30 PCWorld JANUARY 2022REVIEWS MICROSOFT SURFACE GO 3
higher compliments that you can give a
laptop or tablet.
The front-facing 5.0Mpixel webcam
continues to provide decent color
saturation and lighting, though without the
new lighting and color sensors added to
the Surface Pro 8. With the easy migration
of photos between smartphones and PCs,
the rear-facing camera seems less necessary
with each passing generation of devices.
But the Go’s small size makes snapping a
photo less awkward than it is with larger
tablets, and the 8Mpixel resolution is plenty
sufficient for capturing documents and
well-lit scenes.
The Go also features dual far-field mics.
However, the importance of such mics has
diminished significantly as Microsoft has
eased away from an environment where usersare expected to call across the room to
Windows’ built-in Cortana assistant.
Still, there’s certainly something to be said
for a video-friendly tablet. My youngest son
uses a Windows laptop for remote schooling
and a tablet for video chatting with his friends,
and the Surface Go 3 combines the two.
Inking isn’t particularly impressive. I tried
inking with the Surface Slim Pen and there’s
noticeable line offset and significant jitter (a
wavy motion) when moving the pen at a
diagonal. The Go 3 is fine for casual drawing,
but nothing more.PERFORMANCE: NOT
MUCH IMPROVEMENT
We tested the Surface Go 3 using our
standard benchmarks and real-world tests.
The Go 3 streamed a 4K/60 YouTube video
without dropping a frame.
YouTube scales video to the
size of the display it detects,
however, so the tablet was
essentially downloading a
720p video and upscaling it.
When we connected to a 4K
display, it appeared to drop
about 40 percent of its frames
before YouTube dialed back
the resolution to 1080p,
which streamed flawlessly.
We didn’t try any games
with the Go 3, but it
performed fairly typical tasksThe Surface Go 3 keyboard is a bit cramped—it’s more comfortable
for small fingers.