The Surface lineup for Microsoft has been extremely interesting to watch. What first launched in October 2012 as the Surface RT has been constantly iterated upon, and of course the Surface Pro line has evolved even faster. Surface Pro 3 has finally provided Microsoft with something that critics and consumers alike seem to have bought in to, and sales have been very strong since the Pro 3 was launched on May 20th 2014. However there has always been questions about the “consumer” version of Surface. Surface RT was, frankly, a sales disaster. The much improved Surface 2 fixed many of its shortcomings, but certainly did not set the world on fire. So now we have the third generation Surface, aptly named the Surface 3. There are a pile of changes that Microsoft has made to this generation of device, and obviously their hopes are that Surface 3 will be as popular as the Surface Pro 3 has been, but extending the device back down to a lower price point.
That price point is important. As much as the Surface Pro 3 has gained its share of fans, it is far from cheap. The most inexpensive model starts at $799, and for that you still do not get the keyboard. Surface 3 moves that bar down significantly, and the starting price is the exact same as the original Surface RT, at $499. Microsoft had to trim down the Pro model to hit this price point, but the cuts were well placed.
Surface RT compared to Surface 3
I think looking at the Surface 3 in a vacuum would be improper, since the device now is really an evolution of the previous two Surface models. From a build quality standpoint, the original Surface RT was top notch, with its VaporMg case, the revolutionary kickstand, and high attention to detail for all of the aspects from buttons to display. I think in 2015 it is pretty obvious what the shortcomings of the Surface RT were though. Performance was less than acceptable with the Tegra 3 SoC on board, and Surface RT was handicapped with the confusingly named Windows RT operating system and the lack of software compatibility that goes with using an ARM CPU instead of traditional x86. Surface 2 fixed the performance issue by moving to NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 SoC, and while not the outright fastest tablet chip, it was at least in the ballpark. However it kept the Windows RT operating system at a time when everyone else had abandoned it.
Surface 3 has fixed that final issue and at the same time made some amazing improvements to the overall design and feel. Full x86 Windows is on tap, for better or for worse, and powered by a brand new SoC. This must be a special moment in history where a Microsoft built device is the launch vehicle for a brand new product from Intel. The Surface 3 is powered by the 14nm Intel Atom x7, in this case the x7-Z8700 model which is the current top of the line Atom processor. Codenamed Cherry Trail, this is the massaged Bay Trail cores now built on Intel’s now mature 14nm FinFET process, and they include the same GPU cores as Broadwell.
Microsoft Surface Comparison
Surface 3 (Base)
Surface 3 (High)
Surface 2
Size
10.52 x 7.36 x 0.34 inch267 x 187 x 8.7 mm
10.81 x 6.79 x 0.35 inch275 x 173 x 8.8 mm
Weight
1.37 lbs - 622 g
1.49 lbs - 675 g
Display
10.8-inch ClearType Full HD Plus1920x1280 resolution, 3:2 ratio10-point multi-touchSurface Pen Support
10.6-inch ClearType Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution, 16:9 ratio5-point multi-touch
Battery
28 Wh, 13 W AC Adapter
31.5 Wh, 24 W AC Adapter
Storage
64GB
128GB
32GB or 64GB eMMC
RAM
2GB
4GB
2GB
CPU
Atom x7-Z8700Quad Core 14nm1.6 GHz Base Frequency2.4 GHz Burst Frequency
NVIDIA Tegra 44x ARM Cortex-A15 @1.7GHz
WiFi
Marvell 802.11ac + BT 4.0LTE Models at a later date
802.11n + BT 4.0
Ports
USB 3.0, Mini-DisplayPort, microSD,Micro USB charging, 3.5mm Headset Jack
USB 3.0, micro-HDMI, microSD, proprietary charging
Software
Windows 8.1Office 365 Personal with 1TB OneDrive (1-year)
Windows RT 8.1Office 2013 RT Home & Student Edition
Front Camera
3.5 MP
3.5 MP
Rear Camera
8.0 MP with Autofocus
5.0 MP
Operating System
Windows 8.1 64-bit
Windows RT 8.1
Warranty
1-year limited
1-year limited
Price
$499
$599
$449
In addition to the new SoC, Surface 3 can be purchased with up to 128 GB of eMMC storage, and the higher storage models also come with 4 GB of RAM. This compares to the base model which is 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, which is already one of the big improvements Microsoft has made with Surface. 32 GB of storage on a Windows tablet is really the bare minimum required, and the move to 64 GB as the base is going to make this tablet far more usable. You can of course add more storage with a micro SD card, but until Windows gets the great SD card support from Windows Phone, it still means that you need to manage your storage more than you should have to.
There are so many changes with the Surface 3 that really, this is likely the Surface that most people wanted from day one, but did not know it. First up is the new (again) kickstand.
What has set the Surface line apart from all other tablets has been the inclusion of a built in kickstand. This simple addition is the key to the entire Surface philosophy. Surface RT came with a single position kickstand, Surface 2 moved it to a two position kickstand, and Surface Pro 3 changed the game again with an infinitely adjustable kickstand. The Surface 3 takes a slight step back, to save cost and weight, and goes with a three position kickstand. When Anand reviewed the Surface 2, he said that the addition of the second position fixes most of his issues with the original kickstand but he would love to see at least one more stop added. The Surface 3 delivers that third position, and lets the Surface 3 open even wider. While the Pro 3 kickstand may seem like the better version due to the infinitely adjustable angles, the Surface 3’s three position model is much easier to operate. The Pro’s friction hinge is very stiff so that it does not collapse when being used, but the three position version on the Surface 3 simply snaps from one location to the next.
Having the third position really helps in a lot of situations, and while I would have liked the final one to open as wide as the Surface Pro 3, it still opens sufficiently to watch content in your lap or to use the pen on a desk or table. Overall, it is still a step back from the Pro 3, but it fits in well and still makes the Surface 3 one of the most versatile tablets ever made.
In fact, looking at the hinge kind of sums up the entire device. It is very similar to the Pro 3, but slightly stepped back. The build quality of the stand is as good as ever, and there is still the reassuring ka-chunk when it is snapped closed.
One interesting thing on the Surface 3’s kickstand is the new logo. Microsoft has been changing the logo on Surface on almost every iteration, and they obviously still were not happy with the Pro 3’s Surface branding. The Surface 3 features a polished Microsoft logo now, perhaps signifying that this device is really more about the company and its direction than any single product line.
Another key feature of Surface since its launch was the magnetically attached keyboard. The first generation devices could be had with either a touch keyboard, which did not have mechanical keys, or the type keyboard, which was slightly thicker but offered actual keys. Considering the tiny difference in size and weight versus the sometimes jarring difference in using a touch keyboard, it makes sense that the type keyboard is now the only option.
If you are new to Surface, the keyboard attaches magnetically to the bottom of the device, and can be used as a display cover when the device is not in use. When in tablet mode, the keyboard can be folded around the back like a normal tablet cover. The magic happens when you can set the Surface up on its kickstand, and the keyboard allows the tablet to be used as a laptop.
The Surface 3 keyboard cover is unsurprisingly smaller than the Surface Pro 3 model, due to the smaller display size of the new device. However the keyboard is only a little bit narrower than the Pro’s type cover. I did not have any issues typing on it despite the slightly smaller width but I have always used smaller devices. The keys themselves are surprisingly good considering how little travel there is. Microsoft has also kept the backlighting available with a couple of different levels on tap.
One big change compared to the Surface Pro 3’s type cover is the top row of function keys have ditched the Windows 8 keys and replaced them with the more standard function keys of a traditional laptop. Microsoft made a move to distance itself from Windows 8 with the Windows 10 naming scheme, and they are following through with that on this new device. Personally I find the new keys (which are really the old keys) much more useful than actions I could easily get to through the Charms anyway, so this is a net win for users.
For those that really pay attention, there are some other subtle differences in the keys as well. It is not an exact duplicate on a smaller scale, and instead a couple of things have been tweaked. One thing that has changed is the auditory response. Although some people love a good clack when typing for feedback on key presses, the sound was a bit much when there were a couple of people at a meeting, so Microsoft has tweaked the keyboard to be a bit quieter. The keys also have a slightly higher moment of inertia, and it takes a bit more force to actuate.
The trackpad is small. The Surface Pro 3 has a small trackpad, and so does the Surface 3. I have found it to be fairly accurate and easy to use, but it is very space constrained. There is not much that can be done here because the design of the Type Cover does not leave any room to move the keyboard up. This is because the Surface 3’s type cover features the same double latch system like on the Pro 3. If needed, the back of the keyboard can be snapped onto the bottom of the tablet to offer an additional contact point for it. This increases the stability of the keyboard quite a bit, but a big trade-off is the size of the trackpad.
The covers also have the same attention to detail as the rest of the tablet. With the cover closed, the exact same bevel on the sides is maintained with the cover, which is just slightly wider than the device to keep the angle correct. These are the kinds of touches that help put this tablet a step ahead on its build and design.
For those that like choice, the new type cover will be available in some splashy colors with blue, red, black, bright blue, and bright red. Everyone likes to put their own take on a device so it is great to see those options available.
Now for the elephant in the room. Price. The Type Cover is not an inexpensive accessory. At $130, it adds 28% to the bottom line when compared against the entry level Surface 3 tablet itself. That’s a big pill to swallow.
Microsoft’s vision of the Surface 3 is a tablet that can replace your laptop, and to do that, you need a keyboard. It is a lot better than an add-on Bluetooth keyboard, and acts like a cover too which saves you needing one of those as well, but still at $130 it is a big ask. You could of course use a USB or Bluetooth keyboard as well. Maybe you want to use it as a tablet when mobile, but back at your desk you can just plug it into a keyboard. That’s going to work great. But the Microsoft one really completes the Surface 3.
That said, do you really need the keyboard? Likely not, at least not if you are OK with the device being used mostly as a tablet. This at the end of the day remains a big part of the reason that the Surface 3 is sold without a keyboard, along with allowing it to hit a $499 price tag to be priced competitively with the Apple iPad Air 2.
As for the testing at hand, in most of my use with the tablet over the last couple of weeks, I would almost always remove the keyboard before using it. This saves a bit of weight, but also prevents the keys from being folded behind and making for an uncomfortable device to hang on to. So most of the time I would get by without it, but then when I want to type of an email, I fall back to snapping the keyboard back on (can we please get the Wordflow keyboard in Windows already?) so even though I do not use the keyboard all the time, I would still miss it if it were gone. It is not a must buy, but it is close, which puts a big dent in the price point of Surface 3.
Surface 3 now features the same N-Trig pen technology as the Surface Pro 3. Just last week, Microsoft officially acquired this technology from N-Trig, so it looks like Surface Pen is here to stay. And that’s a good thing.
None of the previous non-Pro models ever had support for a pen, and adding it to this model really increases its appeal. Surface is now a fantastic device for note-taking, and just like the Surface Pro 3, the pen is Bluetooth equipped and you can launch OneNote just by clicking the button on top. There are even several colors of pen available to let you match it to the keyboard if you like.
In addition, there is now a Surface app installed by default to let you customize the pen and other functions.
One of the complaints about the Surface Pro 3 when it first launched was that the Start Button on the right side of the screen can cause you to jump to the start menu when writing. That appears to be sorted out now, and in the Surface app, you can enable a feature to avoid inadvertent presses of that key.
You can also adjust the pressure sensitivity of the pen to what suits your writing style, and the top button can be configured to launch OneNote either on the desktop or the default Windows Store version.
I found the pen to be a fantastic addition to the tablet, and it opens up a lot more use cases for the device. Almost every time we put up a news post about a tablet, one of the first comments is “does it have pen support?” and now we can say yes, even on the less expensive Surface models. With Windows 10, inking is getting a lot more support right into the operating system so it makes a lot of sense for Microsoft to try and showcase that with their first party devices.
Last year Microsoft introduced a dedicated dock for the Surface Pro 3 to let you use it easily with an external monitor and keyboard/mouse. They have made a big push to make Surface Pro 3 a win in the enterprise segment, and you need to have a dock for that to happen. Although the dock is not inexpensive at $199, it has a great design and uses the power port for expansion.
The Surface 3 has a similar dock, and for the same price. Although not as powerful as the Surface Pro 3, they are obviously hoping they will find some traction in the enterprise with the smaller device as well. The dock is well made, and it is very easy to dock the tablet with the wings that slide in and out. The left side of the dock features a magnetic spot to stick the pen when it is not in use, and you can dock the tablet with the keyboard attached.
Unlike the Surface Pro 3 though, the dock is basically just a port extender and connects to the existing DisplayPort and USB connectors and replicates them out. But it does give you plenty of connections once it does that. There are two USB 3.0 ports available, and two USB 2.0 ports on the back. Plus you get Gigabit Ethernet, and a full sized DisplayPort.
For those familiar with the Surface line, and especially the Surface Pro 3, looking at the new Surface 3 is not going to shock you. It is certainly an evolution of the line and not a revolution. It still features the same magnesium body which really feels great in the hand. It really is unlike aluminium in feel, and I find that the Surface 3 texture gives plenty of grip, unlike some polished devices.
Microsoft paid a lot of attention when building these tablets, and their efforts are clearly seen all over. I have already discussed the kickstand when it is open, but when it is closed, it sits absolutely flush with the body, and the body has an angled edge to it, which the kickstand also must have. The power button and volume button both fit very snug and have a great clicky feel.
The biggest and best change to the design is what carries over from the Surface Pro 3; the 3:2 aspect ratio. 16:9 is really not ideal for a tablet in either orientation. In portrait mode, it is much too tall and skinny, and in landscape mode, the tablet is too long and can feel unbalanced.
Surface 3 over Surface 3 Pro
The move to 3:2 is a revelation for tablet use, and the Surface 3 is a much better tablet than even the Surface Pro 3. It is smaller, thinner, lighter, and just easier to hold. The smaller version is really quite good to use in portrait mode, which is something that could never have been said of Surface RT or Surface 2. I’m not sure if we have found a “perfect” aspect ratio for a tablet, but 3:2 offers a lot of advantages and very few drawbacks. It is better in landscape for actual productivity tasks thanks to the extra vertical space, and better for portrait because of the more balanced width.
One of the other great design features that Microsoft has been able to incorporate into the Surface line is front facing speakers. Sound does not travel well through things, so having the speakers pointed backwards just can’t compete. The best part of the speakers on the Surface line is just how inconspicuous they are. There are two tiny slots on the upper sides of the tablet (when in landscape) and they blend in surprisingly well with the black bezels, to the point where you may not even notice them unless you have the device in the right kind of lighting. We will see later on just how well they sound, but the placement of them is great.
The port selection is good too, and this is what helps Surface to be a laptop. There is a mini-DisplayPort on the upper right side, and just under that is a USB 3.0 port. This full sized port lets you connect almost anything to the tablet. In addition, there is an audio jack at the bottom right side, and in between the USB and audio is the charging port.
Microsoft has always used a proprietary charging connector on all of the Surface devices. The original Surface RT had a magnetic charger which would stick on to the device, and light up. It was reversible too, so you could connect it either way. The original had some issues with connections, and they tweaked the design. However for the Surface 3, they have ditched that connector completely and went with a standard micro-USB connector.
The use of micro-USB has some advantages and drawbacks. The advantage is that you can now charge the Surface 3 with any cord you already have for almost all smartphones (only Apple doesn’t use micro-USB) so that is a win. The drawback though is that micro-USB charging is generally power limited to only a handful of watts. A typical phone charger may only be five watts, and some of the better ones will be ten. The Surface 3 comes with a thirteen watt charger. Later we will see what effect that has on charge times, but it really is not a lot of power.
I think it is a missed opportunity to not be forward leaning on the charging port and use a USB Type-C connector. This would keep the reversible nature which is much better than what they have now, and Type-C can handle much more power (without ever going out of spec) offering them the opportunity to supply a bigger charger. Going to micro-USB now feels like a step backwards to be honest. Because the Surface already has a full sized USB port, you don’t run into the problems like the Macbook where it is only one Type-C. Type-C is the future, and not seeing it on this device makes it take a step back in the past.
The bottom of the Surface 3 keeps the now familiar magnetic connector and pins for the keyboard, and a groove runs along the bottom for the keyboard to fit in to.
On the top of the Surface is a slightly different color strip of plastic which will be the RF transparent window for all of the necessary antennae. I like that they did not try to color match the device because the contrast makes for a much nicer look, and trying to color match metal and plastic can end up looking poorly, especially over time. The plastic strip also features the 8 MP rear camera.
When you look at tablet design in the Windows world, there really is Surface and everything else. The device just feels solid, and the magnesium finish is so great to hold in the hand. The fit and finish of the Surface is as good as any other device on the market.
I still remember when back in 2011 Intel announced that they were finally going to stop treating Atom as a second class citizen at the manufacturing level, and bring it in line with the company’s mainstream Core processors. After having drawn out the 45nm and 32nm Atoms for too long, and suffering in the marketplace versus ARM as a result – Intel realized that to combat the growing threat of ARM they would need to treat the mobile market more seriously, and they would need to commit their sizable manufacturing advantage to the field to do this.
Now even Intel can’t turn on a dime – processors design begins half a decade in advance these days – so what have seen is a gradual ramping up towards this point. Silvermont, Intel’s first 22nm Atom, would introduce a more modern and better performing out-of-order architecture for Atom, meanwhile Intel would catch up on the manufacturing side by not producing 2 generations of Atoms on the 22nd node. Instead Silvermont would be the only 22nm Atom, and was to be followed by 14nm Airmont roughly a year later.
With Intel’s initial 14nm problems that year later ended up being a bit longer than a year, but in 2015 we’re finally there, and the change is remarkable. Only one generation ago, Intel launched their 22nm process as they always do, with desktop and high-performance laptop processors first. Now with 14nm the tables have been turned; Atom didn’t get first-dibs on 14nm – that went to Core M – but Airmont is still going to beat Intel’s desktop and high-performance Broadwell SKUs to the retail market. In one generation Intel has gone from favoring the desktop to favoring mobile, that’s how serious Intel has become.
That brings us to Surface 3, and the SoC powering it: Cherry Trail. The successor to the Silvermont-based Bay Trail that has powered so many x86 tablets in the last year, Cherry Trail is a distinct tick in Intel's tick-tock cadence. What this means is that Intel has largely retained the same architecture as in Bay Trail, investing in a fairly small number of updates, looking to take advantage of the power consumption and die size (cost) benefits of 14nm. To that end Intel has not even bothered to announce any major architectural changes for Airmont, and while there will likely be a few tweaks made to the CPU to make it work more efficiently on 14 nm, we will have to wait for Goldmont for the next big Atom architecture.
Cherry Trail itself is a fairly small chip. While Intel hasn’t released an official die size for it (no more than they did Bay Trail), from various IDF presentations they have released official numbers for the complete package, and decent photos as well. As a result we can take a decent stab at die sizes, and from Intel’s photos we’d estimate that the die size is around 83mm2. Unfortunately we don’t have anything quite comparable to Bay Trail, though we believe it to be a good bit smaller than Intel’s previous generation tablet SoC. At 83mm2 this would put the die size at quite a bit smaller than Apple’s A8X tablet SoC, and actually is just a hair smaller than the A8 phone SoC’s 89mm2.
Diving a bit deeper, Intel has also released some size data for individual Silvermont/Airmont CPU modules. The dual core modules, which contain the 2 CPU cores along with L2 cache and appropriate glue, have shrunk significantly from Silvermont to Airmont. Overall the Airmont CPU module is 64% smaller than the Silvermont module. And to be clear that does not mean Airmont is 64% of the size of Silvermont, that means that Airmont has been reduced by 64%; relative to Silvermont it is only 36% of the die size. Intel has achieved a better scaling factor than 22nm to 14nm alone, indicating that they have almost certainly enacted further optimizations to bring down the die size as an architectural level.
Moving on to the architecture of Cherry Trail, each Airmont core is a two-wide instruction decode with out of order execution. The L1 cache is 32 KB 8-way associative for instructions, and 24 KB 6-way associative data cache. Level 2 cache is 16-way associative with 1 MB of cache shared between two cores. There will be either two or four core versions available, which means that each SoC will have between 1 and 2 MB of L2 cache depending on the number of cores. There is no L3 cache on Atom.
The System on a Chip (SoC) has support for LP-DDR3 or DDR3L 1600 in dual-channel configuration, and has the blocks needed for PCIe 3.0, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and support for up to three displays with eDP, DP, and HDMI 1.4b. The built in storage support is eMMC v4.5.1, which is typical for a tablet class processor.
Here is a Block Diagram of the SoC.
The one truely major change to the SoC is the inclusion of Intel's Gen 8 Graphics. Bay Trail used Gen 7 Graphics from Ivy Bridge, and Bay Trail only had 4 Execution Units (EUs) available. Cherry Trail ramps that up significantly, with the latest Gen 8 Graphics from Broadwell now onboard, bringing forward Intel's GPU enhancements over the last two half generations, not to mention the compute enhancements as well.
In terms of execution hardware the x7-8700 model has 16 EUs available, indicating that Intel has spent a significant amount of their die size savings from the 14nm process on graphics resources. Gen 8 has eight EUs per sub-slice but a minimum of three sub-slices in the design, and therefore in order to improve SoC yields the thread scheduler will dynamically allocate the right amount of cores per-subslice to total 16. For comparison, Intel's Broadwell line of Core processors have a minimum of 23 (but most have 24) EUs available, and a maximum of 48, so with Cherry Trail Intel has closed the top-to-top gap in execution resources between Core and Atom to just 3-1.
In Intel’s datasheets, the Atom GPU is labeled as Gen8-LP to designate that this is a low power model being used in a tablet. The base frequency for this GPU is 200 MHz, with a boost of 600 MHz.
In addition to the GPU update, the ISP and hardware decode capabilities get a bump as well. There is full hardware acceleration for decode of H.263, MPEG4, H.264, H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9, MVC, MPEG2, VC1, and JPEG, as well as hardware encode for H.264, H.263, VP8, MVC, and JPEG. This marks the first Intel product to ship with the company's full, fixed-function HEVC decoder, making Atom the company's most advanced media processor, at least for this short moment.
The overall SoC is 17mm x 17mm, and the Z-height is 0.937mm, so it is quite a bit smaller than Core M’s 30mm x 16.5mm x 1.05mm package. Intel is not listing a Thermal Design Power for the Atom chip, but is instead listing it as a Scenario Design Power of 2 watts. The CPU base frequency is 1.6 GHz with a turbo frequency of 2.4 GHz, and there is also support for a Low Frequency Mode of just 480 MHz for extra power savings when needed.
Atom x7-8700
Atom Z3785
Architecture
Cherry Trail (Airmont)
Bay Trail (Silvermont)
Cores / Threads
4 / 4
4 / 4
Base Frequency (MHz)
1.6GHz
1.5GHz
Turbo / Burst (MHz)
2.4GHz
2.4GHz
L2 Cache
2 MB
2 MB
SDP
2 W
2.2 W
GPU Architecture
Gen 8
Gen 7
GPU Execution Units
16
4
GPU Frequency / MHz
200-600MHz
313-833Mhz
DRAM
LPDDR3-1600
LPDDR3-1333
So what we really have here is a massaged Bay Trail class chip, but the 14 nm process should allow for a higher period of sustained turbo frequencies to help out with performance. It will be interesting to see what Intel does with Goldmont, and if they will add things like hyper-threading or not, but that discussion is for another time.
Since the Surface 3 is a tablet that can replace your laptop, comparisons will be made between both devices. Because the new tablet is running full Windows 8.1 x64, it is possible to run the full benchmark suite that we have for laptops. On the tablet side, there are not a lot of cross-platform benchmarks so the only thing that can really be used is browser based tests. It is not idea, but we have to work with what we have.
To summarize the Surface 3, it is powered by the top model of the latest Intel Atom 14nm stack. The Atom x7-Z8700 is a quad-core processor with a base frequency of 1.6 GHz. The CPU can turbo up to a maximum of 2.4 GHz, and all of this is done within a 2 watt Scenario Design Power. The review unit that I received is the $499 unit, so it only has 2 GB of LPDDR3 memory rather than the 4 GB offered on the higher priced model.
For comparisons against tablets, I have selected a sampling of several devices that have already been reviewed. Some of the devices are running on ARM processors, and several of the Windows ones run on Intel Core M, with a few more running on previous Atom architectures. To compare this device against any other device we have tested, please check out our Mobile Bench.
Since we just have web benchmarks to compare against other platforms, it does make it difficult to get a true feel for how Atom compares to the best, but when comparing to ARM processors it is fairly competitive. All of the web benchmarks are done using Chrome (hopefully we can switch to Microsoft Edge soon) because IE 11 has pretty awful javascript performance. Atom is a long ways off of the Core series in the Surface Pro line, and well back of the Core M powered Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet. There is a big jump in performance compared to the Bay Trail ASUS T100 and HP Stream 7. That is important since Cherry Trail is not a big architecture update, but mostly a process shrink, so the 14 nm processes can keep everything running at higher frequencies in the same power envelope.
By attaching the keyboard, the Surface 3 becomes a pretty reasonable laptop, so to see how much of a performance drop off there is with tablet class parts, the Surface 3 was run through our Laptop suite as well. The Atom is also equipped with eMMC storage, and some of the tests like PCMark take storage into account. Other benchmarks like Cinebench and x264 are CPU only. To compare the Surface 3 against any other laptop we have tested, please use our Laptop Bench.
PCMark
PCMark 8 from Futuremark has several benchmarks within it, all with the goal of simulating real-world use cases for each of the scenarios. It includes Home, Creative, Work, and Storage benchmarks. The workloads generally include both burst and sustained performance. The Atom can’t compete with the bigger Core pieces, but it is actually surprisingly close to the Core i3 Surface Pro 3. I think this is less about Atom and more about how handicapped Core i3 is with its lack of Turbo.
TouchXPRT
TouchXPRT 2014 is a benchmark that has a lot of burst workloads. The tasks are quick, but heavy, and it gives the processor a quick chance to cool off between each one so normally it is good about not running into throttling behaviour. The Atom processor is a long way off of the Core series here, with the exception of the i3 Surface Pro 3 which has no turbo capability. However there is a good bump in performance over the previous generation Atom in the HP Stream 7.
Cinebench
Cinebench is purely a CPU task, and it loves Instructions Per Clock (IPC) and frequency. There are two modes here with a single CPU run and all core run. It is still a long ways back of the Core i3 Surface Pro 3 on this test, and despite the Atom processor having four physical cores and the Core processors having only two physical and four logical cores, it is still not enough on the multithreaded run to really close the gap, although it does slightly. Looking at version 11.5 of this test, we have more data going back to older devices, so there are scores available from the ASUS T100 and there is a bump in performance compared to Bay Trail.
x264
Once again this is a benchmark that prioritizes good IPC and frequency, along with multiple cores. The Atom struggles here compared to Core, which at this point should not be a surprise.
So clearly the new Cherry Trail CPU cores are not a giant leap in performance over Bay Trail, but like Haswell to Broadwell, there is a decent bump and the better manufacturing process helps increase overall performance due to the additional thermal headroom in the same power envelope. However when comparing it to the ARM competition, we only have a few data points but it does seem to be about on par with the top ARM CPUs at this time. Comparing devices across different operating systems is always difficult though.
Using the device day to day as a tablet though, performance was good. Yes, it could be better, and devices that use Core M are going to be able to run circles around Atom, but at the cost of additional heat. One of the nicest surprises of using this tablet was that it just never got warm at all, and the same cannot be said of any of the passively cooled Core M devices. Sure, when running very heavy benchmark loads, there was a bit of heat on the back, but it was never much more than around 30°C or so.
My experience was that when the Surface 3 felt slow, it was often not CPU bound but disk bound.
The Surface 3 with the Atom x7-Z8700 pairs the Intel Gen 8 Graphics from Broadwell with the Airmont CPU cores of Atom. Unlike the Broadwell cores though, the Surface 3 SoC only has 16 execution units (EUs) as compared to 24 in Core M. The maximum frequency is also reduced to 600 MHz for these cores, as compared to up to 900 MHz in Core M. This is all necessary to keep the x7-8700 in the 2 watt SDP.
So performance will be a step back compared to Core M, but really this should be no surprise. The interesting comparison will be how it compares to Surface Pro 3 with Haswell Gen 7.5 graphics and of course to Bay Trail equipped tablets.
We will start with some synthetic tests and then move on to DOTA 2 to see how it performs on a real world game.
3DMark Tablet
The GPU upgrade is a big improvement over the ASUS T100's Bay Trail graphics, but the Atom GPU still can not compete with the fastest tablet SoCs out there.
3DMark Notebook
Comparing the Surface 3 to PC class hardware puts it in a pretty poor light when looking at GPU performance. Our 3DMark tests have the Surface Pro 3 with the Core i3 on average 40% faster than Surface 3. Comparing it to the Dell Venue 11 Pro with Core M, we find the Core M GPU is on average 47% faster, which is quite a gap. Let’s not forget though that the Surface 3 is a mere 2 watt SDP, whereas Core M is a 4.5 W TDP and the Haswell-Y in Surface Pro 3 is an 11.5 W TDP.
GFXBench Tablet (OpenGL)
As with the 3DMark scores, the GPU upgrade is significant, but still a ways back of the best tablet GPUs out there. Intel still has some work to do on this front.
GFXBench Notebook (DirectX)
We see a similar story with GFXBench on the notebook side. The 16 EUs in our Atom SoC just cannot compete against the larger and faster GPUs in Core.
Moving on to a real-world game, we use a custom DOTA 2 benchmark for our lower powered devices. It is a very popular battle-arena game, and the GPU requirements are not too demanding.
The GPU in the Surface 3 is really not enough to play most games, and even on our value settings, the Surface 3 is not a great experience for DOTA 2. The higher TDP of Core M lets it do ok in this test, but overall the Surface 3 is a long way back of even the Surface Pro 3 Core i3.
Like most tablets, the Surface 3 utilizes eMMC storage rather than the SSD storage found on higher priced laptops and Core M tablets. It costs less, it is less complex, and it works. So expectations are that it will not be able to compete with the fastest solutions out there. But as a tablet, workloads should be less complex, at least in theory.
Unfortunately Microsoft shipped me the 64 GB version of the tablet, and due to PCMark 8 requiring a large amount of free space in order to perform its tests, it was unable to be run on this device. But we have run into this issue in the past, and we can turn to a couple of other tools to get a feel for how the storage performance is. Even though eMMC is slower than a good SSD, there is still different levels of performance based on the NAND in use and the controller.
I ran CrystalDiskMark over a 4 GB span and the results are below.
Surface 3 eMMC Storage (left) vs Surface Pro 3 Core i3 SSD (right)
Compared to a true SSD, the eMMC performance leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, most of the time when I was using the tablet and I found it slow, such as installing software, or loading programs, it was mostly disk bound. There are faster eMMC options available, but I will refrain from comparing it to other tablets since we do not have the same benchmarking tools for both.
When Surface Pro 3 moved to a 3:2 aspect ratio, it made a lot of sense. 16:9 in a tablet makes for a very poor experience, and in a laptop, it is not much better. Almost everyone has moved to 16:9 in the laptop space and the lack of vertical height can make for a less than ideal experience. Most web content is vertical, and working in Office means you want vertical space as well. The widescreen does help with two windows snapped open at once, but I always find myself craving more vertical room.
On a tablet, I feel that 16:9 is even worse. Holding a 16:9 device in one hand can feel very heavy due to the length of the tablet, and turning it to portrait means that it is very tall and skinny. The move to 3:2 really squares up the device, and makes it a lot more balanced in either direction. Holding it in one hand is much easier, and finally portrait mode is usable on the Surface.
So the aspect ratio is a big improvement. The display size also has a slightly wider corner to corner of 10.8 inches versus 10.6 inch model that came before this. The actual width of the display is about 9 inches, compared to 9.2 on the outgoing Surface 2 model. The display height is now 6 inches, up from 5.2, so the total area of the display is almost 54 square inches, up from 48 inches on the outgoing model.
To fill this display, we have a Panasonic panel with a resolution of 1920x1280. This is roughly the same pixel density as the Surface Pro 3’s slightly larger 12 inch 2160x1440 display, coming in at 217 pixels per inch. It is not the highest PPI of a tablet, but it makes a good compromise between desktop and tablet use. Speaking of desktop use, I found that it makes a perfectly acceptable size for a small notebook, and even with touch it was not too difficult to work with the icons.
When Microsoft launched Surface 3, it said “with incredibly accurate colors and clarity from multiple viewing angles” and that would be excellent to see. The Surface Pro 3 has a decent display, but it was not the most accurate device we’ve tested.
To do our display testing, we use SpectralCal’s CalMAN 5 suite with a custom workflow. Brightness and contrast readings are taken with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter, and color accuracy is measured with an X-Rite i1Pro spectrophotometer. We target 200 nits brightness when doing our tests.
Brightness and Contrast
The Surface 3 gets quite bright, coming in at 432 nits at maximum output. The black levels are a bit high, but overall contrast is a decent 920:1. This makes the Surface 3 almost 100 nits higher than the Surface Pro 3 that Anand reviewed last year, which is a good start for this less expensive version.
Grayscale
The grayscale average for the Surface 3 is very good, coming in just about at 2.5 as an average for the sweep. There is a bit of a spike at 25% but it is not indicative of the overall calibration. Gamma is a bit low, but the white point is fairly close to the ideal value.
Saturation
The accuracy on our saturation tests is outstanding, with an overall average score of just 1.57. Looking at the individual colors, the red is a bit oversaturated at 100%, and blue tends to be undersaturated, but the amount of error is very small.
Gamut and Gretag Macbeth
Once again the Surface 3 comes in with fantastic scores on these two tests, with the comprehensive GMB test under 2. When we are doing these tests, values under 3 are considered good, and the Surface 3 has passed with amazing scores. The best part of this is that all of this is done without the use of an ICC profile, so that means the hardware is being calibrated directly. ICC profiles can fix some issues, but not all programs respect them so having it done in hardware is a much better option.
Calibrated
Since this is a full x86 Windows operating system, we can also calibrate the display with the CalMAN software. Even though it was very good out of the box, the calibration pulls it even closer to perfection.
Surface 3 has one of the most accurate displays we have ever tested, which is great to see in what is considered the value member of the Surface family. Microsoft promised an accurate display and they have delivered.
When you consider something like a tablet, battery life is a crucial part of the complete package. Tablets are not meant to be plugged in for really any of their normal usage. In the case of the Surface 3, it has a 28 Wh battery onboard to power it when not plugged into the wall. That is a fair bit less than the 42 Wh battery that is crammed into the Surface Pro 3, but with a less powerful CPU, and a slightly smaller display, it may be able to compete.
To test battery life, we have several tests and for a device like the Surface 3 we will compare it to a couple of device types. First up, we will compare it against other tablets on our Wi-Fi test, which consists of basic web browsing. Next we can compare to notebook computers with our light test (again, web browsing) to get a feel for how it performs against those devices.
Surface 3 features Connected Standby support, but after a few hours of being asleep it will switch to hibernation. This is the same as the Surface Pro 3, and it helps tremendously with standby times. Although we do not have a test for this, in my time with the device I found that standby times were excellent, which makes sense since the device is actually turning off after a few hours. This does make for a bit longer wakeup the next time you need it, but it is a better result than the device being out of battery.
To enable a level playing field for all of the devices, we set the display brightness to 200 nits for all battery life tests, and disable any adaptive brightness.
Tablet Battery Life
Compared to other tablets, the Surface 3 has pretty poor battery life. On our web browsing test, the Surface 3 came in at just under eight hours. The iPad Air 2 has a similar size battery, but manages almost two hours more battery life in this test. The CPU workload is fairly light in this test, but without a complete breakdown of all of the parts inside it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly what is the issue here.
On the video playback, the Surface 3 stumbles even farther, although the overall battery life is almost identical to the web browsing test. On the video playback many tablets are able to offload the work to hardware. Once again, without being able to check each part of the tablet individually it is not very easy to determine what is causing this weak battery life result.
So compared to tablets, the Surface 3 is clearly not as efficient. The gap between the devices is fairly significant and I would have hoped for better.
Laptop Battery Life
We have a different set of tests for notebook computers, so I also ran the Surface 3 through our light workload which is a different browser test.
The Surface 3 manages to outperform the Surface Pro 3 here, and at 8.5 hours on our light test, it is a decent result.
The situation is very similar under our heavy test. The Surface 3 once again outperforms the Surface Pro 3 here, however now it's by quite a bit more than it did under the Light test. Meanwhile compared to the Core M devices, only the Venue 11 remains well in the lead; the UX305's lead is down to 15%. Ultimately with a 2W SDP, the bulk of the Surface 3's power consumption is in the display, so ramping up for our heavy test does not have the same impact on overall power consumption as it does on devices with more powerful SoCs/CPUs. Meanwhile the situation also sees the Surface 3 do well on a normalized basis, well ahead of any other device with respect to the number of minutes of runtime per watt-hour of battery capacity.
Charge Time
The other aspect of mobility is charge time. Although longer battery life would always be a priority, the ability to quickly top up a device can make it a lot more useful in the real world where you are not always away from an outlet.
Charging time is always going to be a function of the battery size and the supplied charger’s ability to fill that battery. In the case of the Surface 3, Microsoft has shipped it with just a 13 watt charger, and when it is charging, only about half of that is available to the battery with the rest designated to power the system.
Compared to notebook computers, the charging time is quite a bit longer than we are used to seeing. The Surface Pro 3’s proprietary charging connector was able to charge quite quickly, but the Surface 3 is really quite slow. Part of this comes down to the micro USB connector which is now the charging connector.
This connector is just not built for the high amperage needed to quickly charge a device up. Although I am happy to see Microsoft ditch the previous charging connector, this is where a USB Type-C connector would be much better. It can handle a lot more power, and it would have allowed the Surface 3 to come with a much higher wattage adapter. It really feels a bit like putting one foot in the past with the micro USB port. The long charge times were quite an issue for me trying to review this device, since we run our battery life tests multiple times to ensure a reliable result, but there was a very long wait to get the device ready for another run.
For networking, the Surface 3 features the same Marvell AVASTAR 802.11ac network adapter as its big brother. I have seen a lot of the firmware updates for Surface Pro 3 over the last year being network related, so hopefully they have all of the bugs out of it by now. During my time with the Surface 3, I did not have any issues with it. It is a standard 2x2:2 setup, and the top of the Surface 3 has a plastic section to act as a RF window.
The average speed during our TCP test was just about 350 Mbps, which is not too bad but well off of the Broadcom devices, which can see over 500 Mbps.
The Surface 3 features to forward facing speakers hidden in the display bezel. It makes for a nice look, and having the speakers facing you helps a lot with stereo and should help with the overall sound quality too.
The Surface 3 is not especially loud, and the frequency response is about what you would expect for a small device with no room for proper speakers. There is almost no sound below 150 Hz, and around 15 kHz the sound drops away. Maximum volume I observed while playing music was 76 dB(A).
This tablet has two cameras, with the rear camera being an auto-focus 8 MP unit, and the front facing camera is actually a decent camera as well, with 2304 x 1536 resolution shots. The one quirk with the front facing camera though is that it really works best when the kickstand is in the first position, and because this is not a laptop with an adjustable hinge, you will always be limited to where it points.
The rear camera though is surprisingly good, even in low light. I am still not a fan of using a tablet to take pictures, but if you have to, this one will please you.
It will work in a pinch, but I will stick to my smartphone when I can.
In the Windows space, there is quite a bit of variety in tablets. Some are well under $100, and some go over $1000. In this space, the Surface Pro 3 has done very well, establishing a name for itself with good performance in a small form factor. Microsoft is certainly trying to emulate this success with the Surface 3, and for good reason. With the Surface Pro 3, they got a lot right, so it makes sense to push the value line in the same direction.
The Surface 3 is superior to its predecessors in many ways. Where they were good, it is better. It keeps the wonderful magnesium chassis, but stretches it into a 3:2 aspect ratio. This alone is almost worth the price of admission, but it is just one of many changes made. I would argue that it is one of the most important changes to this tablet, and it makes it a better tablet and a better laptop. The kickstand has always been a staple of the Surface lineup, and adding the one additional step really helps make it even more usable in more scenarios. I wish it opened just a bit wider like the Pro model does, but that is a small gripe.
The move to x86 with the Atom x7-8700 was long needed. No longer is Surface and Surface Pro not able to run the same applications. Windows RT was always going to be a tough sell, but even more so since the Windows Store did not take off as quick as would have been necessary for RT to have a future. Once Intel shipped Bay Trail though, the writing was on the wall for Windows RT, since there was little reason to sacrifice the backwards compatibility of x86. The move to Cherry Trail in this model has provided a speed boost as well, and for light workloads it is more than sufficient. Plus, you could run anything that a Surface Pro could run, even if it will take a bit longer. That is an option that just did not exist before with the Surface line.
That being said, the SoC performance is where the price point dictates - around the good ARM products but poorer compared to Core. This is especially true when compared to the Surface Pro 3, but it is worth noting the SoC power draw between the two (14W vs 2W). That being said, the performance of the eMMC is a major drawback to how this device feels, especially in day to day use. Most of the time it isn't noticable, but when there is a bottleneck most of the time it was due to disk accesses.
From a long term usability standpoint, getting rid of the 32 GB model and having Surface 3 start with 64 GB is a big boost. 32 GB is a tough sell when you have the larger install footprint of Windows, as well as a recovery partition. Add in some Windows Updates, and a 32 GB model is going to be near capacity right away, and that really diminishes eMMC’s performance. Now the base model starts at 64 GB, and for just $100 more, you can opt for the 128 GB model which also has 4 GB of RAM. I personally think that would be $100 well spent, and if I was buying, that would be the model I would go for.
The accessories are also first rate. The keyboard is really quite good, and although the trackpad is small, it does work well when needed. It is a bit on the pricey side but it really does complete the Surface 3 and gives you the laptop capabilities in a nice cover. When I was using it as a tablet, I almost always removed the keyboard though, so it is certainly not a must have, but a really should have. Adding the pen to the lineup for this round was also a great move. Being able to use the Surface 3 for quick notes came in very handy, and I found the pen to be quite easy to glide over the screen, and accuracy was top notch. Of the accessories, the dock is likely not something the average consumer needs, but it really is a nice dock for storage and charging. At $199 though, it is too much for the average person to go for. For businesses though, it should come in very handy and should help the Surface 3 gain some traction there. It is not quite as good as the Surface Pro’s dock though, since this model lacks the proprietary docking port of the Surface Pro 3.
There is a lot to like about the Surface 3, but not everything is perfect. Battery life, especially when compared to other tablets, is well below average. This is despite having a display with a pixel density less than a lot of the competition, which means the Surface 3 should have an advantage in backlight power consumption. Display power draw is a huge concern, and perhaps the Panasonic one in the Surface 3 is not quite as efficient as others, especially Sharp’s IGZO lineup. The overall battery life is still decent though, and the much improved standby time is a big boon. However the charge rate is really a problem on this tablet, and it would have been excellent to see this new device embrace USB Type-C as the charging connector. Since it already has a full sized USB 3.0 port, there would be very little downside to moving to the new connector for charging, and it would allow for a reversible insertion as well.
I think though that the battery life is really the only real concern for the Surface 3. In the Windows space, there is no other tablet quite like this one, except maybe the Surface Pro 3, but that device is bigger, and heavier, and less useful as a tablet. It does have far more performance available, but for far more money up front.
Up to this point, I have not discussed the ability to use Surface 3 in your lap at all, and for good reason. For people out in the world that need to be able to use a device in their lap, then please just buy a notebook computer. Almost none of the 2-in-1 devices that I have tested have been especially good at that task, even those with true attachable keyboards. Only the devices like the Yoga 3 Pro which keep the processor in the base have the correct balance for this task. The Surface 3 can work in a pinch, but it is much better suited to be used on a desk with the keyboard attached if you need to use it as a notebook.
Pricing is the final piece of the puzzle. At $499, you get a decent spec with 2 GB of memory and 64 GB of storage. The $599 model bumps that to 4 GB of memory and 128 GB of storage. It is not inexpensive. Add in the keyboard for another $130 and the Surface 3 is getting close to the pricing of the ASUS UX305, which has a lot more performance available. The pen is another $50 on top. The base price of the Surface 3 is, I think, competitive, but adding in the accessories to really make it what it is advertised as ramps the price up in a hurry.
So with those caveats aside, we can finally get to the conclusion that you have likely guessed already. The Surface 3 is a great device. The build quality is really at the top level of any OEM out there. The form factor is finally the right one after two previous generations that got it slightly wrong. The weight is lighter than any previous Surface, and just as balanced. Performance of the x7 Atom CPU is great for light tasks, and if you need more than light tasks then this is not the device for you. As a tablet, it is great to use in either orientation, with the portrait mode being especially good now for browsing the web. The kickstand is improved, they keyboard is improved, the base tier steps up to 64 GB of storage, making it actually useful without immediately adding micro SD to the mix.
With Windows 10 right around the corner, the Surface 3 feels like Microsoft’s best attempt yet at creating a great tablet computer. If you in the market and you want a Windows 8.1 tablet, it would be worth your time to check out the Surface 3.