Seriously considering a Surface Pro 3
I returned the surface last night. I felt bad. It really was a good piece of kit but it was not meant for me.
There was a lot of overlap between my rMBP and the Surface Pro 3. While there were things I could do on the surface I could never do on the Mac, where there was overlap, the Mac crushed it. It wasn't even fair. My rMBP is faster, gets better battery life, has a fantastic keyboard, amazing audio (although the left speaker does distort now. maybe I should take it in for service before the warrantee runs out.) and handles multiple operating systems better. Gaming good on this machine whereas the surface was just passable. Portal 2 played fine, but that was the extent of it. Still impressive.
The surface didn't hold up well in tablet mode. First, I always took the damn keyboard off, as it added bulk and it didn't always deactivate. Modern IE would randomly eat processor time and kick on the fan, even without a site being displayed. I had to kill it in task manager to stop it. Otherwise, it would just do it again once I went back to IE.
The pen was slippery and note taking was a pain. The pen just flew around the glass. I have terrible handwriting, but some resistance would have helped here.
Ergonomically, tablet mode is horrid. If I was at a classroom desk, moving between pen and on screen keyboard, this would be a win. Onenote in modern mode is convenient. The pen feels "right" in my hand and the on screen keyboard is probably the best out there. With shortcuts for numbers on the top row and left and right arrow keys at the bottom to make up for touchscreen inaccuracies, it was really well done. I'm going to miss that. But in my hands, terrible. First, it's too heavy as a tablet. It will hurt your wrists. The split keyboard is locked to the bottom of the screen, making holding the surface in portrait mode ridiculous. I was constantly correcting typos in an acting class because we have notes to take, scripts to work with, annotations for our sides etc, but no desks. This is a usage case that many won't encounter, but a tablet should be usable without a desk. The surface failed there.
Tech support was dismissive except for one woman. She reminded me of when I had to call Apple because someone else's Mac kept showing up in find my iPhone. She really did WANT the help me. It wasn't about a paycheck. She actually wanted to help, and seemed displeased by the rationalizations other employees made. For her, top notch support. I wish could remember her name and call a supervisor to praise her.
I wish she was the norm but from my multiple calls for support, I found she was the exception. Multiple times I was told that there were no problems with overheating and the wireless networking issues were fixed with updates. I had reinstalled windows 3 times among two surfaces. The engineers behind the surface were clearly passionate about their baby, but the support side was oblivious at best, and smug at worst.
Network logins on windows 8 were stupidly limited. OS X allows multiple logins from the same machine with different users, but windows doesn't. When you like to screw with a NAS, that matters.
Windows 8 only makes sense on a tablet. As a laptop, even the surface was behind. Gestures on a Mac were much better than using the touchscreen on the surface.
IE doesn't handle websites with layered objects well. Look at the apple website or onlycoin. Certain elements are intended to move as layers. Modern IE treats everything as a single static layer. You cannot drag a background element either.
The battery life is acceptable for a PC laptop, but as a tablet it's abysmal. At least the charge time was Apple-level fast.
The display was absolutely gorgeous and exactly what I want at this price point. When I needed to push to the TV, miracast was built-in and ready for the task. However, it was laggy. Not only was the content on the TV side behind, which I would expect, but it slowed down the tablet itself too. AirPlay never had that problem.
The sound was decent but let's be honest here. My iPad 4 was louder and the rMBP killed it all around.
The keyboard was an embarrassing gimmick. It was clearly a transitional thing for those who can't handle touchscreen typing yet.
No true touchscreen version of Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows. Inexcusable.
Waking from sleep was very laptop like. With a tablet, I want to open the cover, unlock, and go. The Surface had to boot up and even that required me to use the power button, which was ignored half the time on both tablets anyway.
I really did want to like this tablet, but I'm going to get a Samsung note 10.1 or 12.2 once the refund hits. The prices are the same for both so now it's just a matter of which size I like more.
If you have a good laptop already, you do not need or want the surface pro 3. If you are looking for a laptop and want a tablet, this is a great buy, but consider the i3 first. The surface really is a good piece of kit, and the wireless issues were fixed the day before I returned it with yet another firmware update. If you only need a note-taking tablet, get a tablet and not this hybrid.
If I had to do it over again and I didn't have the rMBP, I would have kept the Surface. My past experiences with iPad notetaking prove this to be a far better classroom device. However, onenote on a smaller device with a stylus and my current laptop are better for me. I would have killed for a surface when I started back in college again, but it's just not there yet and at that price point, it needs to be.
