PC World - USA (2021-01)

JANUARY 2022 PCWorld 31

like web browsing, Zoom and Teams, and
streaming video. Be mindful that anything
under 8GB of RAM may limit the number of
tabs you can have open at any one time and
the number of apps you can run
simultaneously.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Microsoft
ships many of its recent Surface tablets and
notebooks with performance turned down to
minimal levels to maximize battery life. We
adjusted the Windows 11 power mode (fave.
co/3DOnyiE) to “best performance” to see if
the tablet ran any faster. It did, but only by
about 6 percent at most—adjusting the
power and performance levels certainly won’t
transform a Surface Go 3 into a speed
demon. It will, however, help elevate
performance above that of the Surface Go 2
in some cases.
Otherwise, we run four performance tests:
PCMark 10, Cinebench R15, Handbrake, and
3DMark. Most of these are geared at higher-
performing mainstream laptops like the Dell
Latitude 7320 Detachable (fave.co/3vvGcJq),
the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1
(fave.co/3AZn9rY), the Microsoft Surface Pro
7+ (fave.co/3C0zXPZ), and the new Surface Pro
8 (fave.co/3p17W75). While understanding
how the Surface Go 3 compares to those tablets
is useful, it’s perhaps more illustrative to see how
far the tablet has progressed from the second-
generation Surface Go 2 instead. We’ve
highlighted the Go 2 in orange.
UL’s PCMark10 benchmark puts the

tablet through a variety of tasks like web

browsing, light gaming, CAD work, video

editing, and more. It’s a solid measure of

how well the Surface Go 3 will fare in day-to-

day work. Here, we found that the Go 3’s

performance dipped by about 2 percent.

With the power mode’s performance setting

turned up to best performance, the Go 3

records a score of 2,804.

The older Cinebench R15 test measures

how well the Surface Go 3 performs with all of

its cores and threads in active use.

Unfortunately, any application that can take

In many tests, the Surface Go 2 and 3 finished

neck and neck. There were a few where the older

Surface Go 2 appeared to be a bit faster, however.

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Microsoft Surface Pro 8 MaxCore i7-1185G7

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4Ryzen 7 4980U SE

Dell Latitude 7320 DetachableCore i7-1180G7

Lenovo ThinkPad X12 DetachableGen 1 Core i5 1135G7

Microsoft Surface Pro 8Core i7-1185G7

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3Core i7-1065G7

Microsoft Surface Pro 7+Core i5 1135G7

Microsoft Surface Pro 7Core i7-1065G7

Microsoft Surface Laptop 2Core i5-8250U

Microsoft Surface Pro 6Core i5-8250U

Microsoft Surface Laptop GoCore i5-1035G1

Microsoft Surface Go 2Core m3-8100Y

Microsoft Surface Go 3Core i3-10100Y

4 ,7 74

5,074

4,650

4,756

4,481

4,529

3,838

4,016

3,367

3,40 0

3,295

PCMark 10

CPU performance

2,685

2,620