Gadgetory

the Microsoft Surface 3 is Microsoft's hybrid tablet laptop that retails for $499 and for that price tag you'll get the Surface 3 running Windows 8.1 Intel's Atom processor clocked in at 1.6 gigahertz 64 gigabytes of storage and 2 gigabytes of RAM for an extra hundred dollars you can upgrade the storage of 228 gigabyte in the memory up to 4 gigabytes of RAM which is the model what you have right here when we did our initial unboxing of the surface 3 a lot of you guys were curious whether the surface 3 could handle everyday tasks like browsing the web watching YouTube videos in HD or 4k and then there was someone like me asking myself whether I can edit videos or photos on it whether it could handle basic multitasking despite the Intel Atom processor we did a few tests and here's what we found the first one we thought we'd try was 4k playback on YouTube I watch a lot of videos online so I'd want to make sure that whatever laptop I decide to purchase is capable of comfortably streaming videos without getting bogged down in a process we played a few HD and 4k videos on YouTube and it works surprisingly well in full-screen and in window mode despite it having an Intel Atom processor 1080p videos work great though 4k did stutter however since it has a 1080p resolution it's not pushing all those 4k pixels through the display anyways so another thing that crossed my mind was can it run multiple windows at once with an Intel Atom processor and 4 gigabytes of RAM I figured the surface 3 wouldn't be able to handle having multiple Google Chrome tabs and multiple windows open but to my surprise it handled everything just fine now to really test it out I opened one Chrome window with a video on YouTube and tried editing a document in another window I did notice some lag but nothing too bad multitasking is definitely doable for a computer the size as long as you don't overdo it upgraded 4 gigabytes of RAM really does help another important thing for me is whether or not my computer can play games when you think of gaming the Microsoft Surface 3 probably won't be your first choice but we wanted to see how it held up anyway we installed Minecraft and it worked really well in low to medium settings in full screen however don't expect it to run a smooth 60 frames per second we also install a counter-strike go and it worked well in medium 720p resolution we also tried 1080p in low settings and performed particularly the same as the 720p resolution in medium the surface 3 shouldn't be your first choice for gaming but you can play games if you really want to just don't expect it to run the latest titles like Far Cry 4 or GTA 5 the next thing I wanted to know was if the surface 3 could run Adobe Premiere and Photoshop I'm a big fan of Adobe services I edit videos on Premiere everyday and I use Photoshop to edit images these are pretty intensive applications so it's a good test for the surface 3 the first thing I did was try to create a mock thumbnail for YouTube the thumbnail is a 1280 by 720 file so what I did was go through all the steps I'd normally go through on my iMac I added my background photo added a border around the image some text with the drop shadow filters on it and the surface 3 held up I did notice some stutter when applying filters and adding layers but it still did pretty well could the surface 3 be my only machine for Photoshop no because if I were to work on an image with multiple layers and multiple effects the surface 3 wouldn't be able to keep up I would need a more powerful computer to edit my photos comfortably next I tried opening a Premiere Pro CC I imported both HD footage and 4k footage onto my timeline and surprise surprise the surface 3 held up there were some moments where the preview window wouldn't playback the footage and 4k footage would stutter when a clip was cut I also tried applying a fast color correction but it lagged during playback you can get through a basic edit if you really needed to rendering and footage was ok depending on what I was doing when I did something complicated that required a few effects and filters on top of the video it definitely took longer but when working on a smaller video with a few color correction effects on top of it rendering didn't really take all that long but the question is could the surface 3 be my only machine for Premiere Pro and the answer is no and that's because it lacks the performance of a high-end editing machine with a dedicated graphics card and a higher memory bandwidth Intel Atom processor and 4 gigabytes of RAM just isn't enough to edit 4k and HD videos comfortably so with all that being said performance on the surface 3 depends on how you're going to use it if you're in a gaming and creating media the surface 3 probably isn't going to cut it for you if you're just going to use it for streaming media writing emails and working on documents it holds it for the most part I can definitely see students using this though for $500 you're getting Surface three with 64 gigabytes of storage two gigabytes of RAM Windows 8.1 and no keyboard you have to pay an extra $129 for that while the docking station is $200 so for nearly $850 I'd rather buy a full-fledged laptop such as the lenovo y40 HP probook or the new dell XPS 13 these are much more powerful and capable windows machines now if you're in a scenario of whether you should replace your tablet with a Surface three while comparing it to the iPad 2 or Samsung's Galaxy Tab s I would definitely choose a Surface three over the two tablet since it's running a full version of Windows but is it worth $500 even though performance isn't great no it's just not powerful enough for what I personally want to do what about compared to Apple's new 12-inch MacBook to me they serve about the same purpose and that's to do everyday tasks like browsing the web watching videos writing emails and creating spreadsheets and Word documents but basing it off of those task specs in price the MacBook has a much better processor twice the amount of RAM and it also has twice or three times the storage capacity as a Surface 3 and has a built-in keyboard and force touch trackpad but be prepared to spend over $1300 on the base model though the surface 3 on the other hand starts at just $499 and even if you upgrade to the higher-end model and buy the keyboard you'll still spend less than what you're paying for the MacBook so let us know in the comments down below if you guys would like to see a comparison between the new MacBook and the Surface 3 so my question to you guys is do you really think the surface 3 is worth $500 let us know in the comments down below and if you guys enjoy this video make sure to give it a thumbs up and we will see you guys in the next one you