Since Microsoft’s first foray into the tablet space with the original Surface Pro one year ago they have made some significant ground. We just received the latest Surface Pro 3 and have been mighty impressed.
The major improvements over previous models are:
• 0.9cm vs original 1.3cm
• 800 grams vs 900 grams
• 12 inch display vs 10 inch display
• 2160 x 1440 pixel display vs 1920 x 1080
• 8 hour battery life vs 3-4 hour batter life
• 4 or 8GB of RAM vs 4GB
• 64,128, 256GB or 512GB SSD drive vs 128GB
What this means essentially is you now have a true medium level notebook replacement which is powerful enough for all but high end notebook users.
Following are some other key highlights:
Keyboard
The new adjustable height keyboard provides a slight angle for more comfortable typing and the back-lit keys make it great when typing in low light. The other bonus is a little bit of extra width with the wider form factor screen making the typing experience no different to that of a standard laptop.
Kick stand
This was a great introduction with the original Surface Pro as it provided a way to view the tablet on a nice upright angle without having to buy an additional bulky case. As a result I have opted to carrying the pro around with just the keyboard attached which protects the screen. The only drawback of the original stand was it really only had one angle. The new kickstand is fully adjustable to provide any viewable angle you desire which along with the larger form makes the Pro 3 great for watching movies and other media.
Display
The display is beautifully crisp and quite big when you line it up against other tablets in the market. I love being able to pull the keyboard off and view a PDF or document in portrait mode which is almost the size of an A4 sheet of paper. The Surface Pro 3 stylus is great for being able to mark up and annotate documents without worrying about accidently marking the document with your palm or finger as it only responds to the pen. The other big bonus for graphics is that you are able to hook up two monitors when using the docking station which is coming out in August.
The starting price with standard configuration is US$799 with the highest spec configurations going for US$1950. Pricing in Australia will be $979.00 to $2,279.00 according to the Microsoft website.
All in all it’s a great piece of hardware. I am sure Strata Managers will be impressed by its portability for meetings but also its large screen making it easy to share financials and other data during committee meetings.
My recommendation – check it out for yourself but like me I think you will be pretty impressed.
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