MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO 3

After an unconvincing first iteration and a second that still had some faults, Microsoft has had another go at the Surface Pro. This third version has some welcome improvements, including a large 12" screen with 2160 x 1440 pixel resolution. The body has also been refined and comes with a new stylus.

Microsoft could have made the Surface Pro 3 a boxy thin tablet, but it didn’t. The edges of the Surface Pro 3 house a single USB full-size USB port, power button, keyboard connector, mini display port, headphone jack, volume buttons and a vent that you’ll barely notice. The edges gently slope, making the Surface Pro 3 more comfortable to hold. Around back is a rear-facing 5 megapixel camera and a kickstand.

The Surface Pro 3 has a 12in screen. That's important. It's an inch and a half bigger than the older Surface Pros and it makes a heck of a difference. It's still smaller than a 13.3in laptop, but it's a lot more usable as a laptop than the 10.6in Surface Pro 2, for example.

The Surface Pro 3 is a powerful lightweight Windows tablet PC with touch and digitizer but I find myself loving the Surface Pro 3 simply because it’s a lightweightmobile PC that I can dock at home and in my co-working office [A big shout out to my Coworking Bonn buddies] and one that I can use for meetings, in the coffee shop and in the bus home if I need to. Apart from the lack of 3G/4G the Surface Pro 3 is one of the most ultra-mobile, work-anywhere PCs I’ve ever used.

The new stand allows for viewing at multiple angles, but it’s the hardware within that propels the Surface Pro 3 to another league. Our review sample included the powerful Core i5-4300U CPU, along with a meaty 8GB of memory. The only area of concern is the onboard storage, with our high-end version still limited to just 232GB of usable flash storage. If there’s one concern, it’s that the speedy CPU chews through battery life.