14 TECH ADVISOR • JANUARY 2020MICROSOFT SURFACE EVENT
actually find the Dolby controls, which are usually
in a Realtek app. But Microsoft’s spec sheet claims
they’re there. Nevertheless, these are speakers you
won’t mind listening to music on, at all, which is saying
something for laptop speakers. The Laptop 3 produces
bright midrange sound, and discernible (though
underpowered) bass.
Somewhat surprisingly, Microsoft didn’t load up the
Surface Laptop 3 with too much extraneous crapware,
although worthless apps such as Farm Heroes Saga
make an appearance. Honestly, we wish Microsoft did
more with the Surface app that it bundled with Surface
devices. While it provides a nice summary of the system
specs and provides basic configuration options for the
Surface Pen (sold separately), it would be welcome to
see something a bit more comprehensive.Performance: a mixed bag
We were honestly excited to review the Surface Laptop
3 both from a system as well as a chip perspective. This
is the first time Microsoft featured an AMD processor
inside one of its laptops, and not only was it a mobile
Ryzen, but a custom mobile Ryzen.
If we had any trepidation, it’s that what Microsoft
included wasn’t based on the impressive Zen 2
architecture giving Intel a run for its money on the
desktop in the form of Ryzen 3000-series CPUs, but
instead the older Zen+ architecture. Fortunately, AMD
has published the Ryzen 5 3580U specs. It’s a quad-
core, 8-thread chip, with a base clock of 2.1GHz on up
to 3.7GHz. It also integrates a 1,300MHz Radeon Vega
9 GPU core, giving it a little more oomph for games.14 TECH ADVISOR • JANUARY 2020MICROSOFT SURFACE EVENT
actually find the Dolby controls, which are usually
in a Realtek app. But Microsoft’s spec sheet claims
they’re there. Nevertheless, these are speakers you
won’t mind listening to music on, at all, which is saying
something for laptop speakers. The Laptop 3 produces
bright midrange sound, and discernible (though
underpowered) bass.
Somewhat surprisingly, Microsoft didn’t load up the
Surface Laptop 3 with too much extraneous crapware,
although worthless apps such as Farm Heroes Saga
make an appearance. Honestly, we wish Microsoft did
more with the Surface app that it bundled with Surface
devices. While it provides a nice summary of the system
specs and provides basic configuration options for the
Surface Pen (sold separately), it would be welcome to
see something a bit more comprehensive.Performance: a mixed bag
We were honestly excited to review the Surface Laptop
3 both from a system as well as a chip perspective. This
is the first time Microsoft featured an AMD processor
inside one of its laptops, and not only was it a mobile
Ryzen, but a custom mobile Ryzen.
If we had any trepidation, it’s that what Microsoft
included wasn’t based on the impressive Zen 2
architecture giving Intel a run for its money on the
desktop in the form of Ryzen 3000-series CPUs, but
instead the older Zen+ architecture. Fortunately, AMD
has published the Ryzen 5 3580U specs. It’s a quad-
core, 8-thread chip, with a base clock of 2.1GHz on up
to 3.7GHz. It also integrates a 1,300MHz Radeon Vega
9 GPU core, giving it a little more oomph for games.