EDIT:
After 2 weeks of use in a college environment I have found the Surface 3 to be quite capable. It hasn't been problem free however. Having never owned a tablet this was a new experience for me.
My connection to the college wireless has been spotty, whereas the connection on my Nexus 5x with the college wireless has been pretty spot on. I get better connections inside with the Surface 3 while in the lecture halls, but it may require multiple refreshes. The college requires mac address registration for all devices accessing its wireless. There is no mac address on a label on the outside of the Surface 3 so you have to go into the console commands and do an ipconfig query and look at the 'physical address'.
The preloaded app called Drawboard PDF is a horrible program. It works great for 15 or so minutes and then your finger/pen strokes start to display slower and slower and slower until you are waiting for minutes for something you drew to show up. Eventually the app crashes. I attempted to get customer support and received an automated reply a week ago promising a follow up. I am still waiting. Of course I discovered that OneNote does everything Drawboard PDF does plus a hundred more things... and OneNote doesn't have the slow down problem at all.
I have since purchased a Microsoft Surface Pen for Surface Pro 4, and a used Microsoft Surface 3 Type Cover to complete the ensemble. The Pen is amazing, the keyboard is a little too floppy for lap use because in a lecture hall you rarely get a desk to place your laptop on. My solution to the floppy keyboard problem was to get a Leather Folio Cover which offers more rigidity
Overall, I have now spent much more money than I had originally intended. I spent $550 in total, not including tax. I used Prime for all parts, so no shipping costs. For $550 there are several faster laptops with more storage I could have purchased but wouldn't have gotten the modularity or touch/pen capabilities. So, I'm finding myself adapt to this different paradigm instead of it adapting to me.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
After reading some of the 1 star reviews here I was worried. I made sure to select a unit in the list that specified new condition.
So far so good. I've unboxed it and found the unit to be brand new with the exception that it had a refurbished sticker added to the back of the unit and included a newsprint booklet saying it was a refurb. The packaging was flawless. I plugged it into power and turned it on and was greeted by the first user experience and intro for Windows 10. This took a few minutes because I turned off some options for privacy and setup wireless. It had a 20% charge on the battery. There were about a dozen updates that needed to be done. Using the Drawboard PDF app, pre-installed, without a pen went quite well as this was the type of application I had in mind for taking notes during lectures.
At this point in time I am quite pleased with it. The unit is in perfect condition without any blemishes.
I will update this review only if I find something wrong.
| Standing screen display size | 10.8 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920x1280 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920x1280 Pixels |
| Processor | 1.6 GHz pentium |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Memory Speed | 4 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 128 GB |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 1 days |
