In fact, it might be my new favorite, beating Apple for “king of trackpads” on feel alone. The keys come with 1.55mm of travel–which feels perfect when compared to shallower implementations like the keys you get on a MacBook Pro–and the glass-topped trackpad is exceptionally smooth and accurate. The keyboard and trackpad are phenomenal. The balance is a little bit off because the tablet/screen is necessarily heavier than a traditional laptop display, but the aluminum finish is both extremely rigid and surprisingly soft to the touch. I love almost everything about how the Surface Book 3 is built. First, let’s touch on what’s great about this computer. This low-power CPU was chosen by necessity, because it sits behind the display inside the “tablet” portion of the computer, and without robust active cooling it simply can’t keep up with more traditional 13-inch laptops under heavy load.īut we’ll get to all that in the “Performance” section. The 15W 1.3GHz Quad-Core chip in this model is the Surface Book’s Achilles heel. Where it falls short should be immediately obvious: the CPU. In most regards, this is the MacBook’s equal: reasonably fast SSD storage, 32GB of the same really fast 3733MHz RAM, beautiful high-quality display that also happens to be a touchscreen (point Microsoft), and the base comes with a proper NVIDIA GPU (again, point Microsoft). Would its unique design, high-quality touchscreen, pen compatibility, and the option for a dedicated GPU make this the better choice for some photographers? There’s no way the 15-inch Surface Book 3 can keep up with the 6- and 8-core laptops in its size/price bracket, but with its dedicated GPU, 32GB of RAM, and quad-core i7 processor, I wanted to compare the 13.5-inch model to the new 13-inch MacBook Pro that we recently put to the test.Īpple’s latest computer really surprised me, and I wondered if the Surface Book 3 would be able to keep up in terms of either usability or performance. But, knowing the limitations inherent to the Surface Book’s design, I asked to review the 13.5-inch model instead. When we reached out to Microsoft for a review unit of the Surface Book 3, they initially planned to send the 15-inch model. But it’s also flawed… critically flawed by the selfsame design that makes it a unique product, which is why I can’t recommend it to most working photographers. The build quality is great, and the design is both useful and pretty much unique right now.
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