Microsoft Surface Pro 3: The thinner the better

Thinner, lighter and faster is what the newly launched Surface Pro 3 tablet from Microsoft has been dubbed as. If you want a tablet that acts almost a good as a PC.

So let’s see what makes the Surface Pro 3 better and different from anything Microsoft has released before. It comes with a 4th generation Intel® Core™ i3, i5 or i7 which makes it totally faster than most. The screen has been increased to 12 inches now so you have more visual work area, just like a PC, plus the 2160 x1440 resolution is absolutely breathtakingly crisp.  

Weight? What weight? The Surface Pro 3 is only about 798grams which makes it very portable. It is also thinner than the previous Surface versions having dimensions of 7.93×111.5×0.36mm.

If you don’t work well with touch screens, you can always get a Type Cover which will give you more of a PC experience.

It can’t all be good news about the tablet PC though. The price of the SurfacePro 3 according to the Microsoft Store ranges between $799 – $1949 (approx. K 6500 – K13,643), differing in price for its 64 – 512GB variants. It definitely is in the price line of most laptops which might be a disadvantage in that people may want cheaper tablets. Then you have to think of an additional cost when it comes to buying the Type Cover (keyboard). It’s just not a device anybody can get looking at the price. Consider the total cost of shipping it to Zambia too, or just the price the retailers here will sell it at. Pretty expensive overall.

It also has no LTE connectivity which so many devices are now using because of the mobile connectivity currently present so you can’t exactly use it anywhere you want. It comes wifi enabled so that’s as connected as you get. Disappointing.

Then there’s the all important longevity factor, battery life. The Surface Pro range hasn’t been that great when it comes to battery life and the Pro 3 is no different. There are claims that it has been improved by 15 to 20% (only?)  so you can get atleast 9 hours, but that’s only if you’re not using much of it. This is where we paused and thought; if this tablet PC should be an alternative to a conventional PC, shouldn’t it have a battery powerful enough to handle the tasks that normally are done on an actual PC? Tablet, we call it. This is NOT a PC, yet.