiful design everywhere, because the edges around the screen are a lot bigger than we are used to in 2019 from premium laptops.

The connections have suffered from the minimalist design, because one USB-C and one USB-A connection is not much. Certainly not when the USB-C connection has to do without support for Thunderbolt 3.

The keyboard does not have a lot of travel, but nevertheless types reasonably well thanks to the clear touches and the sturdy case underneath. With the combination of the good keyboard and excellent touchpad you can easily get through a day without a mouse or separate keyboard. Unfortunately, Microsoft omitted the NumPad, even though there had been enough room for this

Backside Microsoft Surface Laptop 3

Sound and Vision

Like the other products in the Surface lineup, Microsoft has opted for a screen with a resolution that we don’t often encounter in this 15-inch laptop: 2496×1664. In practice, that is an excellent choice that also works well without scaling. Although text becomes fairly small, it gives a huge boost in usable screen surface. That is not the only positive thing about this screen, because the other features are also excellent. As standard, the screen is nicely calibrated with a range of 2.2, although the color temperature with 7050K is on the high side. The maximum brightness is 382 cd / m2 with a contrast of 1335: 1.

Despite the lack of a large speaker grill, the sound reproduction is particularly good. You will of course not be having a party with music, but watching movies or series is above average. Even the bass reproduction is pretty clear for a laptop. A software package for adjusting the sound is missing, but luckily that is not necessary in this case either.

Front Surface 3

Performance

As mentioned, this laptop has a processor that you can only get in Surfacebooks: The AMD Ryzen 5 3580U. The processor has four cores (8 threads) with a turbo clock frequency of 3.7 GHz. The graphic power is obtained from an integrated Radeon Vega 9-GPU.

In practice, the AMD processor works reasonably well with the competition from Intel. A PCMark 10 Essentials score of almost 7484 points is comparable to the mobile Intel i5-8250U processor. If we look at the gaming aspect, a score of 1731 is impressive for a built-in GPU. You cannot play the newest games with it, but it is sufficient for simpler or older games and to speed up rendering tasks.

If we look at the battery life, we see that this laptop is not made to use for a whole day without a charger. The 45Wh battery is clearly not up to the relatively inefficient AMD Ryzen processor. With only use of the web browser, with the screen set to 50% brightness, the laptop will last for about 6 hours. If you are going to perform more intensive tasks, then the battery will of course run out sooner.

Finally we looked at the storage medium. In our version, the laptop comes with an SSD of only 256 GB. That is very poor in a 1649 euro laptop. In addition, the speed is unfortunately not among the top. With sequential read and write speeds of respectively 1986MB / s and 822MB / s, the SSD is not slow, but there are plenty of laptops on the market with much faster storage. If you are looking for more (and faster) storage, Microsoft offers only one alternative with a 512GB SSD, but that variant costs 2299 euros. Fortunately, you can easily replace the SSD yourself, but note that it concerns the small NVMe SSDs with a length of 30 mm.

CrytalDiskMark

Conclusion

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 is a beautiful laptop, but one that is difficult to recommend due to the price. The laptop exudes luxury and because of the excellent keyboard and touch-pad it is also suitable for working up a lot, but unfortunately the hardware for the price is below par. Microsoft seems to be following Apple with ever higher prices for a beautiful design.

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