Microsoft has today launched the Surface Book 3, the company’s most powerful Surface device. The company claims that the Surface Book 3 brings a 50% performance improvement over the Surface Book 2 which was released 2 years ago.
True to the company’s aim of providing desktop-level power in a laptop form factor, the Surface Book 3 packs in some impressive specs. Here’s what’s under the hood.
The laptop comes in two sizes — a 13-inch option configurable with Nvidia GTX GPUs, and a 15-inch variant that’s configurable with Nvidia Quadro GPUs. The base 13-inch Surface Book 3 will come with the 10th-gen Core i5 processor, and Intel’s Iris Plus graphics. However, customers can configure the 13-inch with an Nvidia GTX 1650 as well if they need discrete graphics in their system.
The 15-inch laptop on the other hand will pack in the 10th-gen quad-core Core i7 processor in the base variant priced at $2,299. It will also come with the GTX 1660Ti packed in. The GPU however, can be configured up to a Quadro RTX 3000 for a starting price of $3,499. The laptops can be beefed up with up-to 32GB LPDDR4X RAM, and the 15-inch Surface Book 3 comes with 16GB RAM by default, which is plenty for most use-cases.
The Surface Book 3 features the exact same display specs as its predecessors. In fact, the chassis is the same size as the Book 2 as well. The 13-inch variant packs in a 3000×2000 crisp display, while the 15-inch comes with a 3240×2160 pixel screen.
For I/O, the laptops come with USB A ports, Surface Connect ports, SD card reader, and headphone jack. There’s also a USB-C port here, but no Thunderbolt 3 even now. The Surface Book 3 also comes with support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.
Microsoft is claiming a battery life of 15.5 hours on the 13-inch Surface Book 3, and 17.5 hours on the 15-inch Surface Book 3 — that’s pretty great. If you’re interested in getting the Surface Book 3 for yourself, Microsoft is planning to make it available starting May 21.
Check out the Surface Book 3 here
