20 MARCH2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE
ittt’s just right, and one of the best touchpads
wwwe’ve used on any laptop.
The display, too, is as sharpasyou need at
this size,with aresolution of 2,256x1,504 and
aaapixel density of 201ppi. This gives it a
square-ish 3:2 aspect ratio,which feels alot
better suited to office work than the 16:
screens many competing laptops use,such
as the Dell XPS 13 (Shopper376).
It looks great, too. Its maximum brightness
of 365cd/m^2 isn’t exceptional, but it’s fine for
most conditions in which you’ll probably be
using the laptop,and the displayalsoreaches
asuperb 97.5% sRGB coverage.
SPACERACE
It’s just apitythat the screen doesn’t go
beyond sRGB, as the MacBook Air has now
moved to the larger P3 colour space.Ifyou
switch to Enhanced mode in the laptop’s
displaysettings you get slightly boosted
contrast, but that’s still along wayoffa
proper wide-gamut display.
The speakers, meanwhile,are relatively
impressive foralaptop. They go surprisingly
loud and rarely distort nastily.Theydon’t have
much in the wayofbody, so we wouldn’t want
to listen to anything but the very simplest
acoustic tracks on them, but forpodcasts
and talk radio they’re absolutely fine.
Forperformance,wepreviously tested the
Core i5 version of the Surface Laptop 2, so
can’t make direct comparisons between the
previous generation and the new Core
i7-powered laptop we received. However,
our benchmarks show that it’s quicker than
the 2019 Dell XPS 13 we tried out, which
used an 8th-gen Core i7.That scored 95
overall in our 4K benchmarks, while the
Surface Laptop 3scored 104.
Both the i5 and i7 models also have vastly
improved graphics over the previous
generation. The GFXBench Car Chase
onscreen benchmark showed aclear
advantage forthe Surface Laptop 3, with its
Iris Plus GPU producing 41fps, over both the
MacBook Air and the Dell XPS 13, which
scored 10fps and 31fps respectively.
THE JOYOF
It’s also good to see that you’re covered when
it comes to Wi-Fi future-proofing with Intel’s
Wi-Fi 6AX201 wireless card providing wireless
connectivity.Notably,Wi-Fi 6isenabled by
the 10th-gen Intel chip,and the 15in Surface
Laptop 3uses completely different AMD
Ryzen CPUs that lack Wi-Fi 6support.You’re
therefore getting potentially much faster
speeds on the smaller,cheaper variant.
Finally,battery lifeispretty decent, too.
The Surface Laptop 3lasted8h10m in our
continuous video rundown test, with the
laptop in flight mode and the screen adjusted
to abrightness of 170cd/m2. That’s not
significantly better than its rivals but, equally,
you won’t do any better elsewhere.
The Surface Laptop 3isavery good
laptop.It’s light, slim and good looking, with
performance across the board that’s amatch
forthe best in the business. It’s more practicaaal
than previous models, with non-Alcantara
options that won’t get grubby, andagood
spread of specifications means you can
choose amodel that suits your requirements
and not paymore than you need to.
There is the odd area of weakness. It’s high
time Microsoftmoved to wide-gamut displays
on its hardware and, ideally,we’dhaveliked to
see aThunderbolt 3-equipped USB Type-C
port, rather than plain old USB 3.
But these are small complaints. If you
want alaptop forwork and alittle play, the
Surface Laptop 3isabrilliant option with
very fewnoteworthy shortcomings.
JonathanBray
SPECIFICATIONS
Windowsoverall
Multitasking
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage98for performance details
PROCESSORQuad-core1.3GHzIntel Core i7-1065G7•RAM
16GB•DIMENSIONS308x223x14.5mm•WEIGHT1.3kg•
SCREENSIZE13.5in•SCREENRESOLUTION2,256x1,504•
GRAPHICSADAPTORIntelIris Plus Graphics•TOTAL
STORAGE256GBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEMWindows 10
Home•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.
microsoft.com•PARTCODEVEF-
8h10m
104
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