Surface Pro 3 Handily Outperforms iPad Air 2 and Nexus 9

An anonymous reader points to an interesting comparison of current tablets' peformance, as measured with the Geekbench benchmarking tool, which boils down various aspects of performance to produce a single number. The clear winner from the models fielded wasn't from Apple of Samsung (Samsung's entrants came much lower down, in fact), but from Microsoft: the i5-equipped Surface Pro 3, with a Geekbench score of 5069.; second place goes to the Apple iPad Air 2, with 4046. The Nexus 9 rated third, with 3537. One model on the list that U.S. buyers may not be familiar with is the Tesco Hudl 2, a bargain tablet which Trusted Reviews seems quite taken by.

Comments

That's fine and all

[mystuff]

But does it run Linux?

Re:That's fine and all

[mystuff]

Posted rather quick and a bit mockingly, I was surprised to find that ... it actually does!

A myriad of guides exist to install Ubuntu on a Surface Pro 3 after somebody showed it could be done more than a year ago.

Now the first hit in Google is how to set up dual boot. Amazing.

Re:That's fine and all

[binarylarry]

Yeah I hope this is a joke article?

It gets really hot, lasts 3 hours on battery, weighs as much as laptop, runs a bad, antiquated desktop operating system, etc.

Re:That's fine and all

[Lumpy]

Except no Wifi.... but that's normal for the surface 3 on Windows 8.1 Last update borked wifi hard and I had to wipe my surface to defaults to get it back.

Re:That's fine and all

[ChunderDownunder]

Yeah a Core i5 is probably overkill for a tablet. I'd be keener to read benchmarks with the non-Pro surface 3 boasting a flagship Atom X7 SoC designed specifically for purpose.

'antiquated'? Well Windows 10 ain't out yet...

Re:That's fine and all

[binarylarry]

Oh windows 10 is out and it's just like windows 8.

Re:That's fine and all

[Bing Tsher E]

A good benchmark would be this Asus Transformer I am typing this on compared to the Mac and the Google tablet. It came with Windows 8.1 and a full Office 2013 Home and Student license for under $300. It's x86 but one of the new 'Atom family' processors which are MUCH more than the old netbook atoms but less than a full iSeries x86. Battery life is good enough that the only times it's been a problem is when I've forgotten to plug in the charger for extended periods of time. Being easy to forget to plug in is a sign of good battery life, IMO.

Price wise, it just plain kicks the Apple tablet out of the court, and it includes a physical keyboard. It's so nice to have a tablet that runs real Windows. I don't intend to ever upgrade my Windows 7 desktop to Windows 8, but 8 and the metro interface are great for a tablet. I really wish Mozilla hadn't decided to abandon Metro, but IE is decent. Better than the stunted 'mobile' browsers in the App stores for Android and IOS.

I replaced two earlier Android tablets with this Asus win tablet, and haven't looked back.

Re:That's fine and all

[quenda]

You can also run a full OS_X on the surface 3. Makes more sense than IOS or Android on that hardware.
Wifi not working yet, but as lumpy said, wifi doesn't work in Windows 8.1 either, half the time. (fix the bugs ffs!)

http://www.insanelymac.com/for...

Re:That's fine and all

[MightyMartian]

And what exactly is stuntrd about Chrome on Android? In desktop mode it displays exactly the same content as Chrome on Windows.

Re: That's fine and all

[Type44Q]

Huh, I wonder who the bleeding anus was who modded this down... 'cause speaking as someone* with over thirty years' technical experience with Winblows (yeah, MCSE here; blah blah blah), *i* I certainly consider it to be the single most important question that could be asked.

*Think of me as the proverbial Chevy mechanic; so thoroughly familiar with the quality of GM products that I've got a Toyota parked in the driveway... ;)

Re:That's fine and all

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a meaningful rating? Like comparing speed of tablets that cost about the same and have the same size screens and same amount of memory? And how about rating the number of quality apps? How about comparing features? And ask users which tablet OS they like best? There is a lot more to picking the right tablet than just speed. And its not (as some would have us believe) one tablet or one brand of tablet fits all! Some like a 7 inch screen (more easily portable) some like larger screens. Not everyone looks for the same features in a tablet. Some want a high rez camera. I could care less if my tablet has one (it does but I never use it). Does the tablet have standard power/USB and headphone connections? Can the storage be expanded by adding a microSD card?

Choice is good. I for one will never trust products from M$, (Cr)apple, or Sony.

Re:That's fine and all

[shutdown -p now]

3 hours on battery? Have you actually used one?

Re:That's fine and all

[Paradise Pete]

Look man, we are trying to boil it down to a mostly unimportant single number and then declare which is better! Your absurd idea of a series of difficult and useful comparisons is just plain crazy-talk.

Re:That's fine and all

[Anonymous Coward]

You could care less? Your general tone suggested you couldn't.

Re:That's fine and all

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, rather flawlessly. Only problem is that wifi doesn't work unless you booted into windows first and then rebooted to linux. You can fix this with a small USB wifi dongle, the built in wifi is not that good anyway (it often doesn't work with windows too)

Re:That's fine and all

[Thumper_SVX]

Well, I don't have a Surface 3 as I upgraded my Surface Pro 1 to a Dell Venue 11 Pro (7140; late '14 model). The same Geekbench test turns up a number of 4364. That's running the Core M 5Y71. I'd expect the Surface 3 to be similar in performance. The x7 is slightly faster than this Core M but doesn't support dynamic frequency scaling. Not sure what ultimate difference this would make to battery life.

Having said all this, I have no complaints about my Venue. It works exactly as advertised, is reasonably fast, and has an absolutely crazy-good battery life.

Re:That's fine and all

[unrtst]

Except no Wifi.... but that's normal for the surface 3 on Windows 8.1 Last update borked wifi hard and I had to wipe my surface to defaults to get it back.

Except that the very link that "mystuff" provided shows that WiFi DOES work under ubuntu 14.04 on the Surface Pro 3. Where'd you get your info? Seems you just need to copy the wifi firmware into place, which is trivial (use a thumb drive). The hardest part seems to be getting the windows partition resized (forcing system files to move by using PerfectDisk).

Re: That's fine and all

[willgilliland]

What do you mean 3hrs battery for Surface Pro 3? I get 5 to 6. I guess you would get 3 rendering video on full brightness but then again, the iPad or Nexus can't run full OS video editors anyway.

Re:That's fine and all

[exomondo]

How about a meaningful rating? Like comparing speed of tablets that cost about the same and have the same size screens and same amount of memory? And how about rating the number of quality apps? How about comparing features? And ask users which tablet OS they like best? There is a lot more to picking the right tablet than just speed.

Of course, but I don't see anywhere there that they have attempted to rate which tablet is "best", just which is the "fastest". If your consideration is more toward performance then obviously a "comparison of current tablets' peformance" would be interesting to you.

Re:That's fine and all

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh windows 10 is out and it's just like windows 8.

The only major complaint about Windows 8 was the removal of the start menu and default login to the start screen. Aside from that everything you could do in Windows 7 you could do in Windows 8 and now they have even re-instated the start menu in Windows 10 and defaulted to the desktop on desktop/laptops. Seriously an OS is there *primarily* to run programs, this is why even though defaulting to the start screen in Windows 8 was clunky on a desktop it *still* didnt drive people to Linux.

Re:That's fine and all

[exomondo]

3 hours on battery? Have you actually used one?

I have a Surface Pro 2 and I get about 7 hours out of it, admittedly I'm usually running at full screen brightness and doing moderately intensive graphics stuff so depending on your use case you might get more.

Re:That's fine and all

[shutdown -p now]

SP3 is noticeably better than the previous incarnations in that regard, largely because of Intel getting their shit together and providing a hardware platform that can actually scale.

Re:That's fine and all

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no question that Surface Pro 3 costs more than iPad Air 2, but the performance and features make up for the extra cost. Surface Pro has an active digitiser, something that the iPad Air lacks. Surface Pro also has a much larger software library and can run professional grade software that the iPad simply doesn't have. Surface Pro can also run any OS that you want, iPad can't.

The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

For Facebook, which is all most users want it for.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It's a very poor comparison of tablets (surprising for Which? magazine) as it's only looks at CPU performance. It doesn't consider the OS, graphics performance (ie GPU speed taking into account the number of pixels being pushed), or how real life applications perform either.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely. I have an older iPad 2 and it's still plenty fast for anything I'd use a tablet for, whereas the Surface doesn't have any apps I'd ever use. Sure, it can run desktops apps but that makes no sense on a tablet -- that's what I have a Win7 laptops and desktops for. Surface is the worst of both worlds, combined into a pricey and sucktastic combo.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[ganjadude]

i dont think it was ever a question. the surface pro line has always been the powerhouse.

I think its fair to compare pricepoints, and the surface pro and ipad air would be similar in that regard.

between the 2 i would personally take the surface, USB ports as well as the ability to run win32 apps and dual boot? sign me up

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Plumpaquatsch]

i dont think it was ever a question. the surface pro line has always been the powerhouse.

Considering it has a full notebook x86 CPU (and not a ultra-low-power one), while the iPad has a ultra-low-power ARM CPU, the Surface Pro should be fucking ashamed it only is 25% faster.

Oh, and since this is a SP with an i5, it costs at least $999. So much for price equality...

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[imgod2u]

In these form factors, it's no longer a question of peak CPU performance. These processors all thermal-throttle to the point where none of them are going to be performing at peak while in these form factors. The same i5 in the Surface will provide significantly more performance when in another form factor (like a NUC).

Which is interesting in that it means today, the design of the device itself -- in terms of heat dissipation coupled with total system power -- is what determines performance, not which processor model you have.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[ArcadeMan]

Considering it has a full notebook x86 CPU (and not a ultra-low-power one), while the iPad has a ultra-low-power ARM CPU, the Surface Pro should be fucking ashamed it only is 25% faster.

I was about to post that. That's like putting the motor of a freakin' tank inside a BMW Mini car.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Dunbal]

A 386 has plenty of horsepower for facebook. The Windows OS on the other hand...

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, a car analogy.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[binarylarry]

Technically it was a tank analogy.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Plumpaquatsch]

In these form factors, it's no longer a question of peak CPU performance. These processors all thermal-throttle to the point where none of them are going to be performing at peak while in these form factors. The same i5 in the Surface will provide significantly more performance when in another form factor (like a NUC).

Of course Apple claimed they put a lot of effort into improving the sustained performance of the A8 over the A7, which already was better than other ARM chips. And it actually looks like they succeeded: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8666/the-apple-ipad-air-2-review/5

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook via telnet? Not in a web browser for sure.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[unixisc]

Oh, it's great for other things as well - Kindle, games, videos & photos, and several apps. Oh, and in my car, it works beautifully as an iPod. It's battery life is the best - unmatched by anything else I have - my iPhone, Moto-X, Ellipsis 7 and WinBook. I don't do FaceBook, but I have all 3 types of tablets, and this one is the best. The Winbook could have been great as well had they just put in 64GB of Flash drive instead of 32.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[unixisc]

Why don't they put the AirBooks & the Mac Pros on this platform as well, and drive up the volumes? In fact, if they moved OS-X to the A8, both their OSs would be on the same platform, much like Intel. And then the Macs could run iOS apps as well.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully MS included a small whiny fan in the Surface3 Pro that cranks up every 30 seconds if you're doing something interesting. You can't get the same visceral experience of real mechanical sound effects on a Nexus or iPad.

Re: The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Type44Q]

Well, if we're going to get that deep into car analogies, all I can say is that that torque-to-weight ratio would be phenomenal... but you'd need to load down the front (*not* the rear, Hollywood; are you listening?!) with thousands of pounds of gold bars to get any traction... ;)

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's $899.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Ol Olsoc]

Surface is the worst of both worlds, combined into a pricey and sucktastic combo.

It is kind of like the Escalade "trucks" You end up trying to figure who the hell wants that. They are bad as an SUV, bad as a truck.

And for the price of one, you can buy two machines that will actually serve their purpose well.

Re: The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

And a bad one at that. It's an engine, not a motor.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[tehcyder]

Technically it was a tank analogy.

If it includes a car anywhere, it passes the minimum requirements for a "stupid slashdot car analogy."

Unfortunately, in this case it failed by being roughly appropriate and therefore not achieving full "stupid" status.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fucking moron. The Surface Pro 3 uses a dual core, ultra-low power CPU too. It is not a full blown i5, it is a U series and it still significantly outperforms the iPad Air 2 tri-core CPU.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Plumpaquatsch]

You are a fucking moron. The Surface Pro 3 uses a dual core, ultra-low power CPU too. It is not a full blown i5, it is a U series and it still significantly outperforms the iPad Air 2 tri-core CPU.

The processor alone uses more power than an iPad. If that is "low power", than that's sad.

Re:The iPad Has Plenty of Horsepower

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet it lasts just as long on a single charge as the iPad and has an active digitiser and can run all of the Windows software library.

Forgot about those, eh?

How is this relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Surface pro 3 is a laptop equivalent. The ipad and the nexus are strictly tablets. I would never expect them to compare from a performance perspective.

Re:How is this relevant?

[Bing Tsher E]

The point is probably that people want something in the form factor of a tablet. But why should they settle for something with a toy app-store operating system on it?

Disclaimer: I have an Asus Transformer and can't wait for Windows 10.

Re:How is this relevant?

[ganjadude]

not so sure i agree with that. i think the correct comparison is the price comparo. which one can do more for the same price.

Re: How is this relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, i would hardly call Surface a 'tablet', nor is it marketed as one. Let's see those numbers again in comparison to other laptops!

Re:How is this relevant?

[imgod2u]

That depends. I own an SP3 but also have a Nexus 7 from 2013. I still use the Nexus not just because of the lighter form factor (and far superior battery life) but because there are actual apps on it that aren't available on Windows. We're getting to the point where Android and iOS *are* the de facto platforms for new software to come out on and Windows ends up waiting months to forever for the web interface to even remotely offer the same level of functionality as the app version.

Re:How is this relevant?

[ChunderDownunder]

Which MS are actively addressing with their app-translation services for Windows 10.

MS are at least listening to customers complaining about a viable app ecosystem. Whether that proves any more successful than Android emulation in BB 10, who knows.

Re: How is this relevant?

[ChunderDownunder]

It's both, as evidenced by retailers selling them sans keyboard, as a hidden optional extra adding to the checkout price.

Re:How is this relevant?

[aralin]

When you hold the Surface 3, in both hands, you are blocking half of the air flow, I am wondering how fast is the speed going to be after an hour with partially blocked air flow. Because if I need to have it set on a table, it is not a tablet, but a laptop.

Re:How is this relevant?

[maligor]

The point is probably that people want something in the form factor of a tablet. But why should they settle for something with a toy app-store operating system on it?

Disclaimer: I have an Asus Transformer and can't wait for Windows 10.

Possibly because the Surface Pro 3 doesn't look like a very good tablet to me. At 12" and 800 grams it'll be rather uncomfortable to use like a tablet. It seems more like a ultrabook but they forgot to put the keyboard in.

Re:How is this relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, but that doesn't stop all the pro-iPad reviews comparing it strictly as a tablet and pointing out poorer battery life and weight and fewer "touch" apps.

Heck, the other day I saw a review comparing *hypothetical* specs of the next iPad to the current Surface Pro 3, and declaring the iPad the winner - utterly ignoring the fact the SP4 is expected on the market well before the next iPad.

Re:How is this relevant?

[ahabswhale]

That "toy" operating system operates a lot cash registers these days. I guess your definition of toy and people who's livelihoods depend on it are a bit different.

Re:How is this relevant?

[drolli]

Exactly what i wanted to say:

Boiled down PC beats oversized IPod touch.

Probably it should, and nevertheless both devices may be great at what they were supposed to be (lightweight PC and long-running media consumption device)

Re:How is this relevant?

[exomondo]

not so sure i agree with that. i think the correct comparison is the price comparo. which one can do more for the same price.

Do you really just buy whatever is cheapest rather than whatever is best for the job?

Re: How is this relevant?

[Shirley Marquez]

Microsoft's marketing line for the Surface line is "the tablet that can replace your laptop". (They originally used that for the Surface Pro series but are now also using it for the Surface 3.) Sounds to me like they are marketing it as a tablet.

Re:How is this relevant?

[Bing Tsher E]

That "toy" operating system operates a lot cash registers these days.

Embedded applications like a POS/cash register are ideal to host on 'toy' operating systems. You just want a base to put one big heavy 'app' on and for the OS to stay outta the way. That's very different from a general purpose Operating System.

Re:How is this relevant?

[ahabswhale]

lol...what exactly makes it a toy? Because it doesn't run your Windows apps? Because that means every linux machine is a toy...and fyi...iOS is based on BSD linux just like OSX.

Re:How is this relevant?

[JonJ]

and fyi...iOS is based on BSD linux just like OSX.

Are you drunk?

Re:How is this relevant?

[ahabswhale]

No. Are you an asshole?

Re:How is this relevant?

[Bing Tsher E]

Harpooned!

Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptop out performs tablet.

I have both the ipad and surface pro 3. They are not comparable tools.

Re:Breaking news

[markdavis]

>Laptop out performs tablet.

Yep, hardly "news". If it contains a fan, which the Surface 3 does, then it is not a "tablet" and in a totally different class. A quick Google on "heat" or "noise" or "fan" along with "Surface 3" returns a zillion hits about people upset with the noise, and/or heat.

My use for a tablet = very long battery life and low heat. I use it for simple browsing and casual gaming. And in no way would I want it to run any form of MS-Windows, either (of course, my laptops, desktops, servers, routers, and other devices all also run Linux, so I am certainly not the "typical" consumer, by any means).

Re:Breaking news

[PopeRatzo]

If it contains a fan, which the Surface 3 does, then it is not a "tablet"

That's a criterion you just made up. Your statement is approximately equivalent to "a tablet without a USB port is not a tablet". Or, "a tablet that runs an actual operating system that can run ProTools cannot possibly be a tablet because reasons".

I have a desktop system without a fan. Does that make it "not a desktop"?

Re:Breaking news

[markdavis]

I also have a desktop without a fan... but those are not meant to be mobile.

To me the whole point of the original tablets were to be screen driven, light, long battery life, and fanless (and what made that possible was also not being X86, which also hurt Microsoft).

Deja-Vu with netbooks- the original "netbook" was invented by Asus (the original EEE lines), it was the first sub-notebook device to use an SSD. It was kinda one of the most important things about it to extend battery life, make it quiet, and lighter, and compensate for the slower processor; plus it ran Linux (another major component of the EEE concept). Then along came Microsoft on the scene which could not run MS-Windows on something so lean, and manufacturers stuck hard drives back in them- and I wouldn't call those device "netbooks" anymore. No Linux and no SSD defeated the whole point of the category.

Re:Breaking news

[narcc]

I have a desktop system without a fan. Does that make it "not a desktop"?

Obviously, that means your desktop is a tablet.

Re:Breaking news

[markdavis]

>So, iPads with fans are not real tablets?

There is an iPad with a fan? That is news to me...

Re:Breaking news

[Bing Tsher E]

I have an Asus eeePc, and I think it's the first generation version (a 4G). I bought it second hand on eBay and it arrived with Windows XP installed (the Japanese language version)

I understand that there was a Linux distro tailored for it, too, but it was trivial to install XP pro (US English), and it runs fine.

Re:Breaking news

[Bing Tsher E]

All kinds of people say they are iPad fans, but many of the people stuck with them are kids in schools that assign them an iPad. And believe me, anything a school assigns to kids is the opposite of 'cool' and few of the kids will be 'fans.'

Re:Breaking news

[Plumpaquatsch]

All kinds of people say they are iPad fans, but many of the people stuck with them are kids in schools that assign them an iPad. And believe me, anything a school assigns to kids is the opposite of 'cool' and few of the kids will be 'fans.'

And most people stuck with a Surface are football coaches and players forced to use them by the NFL.

Re:Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

PopeRatzo rolls a critical, hits with Scathing Rebuttal, killing OP instantly.

Re:Breaking news

[dbIII]

It's getting hard to draw the line. I got an Android ASUS Transformer with keyboard for someone to use as a lightweight low end laptop even though it's sold as a tablet. It does everything their job requires a laptop to do, especially with RDP onto more capable devices.
It's not what was marketed as a laptop but the line is blurring, especially since "real" laptops like the i7 lenovo Yoga look like tablets.

Re: Breaking news

[Type44Q]

It's an observation you might not agree with (perhaps because you haven't heard it articulated as concensus) but that hardly makes it wrong; a "proper tablet" in this day and age should certainly *not* require the use of a fan.

Re:Breaking news

[Kurrelgyre]

The article is about the Surface Pro 3. The Surface 3, a different machine with a similar form factor, does not have a fan.

Re:Breaking news

[shutdown -p now]

He does have a point, though. They really are two different classes of devices, and calling them by the same name is not particularly useful. I mean, it's useful insofar as it correctly identifies the form factor, but there's just so much more to it that we really need some more descriptive terms there.

I have a Surface Pro 3, and it's a great device. I also have a Nexus 7, and it's also a great device. I use both, because their strengths and weaknesses are in different areas, and don't overlap as much as one would think.

Re: Breaking news

[PopeRatzo]

It's an observation you might not agree with (perhaps because you haven't heard it articulated as concensus) but that hardly makes it wrong; a "proper tablet" in this day and age should certainly *not* require the use of a fan.

Not "wrong", just completely arbitrary.

I don't believe you can have a "proper tablet" without a USB port. That is no less arbitrary. If you don't like the Surface Pro, that's fine, but don't establish some arbitrary criterion by which you pretend it's "not really a tablet".

If it looks like a tablet, works like a tablet, etc.

Re:Breaking news

[PopeRatzo]

He does have a point, though. They really are two different classes of devices, and calling them by the same name is not particularly useful.

Of course. One is a production device and one is a consumption device.

But it's not the fan that puts them into different classes. It's their relative function.

Re: Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

The important thing was never the form factor.

It was the form factor coupled with day-long battery life and apps specialized for usage on the go.

Re: Breaking news

[PopeRatzo]

day-long battery life

No such thing.

Re: Breaking news

[exomondo]

Also no true scotsman requires the use of a fan.

Re:Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

>So, iPads with fans are not real tablets?

There is an iPad with a fan? That is news to me...

I think OP was trying to be funny, but it was too subtle.

Re:Breaking news

[Anonymous Coward]

All kinds of people say they are iPad fans, but many of the people stuck with them are kids in schools that assign them an iPad. And believe me, anything a school assigns to kids is the opposite of 'cool' and few of the kids will be 'fans.'

And most people stuck with a Surface are football coaches and players forced to use them by the NFL.

I can admit it now that they have discontinued the whole line, so I can't be accused of pimping the product, but I actually have and like the ARM-based Surface 2. I use it a lot for travel, because besides being a touch tablet with great battery life for web, video, etc. the keyboard and office software makes it possible to also cover the travel work needs, like email and documents/presentation. So often it is the only device I need to travel with. For size and battery life the Surface Pro is too much of an ordinary laptop.

Re: Breaking news

[Type44Q]

So you're quite sure that haggis doesn't cause gas?

Re:Breaking news

[dave420]

Phones and smart watches are tablets by that definition.

Thankfully we're not considering budgets here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing retail prices hint what might be the better performer here.
€ 999,- Surface Pro 3
€ 450,- Apple iPad Air 2
€ 350,- Nexus 9

Re:Thankfully we're not considering budgets here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nextbook is 179+ tax and runs windows 8.1 with a quad core.

I don't think I got go back to a non full OS tablet.

Now just waiting on my Jolla to arrive

Re:Thankfully we're not considering budgets here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I didn't know about the Nextbook. I might add it to my list of potential purchases.

When it comes to cheap portable devices, I don't expect fantastic performance. It comes down to: can it play video and can it play emulators (with a spare USB port for a controller)? Phones are simply too small for a portable entertainment device.

Apple's prices are too freaking high for a cheap entertainment device.

Re:Thankfully we're not considering budgets here.

[Anonymous Coward]

The keyboard dock that comes included with a nextbook has 2 usb ports

Yes, but for how many minutes

[gweilo8888]

Arguably a far, FAR more important metric than performance for the majority of users, given that tablets are used mostly for media consumption, is battery life. I have a feeling that the Surface Pro 3 will trail the field badly here. (I don't know what the iPad series can manage these days, but a good Android tablet can manage close to 20 hours of screen-on time at a brightness of 170cd/m2.

Surface Pro 3's fatal flaw: Windows OS

[Anonymous Coward]

It runs Windows and cannot be bought without paying for Windows. Not interested.

What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

The i5 Surface Pro 3 with 128 GB of storage costs $1000.

The iPad Air 2 with 128 GB of storage costs $500.

So the Surface Pro costs 100% more for a 25% bump in speed? And we're spinning this as a win for MS?

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[ganjadude]

it costs a grand with the keyboard attachment.

so to make a more realistic comparo, you need to add the keyboard attachment to the ipad air.

then you can decide whether or not USB ports and win32 apps are worth the 250 premium

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok so $525 with keyboard.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[ganjadude]

the keyboard that is of quality is not only 25$. Sure you can get one for 25 bucks, but it wont be of quality. i know this because i bought a 35$ one before

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[taxman_10m]

Can you buy a Surface Pro 3 w/out the keyboard? If not, I think it is actually fair to compare the base level devices.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[ganjadude]

at bestbuy you can its 250 cheaper if you forgo the keyboard (at my local store anyway)

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Plumpaquatsch]

the keyboard that is of quality is not only 25$. Sure you can get one for 25 bucks, but it wont be of quality. i know this because i bought a 35$ one before

So you bought a crap $35 keyboard once, and a crap $1000 Surface Pro now - I detect a pattern.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Dunbal]

I don't think Apple sells anything for $25, except for maybe iPhone cases.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[ganjadude]

making assumptions are we?? I said in another post I dont have a surface pro. (if you must know i have an older nexus)

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[93 Escort Wagon]

the keyboard that is of quality is not only 25$.

I've used the Surface Pro 3 keyboard, and it is really awful. So maybe a fair comparison would be an iPad with a cheap $5 keyboard from China.

Actually that crap Surface keyboard is why I think it's unfair to call them laptop competitors... no one would buy a laptop with a keyboard that bad. The Surface exists in its own little niche. It's way too heavy to be a tablet competitor, and it's pretty bad as a laptop replacement.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Teckla]

The iPad Air 2 with 128 GB of storage costs $500.

Wait, what? No, this is wrong.

The iPad Air 2 model that costs $500 comes with a meager 16 GB of storage. Just like the original iPad, all those years ago. No progress at all, despite much lower storage prices.

In fact, given larger iOS sizes, and the fact that "retina" apps now require more space, iPad storage has essentially regressed.

An iPad Air 2 with 128 GB costs a whopping $700 (and that's wi-fi only). I guess you don't get hundreds of billions in the bank without grossly overcharging your customers.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[dbraden]

Throw in an extra $10 and you can get a cable, instead :P

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[dbraden]

I don't know if I'd call it "grossly" overcharging if the SP3 is >40% more for a 25% performance boost... Even if you overpay for a $100 keyboard/case, it's a wash.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[barc0001]

Go install a Windows application on the iPad. Or VPN into your corporate network on it, or play Skyrim on it, or install a dual boot and run Linux on it.

Oh wait... you can't do *any* of those things on it. That's what the extra $500 is for.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[0123456]

Oh wait... you can't do *any* of those things on it. That's what the extra $500 is for.

If you want to do those things, why would you pay an extra $500, when you can buy a decent laptop for $500 which will do all those things?

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[barc0001]

To do my job I both need access to the corporate VPN as well as certain Windows programs. There have been tons of times it would have been more convenient for me to use my tablet instead of dragging out my laptop on the train in. The Surface Pro 3 is a very good in-between device that also fills the tablet role nicely. It's not for everyone of course, but my use case it would be very convenient. Unfortunately I am not going to spend $1000 out of pocket on a work device and my company laptop isn't scheduled for EOL for another year so for now I have to just think envious thoughts about it.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

So because other devices cannot match your use case, you were whining that those cannot do what you need in the previous comment? grow up, kid.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[shutdown -p now]

Unlike iPad, Surface has SD card slot. There's no reason to buy the higher-end version just for storage. And the base 64Gb model costs $800.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[serviscope_minor]

If you want to do those things, why would you pay an extra $500, when you can buy a decent laptop for $500 which will do all those things?

Define: decent laptop.

Is your laptop (a) as fast and (b) as light? Actually, screw that. Is your laptop (b) as light. Regardless of speed, the SP3 is one of the lightest laptops currently on the market. All in (including keyboard and PSU) it gives my trusty old eee 900 a run for its money.

Why would I want to save $170 per year to lug round a massive brick when I could have something really light?

Re: What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yes. You gave limited information that made suggestions.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Thumper_SVX]

For $500 you can get a laptop that's built like a Soviet tank, or has atrocious battery life, or has a really slow SSD, or has 2GB of RAM... you get the idea. For someone who wants performance, portability, storage and being useful there aren't a lot of "magical $500 laptops" that really fit the bill. I know; I went shopping recently for new computers (yes, plural).

I ended up with a Venue 11 Pro and an Alienware 15. Yeah, both Dell but they fit my needs perfectly. The AW is my gaming rig and is awesome (runs AC:Unity in Ultra and looks gorgeous) while the VP11 is my computer of choice when I'm on the road (I am extremely mobile at work, traveling sometimes hundreds of miles in a day). Both of them are attached to the same Microsoft account, have Evernote, OneDrive and DropBox installed. As a result, the same files are always available and my workflow benefits greatly from it. As files fall into disuse I migrate them off to the "archive" which is my Linux-based server at home... which is still accessible via an OpenVPN that I have installed on all of my computers if I happen to be on the road.

But you know what? Neither of them will do "all the things" perfectly. They both run the same OS and the same applications, but serve completely different purposes. I would never sit in front of a customer with my AW in part because the battery life is horrendous (it's a gaming laptop, what do you expect?) and is just not really all that portable. Similarly I would never consider playing AC:Unity on my VP11 because... well, it would suck quite frankly. Could I? Yes... but just because we can do a thing does not follow that we should.

So why did I buy two laptops instead of a desktop gaming rig? Well, that was so that when I am traveling for several days (have a trip to Chicago coming up in a few weeks for example) I can still bring my gaming rig with me so I can play in a hotel room. Sure, it rarely leaves my desk but when it does I want to have that powerhouse on-hand.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[exomondo]

I don't know if I'd call it "grossly" overcharging if the SP3 is >40% more for a 25% performance boost

That's a gross oversimplification though, the SP3 can run Windows, Linux and OSX and all the applications that exist for those platforms. The iPad can only run iOS and therefore only run iOS applications. Now maybe the latter is all you need, in which case you probably go for the iPad.

Some people here seem to be extrapolating beyond what has actually been presented and are then getting offended by the conclusion they have drawn, it is purely a performance comparison, there are many other factors that come in to deciding what tablet is best for a particular person or use case, this is just one of them.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[Shirley Marquez]

The Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3 are normally sold without the keyboard; it's a $130 extra. The Surface Pro includes a pen; it's a $50 extra for the Surface 3.

Microsoft has offered Surface bundles that gave you a discount if you bought a Surface or Surface Pro and a cover. No bundles with just those items are currently available, but there are bundles that offer a discount if you buy a Surface or Surface Pro 3, a Type Cover, a sleeve, and an extended warranty. The Surface Pro bundle also requires you to buy an Office 365 subscription; the Surface 3 base price currently includes one.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[tw2k]

If not running windows apps is a point agains the iPad then obviously the fact the surface doesn't run iOS applications is likewise a point against the Surface. I have connected to my work's Cisco VPN and Citrix Gateways many times over the years from various iOS devices. iOS added VPN support - including a Cisco VPN client - in iOS 2 which came out in 2008.

Re:What an embarrassment for Microsoft

[barc0001]

Way to completely twist and misinterpret what I said AC.

Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

The millions and millions of people who bought iPads and android tablets don't care that Microsoft has a heavy laptop replacement.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[ganjadude]

there are millions and millions who bought those and DO in fact want one of these however

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

there are millions and millions who bought those and DO in fact want one of these however

I have two surface pro 3's. They're by far, hands down, the best tablet for music production and performance. They run full-blown ProTools, VST plugins, Ableton Live, and the full suite of Native Instruments software. I have USB ports for my external audio hardware and MIDI and the touch interface is delightful for on-screen faders and drawing waveforms and envelope curves.

I don't care if I'm a niche. I love my Surface Pro 3's. Somebody finally made something exactly the way I need it.

You cannot produce professional music on any iPad. All of the external hardware are toys and the music apps are nothing but gimmick.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[ganjadude]

i also dabble in music, and while I havent gotten a pro yet, pretty much every DJ i work with has gotten rid of their apple products for a pro for the reasons you listed.

yeah DJ is niche, but not really when every kid in HS thinks he can be a DJ and gets mommy and daddy to buy it for them. even if they dont go anywhere.

the surface pro is to DJs today what the mac was to audio/video people 10-15 years ago

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

while I havent gotten a pro yet, pretty much every DJ i work with has gotten rid of their apple products for a pro for the reasons you listed.

Thursday I recorded a blues band outside on Maxwell Street with 4 mics, a little 8channel mixer/interface and a Surface Pro. The workflow with the touch screen is just brilliant. I didn't even bring the Surface's keyboard with me. The guy who was recording the video was shocked at how easily I set up and mixed the sound on the fly. The sound needed almost no post-production at all.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[Jack Griffin]

I have an SP3 at work and I like it. For my use case it is a desktop replacement that sometimes I can quickly take with me to meetings or home on the bus etc.
I understand it's not for everyone, but after previewing Win10, I think MS are at least back in the game (after a shocker with Win Phone 7/Win8).

Re: Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. I don't. And my whole family too.

I would have buy a macbook air if I want a surface. Macbook air probably has better battery life too.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

Not according to the sales figures I've seen where Surface sales figures are minuscule compared to IPads & android tablets. For every person saying "I want a PC equivalent tablet and am willing to pay the price in weight and reduced battery time", there are thousands that aren't.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[trptrp]

You cannot produce professional music on any iPad. All of the external hardware are toys and the music apps are nothing but gimmick.

That's not true. At least for the older iPad with the dock connector, you can connect any MIDI device through the Camera Connection Kit and then play very nice synthesizers like the Moog Animoog or Korg iMS-20. And if the internal headphone out isn't enough, you can connect USB class compliant audio interfaces to get super pristine audio output, too.

There's way more options, MIDI over Bluetooth LE, on the new iOS 9 there'll be options to route sound directly to a Mac and much more.

In fact, for a long time, iOS was the only mobile OS that allowed any meaningful interactive audio because Android had problems with the input delay.

But I'm happy to hear that the workflow you're describing (i.e. running full blown desktop apps) is possible on the Surface 3! It's like a thin laptop with touchscreen and for this interface situation the touch is very useful!

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

That's not true. At least for the older iPad with the dock connector, you can connect any MIDI device through the Camera Connection Kit and then play very nice synthesizers like the Moog Animoog or Korg iMS-20. And if the internal headphone out isn't enough, you can connect USB class compliant audio interfaces to get super pristine audio output, too.

I'm sorry, but no professional produces music on an iPad unless it's some Apple promotional thing or a hobby project. The "Animoog" and the "iMS-20" are pale simulations of the real things and cannot touch a VSTi version.

As far as the "USB class complaint audio interfaces" available for the iPad, even the best of them are consumer grade. And there is absolutely no DAW software available for iOS that any professional would use.

The closest you will come to using an iPad in music production is pro-sumer gear, something like this, where you can use your iPad as a remote control for a real mixer:

http://www.mackie.com/products...

But even those have lost a lot of popularity, since people have figured out that the iPad just adds a huge failure point, since the mixer doesn't have any real faders of its own and adds an absolutely unnecessary level of complexity.

If you're an Apple fan, understand that I love Macs for music production. I've bought a new Mac Pro every three years since the G4. They're wonderful professional music production computers. iOS just isn't there for serious work yet, and I doubt Apple has any intention of making it so any time soon. They are consumption devices, not production devices.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

So Microsoft has made the perfect niche device for you. That's great for you but only adds a tiny exception my point: Other than for minuscule & specialised use cases, nobody cares that the their desktop replacement tablet is faster than all the other tablets that are massively outselling the SP.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

Other than for minuscule & specialised use cases, nobody cares that the their desktop replacement tablet is faster than all the other tablets that are massively outselling the SP.

"Nobody cares that their tablet is faster than other tablets."

OK. People don't care that a tablet that costs the same is much faster and can do much more. I'll write that down for future reference.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

And by the way, if Apple ever makes a tablet that runs OSX, has a USB port and can run the full version of Logic Studio, I'll buy that baby right up. But Apple seems to have no interest in making such a device.

Do you remember when Apple made the best tools for artists?

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[Shirley Marquez]

Tablet-controlled mixers aren't for everyone; getting used to the touchscreen controls can be challenging for people who are accustomed to knobs and sliders, and you can't see the entire setup at once. But they are a wonderful solution for some use cases. You can control the mix from the listening point without the need to run a snake, and you can have multiple people controlling different parts of the mix (for example, have a second person set up the monitor mix or even let the performers adjust it themselves). Mackie was first to market but there are a number of choices now; QSC has one, PreSonus has a mixer that has conventional sliders but also offers iPad control, and Behringer has a series of mixers that have Windows and Android control apps in addition to one for the iPad.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

Yup, that was back when Apple's market position was small and getting ever smaller & people like Michael Dell we're saying that they should just shut down, sell off the assets & give the money to the shareholders. Not at all the same company today.

My first Mac was a Mac II. I used it for over 10 years but even upgrading to a 68030 & running A/UX couldn't make up for the fact that it was a niche device & I used non-apple gear for over a decade before Apple rediscovered mas market appeal with iPhones, iPads, & rMBPs.

MS touting that the SP is the fastest tablet misses the point on why almost everyone uses tablets.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

Don't forget to also write down that most people don't want a heavy, "tablet" that has poor battery life to replace their PC with, they want a simpler, lighter device with better battery life. We wouldn't want you to miss the point

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

Don't forget to also write down that most people don't want a heavy, "tablet" that has poor battery life to replace their PC with, they want a simpler, lighter device with better battery life.

Hey, if you want something lighter, with better battery life, just use a cell phone.

I know it's a shrinking number, but there are still people who want to make things. You cannot make things on an iPad, except purchases.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

You can control the mix from the listening point without the need to run a snake, and you can have multiple people controlling different parts of the mix (for example, have a second person set up the monitor mix or even let the performers adjust it themselves).

Yes, the Surface Pro does that, and runs ProTools too. And doesn't need some fancy device that is hobbled without the tablet, on top of that.

The Mackie mixer that has the dock on top for the iPad is a gimmick. I know, because I bought one.

I've been looking for the best portable production/performance setup for decades. Right now - today - it starts with a Surface Pro 3.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

almost everyone uses tablets

I don't give extra points to production equipment for "mass market appeal".

Justin Beiber has mass market appeal, and it doesn't make his music one bit more interesting to me. All I care about is the best tool for the job. And if the job is buying stuff, then the best tool for the job is an iPad. If the job is creating stuff, then you have to look elsewhere.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

That is in fact what many people have been doing & is in part why the 6+ and other phablets let's have been selling so well. Now compare sales figures for the 6+ & the SP. That yawning gulf is another data point that should tell you that once again, only a tiny minority cares that a desktop replacement SP is faster.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[phayes]

Yech, did you _have_ to boring JB into this?! Pthaugh!

JB aside, marketplace popularity does usually indicate which of two products is generally preferred through sales figures. Just about everyone agrees that Dark Side Of the Moon is a better album than Atom Heart Mother & the sales reflect it. You can give whatever points you want, that doesn't change that your "production equipment" based judgement is a niche so small & off the mean of desireable features in a tablet as to be be irrelevant to 99% of the people looking To purchase one.

A few years back I heard a salesman vaunting the merits of a Bentley being fuel efficient because it could shut down a cylinder or two on the highway. On a quarter million dollar car it is completely illogical to purchase it because you can eke a few hundred a year out of your gas mileage. Microsoft's attempt to sell surfaces because they are faster similarly completely misses the point on why the enormous majority of people want to buy a tablet.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[Shirley Marquez]

I'm curious - what audio hardware do you use when you're trying to do a mix with, say, 16 or 32 inputs? There aren't many computer interfaces that have that many and you would still need a way to connect the interface to your Surface Pro. One of those new Behringer mixers with the Windows desktop application would work but I haven't had the opportunity to check one out yet - the release was delayed multiple times and they are still scarce.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[david_thornley]

Costs the same? It appears that Surface Pros have always been expensive, relative to more conventional tablets. The extra money may or may not be worth it, depending on what you're going to do with the thing, That the more expensive thing is faster and more capable is not surprising.

Re:Hey Microsoft, nobody cares.

[PopeRatzo]

I'm curious - what audio hardware do you use when you're trying to do a mix with, say, 16 or 32 inputs?

I would use a Yamaha QL series mixer, but I don't do any recording that requires more than 16 inputs. I'm more of a musician than a recording engineer, and usually work with small groups or solo.

Nexus 9 still wins on price

[guacamole]

The USA online price of Nexus 9 is in the neighborhood of $400, depending on storage configuration. Overall it's a great package, but google dropped the ball here by omitting the sd card slot. sd card is the only reason I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab S instead.

If a tree falls in the woods...

[jtara]

IOW, who cares?

In any case, the spin is opposite to reality. The remarkable thing here is that an iPad Air2 nearly matches the performance of an I5 notebook replacement...

Re:If a tree falls in the woods...

[Jack Griffin]

Nearly. Except for a whole bunch of stuff it can't match a laptop on (eg mouse input). Even the most hardcore Apple Fanboys don't use an iPad as a laptop replacement so in your own words, who cares?

Not the whole story

[pushing-robot]

Geekbench's own numbers put the iPad Air at 4528, only 10% off the i5. Which is astounding, because five years ago Intel's ULV CPUs were hitting 2000-2500 on the same benchmark while Apple's new A4 was 200.

The flagship ARM CPUs cost a tenth as much as Intel's chips, consume a fraction of the power, and have been roughly doubling performance every year while Intel has virtually plateaued*. If that trend continues, by the end of this year they'll have surpassed Intel on virtually every metric.

Of course, AMD reached pole position a decade ago until Intel's Core 2 decisively took back the lead. Intel may repeat history with Skylake; if not, the computer world could get a lot more interesting over the next few years.

(*on clock speed and IPC they're been scarcely improving 10% a year; IPW is increasing somewhat faster but still well behind ARM designs)

Re:Not the whole story

[Anonymous Coward]

And by the end of next year, they will perform ten times as good! I'm an expert in extrapolation, too!

Closer than I expected

[CODiNE]

It's been interesting how ARM has been gradually getting closer to desktop performance, while Intel has been getting their TPD down. The real metric however is cost. For Apple or even MS, being able to shave another $200 off their price by ditching Intel for ARM is tempting. Now MS, having its bad experience with ARM is less likely to for it, whereas Apple is definitely at least internally testing desktop ARM chips. With their LLVM work and now Metal on Mac the change is a lot easier than their PPC--> Intel was. Now a quad core A8X or whatever their A9 is going to be should nudge it up past that last 25% or so and it would cost them way less.

It looks like MS dropped ARM too soon. That and they totally botched their transition. Looks like Apple is gonna pull it off and regular users may not even notice the switch. Just gradually converge from both ends til one day your laptop also runs iPad apps.

Re:Closer than I expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Love or Hate Apple there is no denying that the way they have taken the ARM design and optomised it is impressive. Their latest designs and 64 bit capability clearly give them a nice basis for an ARM based MacBook Air in say 2017.
At this level, their hardware is anything but commodity. The purchse of P.A. Semi they made under Jobs in 2008 is really paying dividends.

Intel had better shape up or look out.

Re:Closer than I expected

[raftpeople]

I know, I'm really impressed. It's not often that large corporations are able to set a direction and execute this well. It makes we wonder about how Apple is managed that keeps them on track (money alone does not create these kinds of results).

Re:Closer than I expected

[Shirley Marquez]

The reason that ARM didn't work out for Windows (just as the versions of Windows NT for PowerPC and Alpha failed) is that Microsoft has been unable to convince the developers of Windows applications to make them available for multiple architectures. Unless they can make that happen, Windows for ARM is a non-starter on the desktop. (Microsoft plans to continue to support ARM for phones.)

Back in the NT era, Microsoft might have been able to force the issue by making multiple architecture support a condition for getting Designed for Windows certification. (Older applications were being obsoleted by the transition to a true 32 bit OS anyway, so most users had to update.) But they didn't do it, and now there are far too many existing applications that people will want to run on their new computers, so it would be impossible for Microsoft to switch desktop Windows to another architecture. It could be done with a binary translation layer, but there are performance and power consumption compromises to that. And there is a fundamental difference between Windows and Mac users; Windows users tend to have a much larger number of applications installed (though not so much in the number that they use on a daily basis), and many Windows users stick with old versions of applications rather than upgrading.

What a stupid comparison!

[Lumpy]

surface pro 3 is not a tablet. it's a pc. And it's worthless without it's keyboard, everyone that owns one knows this.

Disclaimer, I own one.

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes it worthless without a keyboard? The fact you chose to run different software on your device to conveniently cone up with this line of reasoning?

Stop running Photoshop on you tablet and you'll see it works perfectly fine with the on screen keyboard.

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you type your post using an on-screen keyboard?

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[Kurrelgyre]

I also own one, and I disagree.

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[serviscope_minor]

surface pro 3 is not a tablet. it's a pc.

It's still a tablet. Tablets were generally made out of PCs before Apple convinced half of the world that they invented them. I used to own a TC1100 tablet.

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[Thumper_SVX]

I had an SP1 and now own a Dell Venue 11 Pro (competitor to the Surface/Pro 3). What exactly is the problem with it? I realize it depends a lot on the applications you run, but that is true of any device. For example, if you're using it to run Putty... then no, the SP or its competitors are going to suck. However, if you're using it as a content consumption device, which let's be honest is exactly what a tablet is made for and good at... it's awesome. Now, that comes with the caveat that you're either using apps or the touch browser... desktop side is different.

But on that desktop side, you can run Putty... you can run PowerShell... and you can run any one of a number of desktop browsers and applications, but of course then you have the OPTIONAL keyboard that you can use to operate said applications.

The beauty of the SP3 and its ilk is that it is exactly what you need when you need it. No, none of them are going to be incredible gaming rigs but they're awesome at being productivity tools as well as content consumption devices. If you need solely or primiarly a productivity tool then no the SP and its ilk are probably a bad match. However, if you want a tool that can do both jobs equally well then you really have no choice but to go with one of these Windows 8 devices. But that's not a bad thing, either.

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[exomondo]

surface pro 3 is not a tablet. it's a pc. And it's worthless without it's keyboard, everyone that owns one knows this.

Well that depends on what you're trying to do, if I'm web browsing or using the stylus I generally won't have the keyboard attached, but then I can always attach the keyboard and use AutoCAD or play Team Fortress. I don't have to switch devices just because I switched use cases.

And I'll put this here because, based on some of the comments this is clearly an emotional topic for some people so: No I'm not suggesting this is a common case or a use case that everybody should have or that ipads are bad or that the surface is great. It is a well-built laptop/tablet hybrid with a stylus and touchscreen, if you dont need those things (yes the cost includes those regardless of whether you use them or not) or you want to run iOS apps then you should probably look elsewhere.

Re:What a stupid comparison!

[Shirley Marquez]

The price of the Surface Pro 3 means that few people will buy it just to run the fairly small number of Windows applications that are designed for tablets or are touch friendly. If you just want to do those things there are less expensive options, and buying an iOS or Android tablet will give you a much larger selection of touch friendly apps. The less expensive Surface 3 might appeal to some users who just want it for touchscreen use.

There are some use cases that are exceptions. Music mixing, mentioned in an earlier post, is one. Photoshop, despite your doubts, is another; although it won't work well with just a fingertip because of the size of the controls, it works quite well with the Surface Pen, and that's an accessory (and it's included with the Surface Pro 3 so you don't even have to buy it separately; if you buy the Surface 3 the pen will cost you another $50) that somebody who is using the tablet mostly for Photoshop and/or Illustrator will want.

This just in.......

[Anonymous Coward]

An F-16 outperforms both a Cessna and the Wright brothers plane.
No crap! Surface pro 3 is a full blown computer.

Re:This just in.......

[KGIII]

All tablets are full blown computers. I have an old K6 II that runs a firewall here - not because I have to but because it can (and I am too lazy to change it).

Re:actual working speed and battery life

[Dunbal]

all the antimalware programs you'd want on a PC

If you're trying to draw on the notion that only PC's get malware I have news for you...

*shrug*

[koan]

It isn't about hardware specs as much as it's about UI and app availability.

Cost - Whatever, it's about capability.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny people comparing cost. Apple stuff was (still is expensive)... Surface Pro 3 is not cheap either. That being said, the evaluation was done on performance, not cost. Folks, you need to realize that the surface pro 3 is a full blown computer, not simply a tablet. I purchased a Surface Pro 3 last year. The device is solid. I prefer it over my apple macbook pro - don't kid yourself, the keyboard on the Surface is way better than the Apple MBP. It replaced my table, laptop and desktop computer(s). I purchased two docking stations which connect to my 30" dell monitors at home and work. I purchased the i5 with 8GB/256 SSD, the machine runs Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop perfectly. Battery is fantastic. I wish it had 4G/LTE built in, but it doesn't. As far as WiFi, it goofs up occasionally, but overall not too bad, but can get frustrating - it's been about a year and I would have figured a software update would have fixed that by now. Maybe it's just me. I wish the device had Intel's wifi for the wireless display stuff, but MS has some sort of device for wireless display, I haven't tried it, I'm not sure how good it is. Otherwise, having been using it for about a year now as my primary computer, I am super impressed by the device. Only thing that truly sucks in my opinion is using it like a laptop (not notebook) actually on your lap. It's top heavy and the keyboard can detach if you operate it this way, the device could easily fall and break. If you're on the fence, don't mind using Windows - take the plunge, it's pretty good. Besides, in a year you'll toss it anyways (we're always upgrading!) I hope the surface pro 4 works with the SP3 docking station. Waiting for folks to reply giving me a hard time because I actually like a Microsoft product - sorry, but it's a good device - and I've gotten over Windows 8/8.1 - I mostly 99.99% of the time just run in desktop mode - not a giant adjustment like folks claim. I agree, there should be NO adjustment, but MS is just trying stuff. They say they consulted with users while developing the Windows 8 interface, I'm not sure who those users actually are! As far as the OS - it's stable. I've had ZERO crashes/bluescreens/etc on the Surface over the year aside from one Windows update which made my heart skip a beat thinking the machine was cooked - i was just impatient. I am running Visual Studio/Adobe products/Office mostly.

But the weight?

[bobstreo]

According to specs the surface pro 3 weighs about 1.76 pounds.

Nexus 9 weighs about 0.961 pounds

Ipad air 2 with cellular weighs about: 0.98 pound (444 g)

Ipad air 2 with wifi weighs about Weight: 0.96 pound (437 g)

Macbook Air weighs about 2.38 pounds

My five year-old iPad...

[Anonymous Coward]

still plays movies or shows ebooks for more than seven hours on a single charge. So, tell me why I need a new tablet? Even though I live in Seattle, my old iPad will still work for an entire flight to Miami. Why do I need a new tablet?

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[Anonymous Coward]

My Surface, while only lasting about two hours, can do much more than your iPad. I do Windows development so a Surface is much more capable at what I need. So yes while the battery usually dies while I'm in the air, I can do two hours of real work while while with your iPad you're limited to only watching movies or reading books for seven hours. The Surface is so much more capable.

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[ChunderDownunder]

Planes come with USB ports. You need one of those new-fangled low power Windows devices that charges via USB! :)

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Planes come with USB ports.

I fly about thirty times a year, and I have never seen a plane with a USB port. Not once. Of course I always fly Delta, so I'm stuck in the past, but I have never seen a USB port, not once. My Surface usually dies about half way through the flight. I wish an iPad could do what I need because my wife's iPad typically lasts eight or more hours between charges.

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[ChunderDownunder]

Ah sorry must only be those fancy international planes
i generally fly across hemispheres

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Planes come with USB ports.

I fly about thirty times a year, and I have never seen a plane with a USB port. Not once. Of course I always fly Delta, so I'm stuck in the past, but I have never seen a USB port, not once. My Surface usually dies about half way through the flight. I wish an iPad could do what I need because my wife's iPad typically lasts eight or more hours between charges.

Delta's 737-800 series have usb ports at every single seat.

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Delta's 737-800 series have usb ports at every single seat.

That's BS. I fly a 737-900 (with 37 rows of seats) nearly every week from Seattle to Atlanta. I was just on one yesterday on the backrow 37. There are no 120V or USB plugins in coach. It's an almost 5h flight gate to gate, so I would certainly use a USB port if they had one since I have a Surface that only lasts about 90 minutes on battery when doing real work. Also, I sometimes fly their 757-300 from Atlanta, and again, I have never seen a USB port on a Delta flight. I wouldn't know about first class, but I know you're full of crap wrt coach on Delta. I'm a million miler with Delta, and I have never seen a USB port on any of their airplanes.

Re:My five year-old iPad...

[Shirley Marquez]

According to seatguru.com (link: http://www.seatguru.com/airlin...), some of Delta's 737-800 fleet has USB power at every seat. The older version does not, but the airline is in the process of converting their 737-800 fleet to the newer configuration. First class and economy comfort seats have AC outlets; economy seats do not.

Again according to seatguru.com, Delta's 737-900ER fleet (link: http://www.seatguru.com/airlin...) does not have USB power anywhere, but has AC power outlets at every seat. Your experience suggests that their information is inaccurate.

My Dog and Cat slept together last night.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I see an under million UID Slashdot user stick up for Microsoft.

Must not think of the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Must not think of the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Must not think of the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Must not think of the Stay Puft marshmallow man.

Re:My Dog and Cat slept together last night.

[ChunderDownunder]

All my devices, a NUC, a Mozilla Flame and a Kobo run some variant of Linux. There's a laptop running XP donated to a family member...

they're still the evil empire but competition is a good thing if it forces Google and Apple to innovate. And not using any Apple/Google OSes myself, I'm not convinced separate form factors and ecosystems for Chrome OS/Android or OS X/iOS are necessarily the way forward.

So if I did ever buy a tablet, it'd probably be one with an open bootloader capable of quad-booting Debian/Firefox OS/Android/Windows as the mood suited. A stylus and a keyboard could be handy.

 

Surface vs IPad

[alcibar]

two very different machine for different use cases

The Surface 3 is really a data collection unit

[Anonymous Coward]

For the NSA and FBI.

July 31, 2012
Microsoft (MS) began encrypting web-based chat with the introduction of the new outlook.com service. This new Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption effectively cut off collection of the new service for FAA 702 and likely 12333 (to some degree) for the Intelligence Community (IC). MS, working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal with the new SSL. These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012.

March 15, 2013
SSO's PRISM program began tasking all Microsoft PRISM selectors to Skype because Skype allows users to log in using account identifiers in addition to Skype usernames. Until now, PRISM would not collect any Skype data when a user logged in using anything other than the Skype username which resulted in missing collection; this action will mitigate that. In fact, a user can create a Skype account using any e-mail address with any domain in the world. UTT does not currently allow analysts to task these non-Microsoft e-mail addresses to PRISM, however,

March 7, 2014
PRISM now collects Microsoft Skydrive data as part of PRISM'S standard Stored Communications collection package for a tasked FISA Amendments Act Section 702 (FAA702) selector. This means that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this - a process step that many analysts may not have known about. This new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response from SSO for our Enterprise customers. This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established. "SkyDrive is a cloud service that allows users to store and access their files on a variety of devices.

Geekbench is shit

[Conspicuous Coward]

If we're going to compare architectures on a tech site, can we at least acknowledge the fact that we're not using a credible benchmarking methodology? And linking to Which? Really?

Geekbench is basically useless for comparing different architectures. It's barely even useful for comparing systems on the same architecture. There's a big emphasis on crypto routines that are usually hardware accelerated and already orders of magnitude faster than IO on any system you care to name. A lot of their other tests are small enough to fit into L1 cache, totally hiding things like Intel's vastly superior branch prediction and memory pipe.

Comparing A8X and x86 performance is difficult, and I can't find any credible numbers out there at all. Browser benchmarks aren't a useful way to do this either, but they tend to show the surface pro as being at least twice as quick as the A8X. I'd expect an even bigger gap in anything with a heavy emphasis on floating point operations or memory bandwidth. ARM simply don't have anything that plays in the I5s league yet in terms of pure performance.

Re:Geekbench is shit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, world of sysadmins, tech support and java developers. There are so few people here who actually understand what is going on in the bowels of a system.

An apples and oranges car analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

My Ferrari 458 handily out performs my top-of-the-line super tricked out volkswagon jetta too.

Does it run Linux? Score:-1

[nickweller]

@mystuff: "But does it run Linux?"

How dare you criticise MICROS~1

Even more shocking:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tianhe-2 Cluster computer has 3,120,000 cores and handily beats all three of them on geekbench. So when it comes to disingenuous comparisons of products that aren't really in the same market segment, Microsoft Google and Apple all lose!

Re:Even more shocking:

[jazzis]

To dam funny! +11

Re:actual working speed and battery life

[Space cowboy]

If you're trying to imply that an iPad has as much malware "available" for it as a wintel tablet (which is basically just a pc), I have news for you, too.

Ridiculous and meaningless.

[Maxo-Texas]

Computers (laptops, tablets) long ago surpassed the point where bench marks matter to most of us.

They are faster than we need them to be except for cutting edge stuff.

Of course each faction will tout a benchmark if it shows them in a good light or ignore it if it does not.

But it's meaningless noise. There are many other factors which have significant weight in the decision process besides performances on an arbitrary set of tasks.

Re:Ridiculous and meaningless.

[ledow]

I have to agree.

I'd rather have a bigger / better screen than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have more battery life than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have more storage than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have more RAM than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have two slower processors than one fast one.

I don't even look at processor speed any more. I buy hundreds of machines every year and it doesn't even factor any more. Who cares? They all meet what would be my minimum spec anyway, even for the cheapest, and other specs are much more important.

I used to be the geek that people asked what to buy because I was the only one they knew who could understand it.

For the last five years, my recommendation has instead been "Go to a store, pick it up and play with it, check the holes on it (USB, HDMI, etc.), screen size, keyboard type, etc. are what you want, take the model number, buy it online, bring it to me and I'll wipe out the crap antivirus etc. for you and put a proper one on." The specs to an average user just don't matter any more. They barely matter to a business (I specify a minimum RAM and that's about it nowadays). Power user obviously still compare everything but, you know what, my laptop is several years old and eats things like GTA V for breakfast. I can't see that specs on a tablet would matter at all any more. Of course you don't want a 10MHz chip in there, but anything commercially available is just fine.

Re:Ridiculous and meaningless.

[Dazzadowling]

My main PC is supposed to be an outdated dinosaur that should have been upgraded and replaced every two years several times over - if you listen to the mainstream hype.

In actual fact my main computer was ordered in March 2005 for just under £1000 (I built it myself, the parts were ordered). This has just surprised me actually. Although I have swapped out the heart of it more recently it means my PC is now 'ten years old' and is still going strong and beating hands down the hundreds of machines I have looked at and had to fix for other people over the years. I regularly have to explain to others that no, you don't need to buy a new laptop, your one is just over a year or two old and is running slow because of how you have looked after it, not because all of a sudden the technology inside has deprecated and become obsolete.

Since then I still have the same case, the same RAM (OK ok .. it was swapped out after failure by Crucial with their excellent warranty), the same power supply, same original hard disk (now the third oldest set in the machine but still there), same DVD Write, same floppy and card reader. In actual fact the original hard disk STILL has the same Windows XP install on it, even though it has suffered a complete motherboard change (along with RAM, Graphics card) due to a motherboard problem a few years ago. Worth noting XP coped with the change and carried on as well!

So yes I have a 'new' motherboard but this was one bought second hand off eBay that is almost as old as my original one. I have a 'new' graphics card but again this is many generations old.

And does my machine work? All day every day. I use it heavily for work (education, programming, office, file related, graphics related etc) and for gaming (always been heavily into gaming). Do I feel the need to have the very latest games at the absolute top resolution? not quite because I am not willing to pay the premium to have the rig to run that as soon as the game comes out. Give it a year or two and all of a sudden this games crash in price and in the ability for the latest computers to handle them. Having said that my machine has still not had much of an upgrade and I have little problem running the vast majority of every day titles.

My bottle necks are

RAM (in the sense of the ability to have lots of programs working on the fly with no delay switching to them) Storage (always an issue no matter the upgrade, I now have a few TB of storage spread among my hard disks I have accumulated, that doesn't count external or cloud backups. Never enough.)

For work I have been given an iPad. I barely use it. At all. For anything. It is a pain in the backside for connectivity to my normal workflow and does not have the day to day items I need/want to use in work. It is excellent for connection in the sense of simple sharing/browsing online/using web features but that could be achieved by any handheld device. The biggest drawback for me with that, given the way I now work, is the coping with the file system storage and sharing structure. Not the processor, screen or RAM.

My phone gets daily use for all sorts of things. The biggest problem I have with it is simple storage. Given the price of smartphones today (especially on contract) why they cant all come with at least 100Gb of storage on a couple of cards is beyond me.

These problems are exactly the same ones I had with my first machine. A 386 DX (yes ...my dad paid a LOT of extra money for the co-processor for my FORTRAN and to upgrade the hard disk from 20Mb to 40Mb). Then there were a lot of bottle necks: processor, co-processor, graphics, memory, highmem, RAM, storage, connectivity.

But the main ones I see across all devices for the last twenty plus years I have been using computers? RAM (to a lesser extent today on PCs) and storage.

I love my Surface Pro 3

[robbiedo]

I don't really think of it as a tablet but a better Macbook Air, and I have two Macbook Pro for music production, and a Mac Pro.

Breaking News!!!!!

[plebeian]

A $900 tablet is faster than a $500 tablet. Who would have guessed that you can pay almost twice as much for something that is 30% faster on certain benchmark tests. I actually like the Surface Pro 3, but this article is more of a fanboy blog post than a real review of a product.

Re:actual working speed and battery life

[Ol Olsoc]

all the antimalware programs you'd want on a PC

If you're trying to draw on the notion that only PC's get malware I have news for you...

Just got back from loading Windows and running bootcamp on my iMac. This after a 3 year vacation from Windows. A nice fresh copy of Windows, and it hasn't changed a bit. Update hell, security patch upon security patch, changing settings, programs not responding after an update.

The implication as I read it, is that yes, after enough updates, after enough protection from built-in vulnerabilities, that Surface Pro will indeed slow down. If I didn't have a device that only uses Windows software, there is no way I would put up with this shit. Because shit it is. It's been a week since I've installed Windows, and I've already spent more time chasing down stupid problems than the entire time I've had the Mac. And that is with 3 OS changes on the Mac side with nothing broken.

By the way - none of those problems had a thing to do with bootcamp - since I'm sure you'll claim that was the case.

Re:actual working speed and battery life

[Ol Olsoc]

If you're trying to imply that an iPad has as much malware "available" for it as a wintel tablet (which is basically just a pc), I have news for you, too.

There is a reason why every time some malware shows up for Apple products, it makes the front page of tech news. There is so much on the pc side that it isn't news anymore. Just take a look at the updates on the Windows side.

I would hope the Surface 3 is faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the costs, I would hope the Surface 3 is faster. I am not the least interested in a tablet. I am so over the tablet craze. But if I was given only these tablets to choose from. I would most certainly choose the Surface 3. Which can run a full OS of Windows and allows me to run whatever browser I want and plenty of open source applications like open office. Both Android and IOS put you in a position of being stuck within a app store with only a ability to maybe use a hack to do any sideways app installs. Still not as ideal as a Windows OS platform. As someone said, using a Intel CPU also gives you plenty of OS options like a full Linux install.

How?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this even news?

Personally, I wouldn't call a 13" behemoth a tablet, and second the Surface Pro 2( a more realistic size(high end) for a tablet ~10") has the EXACT SAME HARDWARE as the i5 version of the Surface Pro 3, so it too would be the fastest "tablet". What is more the SP2 has a better thermal design than the SP3 and is not subject to nearly as much thermal throttling as the SP3s are.

Last my lowly core m 5y10 Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 also bests those very same tablets.

My zenfone 2, atom z3580 also comes pretty close to kicking both of those tablet's asses as well, as does even a lowly atom z3735f.

IOW ANYTHING with a core m or better should easily kick any ARM tablets ass.

Linux: should be installable as with the ccore m 7140 it is possible to get it working with linux with the caveat of using 4.1RC kernels(broadwell upport). The SP2/3 are haswell based and SHOULD be WELL supported.

The amount of butthurt...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in the reactions here over a good Microsoft product just warms my heart.

For $300 more it better outperform the iPad.

[jpellino]

So a 20% difference in speed for a 30% difference in price. Good to know.

Re:actual working speed and battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

This after a 3 year vacation from Windows. A nice fresh copy of Windows, and it hasn't changed a bit. Update hell, security patch upon security patch, changing settings, programs not responding after an update.

I recently had to create a Win 7 VM. My Win 7 install disks are the original release. The VM required *4X* the stated minimum RAM in order to complete the hundreds of updates. Yep, 2X it stalled and wouldn't complete, 3X it stalled and wouldn't complete (and also could not be stopped, required a hard reset "virtual power cycle" at which point I started over), 4X it finished--overnight of course.

Re:actual working speed and battery life

[exomondo]

Once the Surface Pro 3 is running all the antimalware programs you'd want on a PC, THEN run the comparisons again, and I think you'd find the others quite comparable.

I dont have antimalware on the Linux or Windows partitions of my SP2, I use Chrome for browsing and dont download/open suspicious files, I take the same precautions on my Nexus and on iOS which is why I havent had any malware issues so what specifically should I be concerned about?

Crayons

[ebvwfbw]

Using the surface, well it's like going back and using crayons.

Be nice if Microsoft would get into the 21st century. They don't even realize they suck.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic that someone is crowing that an x86 windows clone is a smidge faster than an ARM machine, let alone one that that is 2/3 the weight.

kim toan thang

[nguyenvanhai143]

http://www.kimtoanthang.vn/the...