20 TECH ADVISOR • JANUARY 2020MICROSOFT SURFACE EVENT
format suitable for viewing on a more compact Android
tablet. That’s our next benchmark, which is basically a
prolonged CPU stress test that complements how well
the CPU does in Cinebench’s quick burst. This speaks
to both the Ryzen 5 3580U’s performance as well as the
effectiveness of Microsoft’s thermal design decisions.
Here, the Surface Laptop 3 excels, which we’d chalk up
to the Surface Edition chip and its excellent cooling.
Finally, we get to see how well AMD’s mobile Vega
chip performs in 3D graphics. Because of the time
constraints engendered by the short review period,
I didn’t have much of an opportunity to play games
with the Surface Laptop 3. But the 3DMark Fire Strike
scores indicate that the Radeon Vega 9 GPU compares
with the downclocked Nvidia GeForce MX150, which
is impressive for integrated graphics. Unfortunately,
the Iris Plus GPUs inside of the 10th-gen Ice Lake chips
topped it – but not by much.
Where I’m really disappointed with the Surface
Laptop 3 is battery life. Microsoft has always positioned
the Surface Laptop as an always-on, always-connected
device, and the first two Surface Laptops have
performed quite well in this regard. It appears that the
Surface Pro X, due later in November, may bring this
vision to reality. Microsoft encouraged us to test battery
life under more real-world conditions. We’re happy to
do that, provided we can find repeatable benchmarks
and have a bit of time to perform those tests. For now,
however, we’ve relied on our tried-and-true video
rundown test, which delivers disappointing results.
Keep in mind, though, that battery life depends
on several factors. Higher-resolution screens tend20 TECH ADVISOR • JANUARY 2020MICROSOFT SURFACE EVENT
format suitable for viewing on a more compact Android
tablet. That’s our next benchmark, which is basically a
prolonged CPU stress test that complements how well
the CPU does in Cinebench’s quick burst. This speaks
to both the Ryzen 5 3580U’s performance as well as the
effectiveness of Microsoft’s thermal design decisions.
Here, the Surface Laptop 3 excels, which we’d chalk up
to the Surface Edition chip and its excellent cooling.
Finally, we get to see how well AMD’s mobile Vega
chip performs in 3D graphics. Because of the time
constraints engendered by the short review period,
I didn’t have much of an opportunity to play games
with the Surface Laptop 3. But the 3DMark Fire Strike
scores indicate that the Radeon Vega 9 GPU compares
with the downclocked Nvidia GeForce MX150, which
is impressive for integrated graphics. Unfortunately,
the Iris Plus GPUs inside of the 10th-gen Ice Lake chips
topped it – but not by much.
Where I’m really disappointed with the Surface
Laptop 3 is battery life. Microsoft has always positioned
the Surface Laptop as an always-on, always-connected
device, and the first two Surface Laptops have
performed quite well in this regard. It appears that the
Surface Pro X, due later in November, may bring this
vision to reality. Microsoft encouraged us to test battery
life under more real-world conditions. We’re happy to
do that, provided we can find repeatable benchmarks
and have a bit of time to perform those tests. For now,
however, we’ve relied on our tried-and-true video
rundown test, which delivers disappointing results.
Keep in mind, though, that battery life depends
on several factors. Higher-resolution screens tend