Microsoft Surface 3 goes up for pre-order, starting at £419, $499

[LSG501]

That baffles me too. You can but a tablet sized USB keyboard for very little, you can buy bluetooth devices like games controllers for very little. Why is a bluetooth keyboard so damned expensive? Even the Hudl2 one at Tesco was pretty costly.

It's not even a bluetooth keyboard, it plugs in at the bottom remember, it's in essence a thin 'usb' keyboard. I just find it daft that you can buy a 7inch slate from HP for LESS than the keyboard cover on the surface 3 (it's over £100 on ms store)

[ValkyrieTsukiko]

More than likely the price will drop a bit in a few months making it a bit more of a better bargain than the i3 pro.
The thing I want to see is how the 4gb version compares to the lowest i3 pro in terms of power, grunt and (most importantly for me) graphics applications. I want a surface pro for working on artwork using GIMP and MangaStudio, so how the 4gb atom fares is the make-break point for me (esp if it drops in price to maintain a more realistic drop from the i3 pro) :-) though, i'm told, there's no point getting anything less than the i5-8gb surfaces if using it for artwork.

[Wozza63]

There are plenty of good cheap atom based windows tablets already out there. For example my Linx 7 cost me £60, it came with proper Windows 8.1 runs Counter Strike Global Offensive (just about) and also runs Visual Studio with a keyboard hooked up. If I'd spent £100 then I could have got a better CPU and extra RAM but it performs fine if I'm honest.

[TheAnimus]

Those saying it's expensive, compare it to the price of an iPad...

Sure it's larger, heavier, but it's also more versatile. This is directly aimed at the users who would buy an iPad.

[LSG501]

Those saying it's expensive, compare it to the price of an iPad...

Sure it's larger, heavier, but it's also more versatile. This is directly aimed at the users who would buy an iPad.

lets be honest here, very few people who are after buying an ipad are going to buy an ms surface. It's a good product but it doesn't have the same 'brand power' or apps (yes I know there are desktop ones but these really need the stylus which is extra) as Apple (the amount of free 'press' they get is stupid) so by definition it's really competing with android and other windows slates despite what MS might want us to think/believe.

I have no issue with it being a premium price but it's premium is too high for what it is (I think the iPad is stupidly priced too for the record), even more so when you compare straight up with the surface 3 pro which has the stylus included, seriously they couldn't even include that as standard.....

[TheAnimus]

lets be honest here, very few people who are after buying an ipad are going to buy an ms surface. It's a good product but it doesn't have the same 'brand power' or apps (yes I know there are desktop ones but these really need the stylus which is extra) as Apple (the amount of free 'press' they get is stupid)

Companies.

It's smaller, lighter, no fan issues (my complaint with the pro 3), longer battery life too. Combined with the use of the new usb connector, makes it a very cheap 'docking' system.

I'm already thinking of getting two for some of our guys, it runs more useful apps than an iPad, and the question is, can the touch mode be useful at all.

MS aren't trying to attack the low end of the market here. That's already served with an £80 tablet. This is about the premium 'feel' end. For many, this is still going to be too heavy, the ipad air 2 is only two thirds of the mass after all. The larger screen I doubt is an issue, the one extra inch doesn't really make it suddenly too bulky, I think many people find 13 the limit, or 11. Few things you can do with a 9 inch, that you can't with an 11inch. It's not until you drop below 7 that you can fit inside jacket pockets again.

[LSG501]

I wouldn't class 1 hour extra battery over the s3 pro as good, you've also got to consider work load the atom lower performance may end up meaning it needs to work harder and run out quicker versus the i3.
I don't think the atom will out last an ipad for battery life either. I'm actually not 100% keen on the usb socket for charging... I would have preferred a proper socket like others.

Your fan issue is fair but as I said on the s3 pro's release, the chassis was likely designed for broadwell/skylake which was then delayed so it was a compromise.

You say you're getting 2 for work, I can completely understand why as I can see a usage scenario (with the pen) for it for myself too but I can't see a reason (my background is product design so I know about design side of things too) for it to be so much more than what is essentially a slightly upgraded linx 10 inch tablet that goes for £180 including the keyboard.

That's a difference of around £350 when you add the keyboard on to the base model surface 3. Can you honestly say a metal case (no real design cost there it's basically the same as the last one), a pen digitiser, 32gb more storage (pretty cheap based on 4gb model cost increase) and a higher res screen is worth that much more.

I can't, admittedly the keyboard cost on the surface is stupidly high which distorts it but still. I could see it at an extra £200-250 (including keyboard) more than the linx bundle which would put the 'package' at around £380-430... or as I've said earlier the whole package should be the cost of the slate on it's own, it would still be a premium atom (remember it's an atom cpu, not core m) powered slate. MS needs to get people interested in windows 'metro' to get devs interested, pricing a product at close to the market leader isn't going to do that... even google knew to start off cheaper until they had a decent market share.

[Kevin33]

Users are also allowed to charge the Surface 3 battery using normal phone charger.

[crossy]

Mad thought occurred to me - I wonder if the new Surface 3 will encourage other companies to "dip a toe" into the waters. As TheAnimus says - the S3's form factor is attractive for companies, as a device for the "lower echelons", while the "pointy haired bosses" still slum it with the full blown "Pro" model. Although if you've got £900 to spend the HP Spectre X360 looks pretty good - decent specs and a claimed 12.5hrs battery life.

Personally I'd like to see other companies - especially Asus - do this, because invariably they'll do it at a more attractive price point. And because these are running full blown W10 rather than W8RT, they're perhaps less of a risk.

Put it this way - I'll not buy one because I'm happy to continue with my combination of (heavily modified) laptop and conventional tablets. But, my missus' Dell laptop is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth and she already uses (and likes) a Nokia W8RT tablet, so MUI/Metro isn't going to be a shock. But, she needs a keyboard and the fact that this boosts the price to £500ish means "no sale". A functionally comparable Asus, Dell or HP at £100 less will have me reaching for credit card...

[Biscuit]

Passive cooling I guess is the big hitter. The mass and size is also a benefit for some (like me!).

I can dig out a photo of my desk last year, as I was back and forth between London and my GFs place, I was lugging a Surface Pro 3, Series 9 (2012) and Surface 3. This would happily let me just lug a Surface 3, Surface 2, Surface Pro 3. What a great set up!

Sounds rather familiar to me in my early days of travelling to my GFs and doing work there. I ended up just buying a monitor to leave at hers!
I actually have a Pro 3 that is for ‘demonstration purposes’, but I have found myself lugging it around, along with my rMBP13” and my Hudl… they are really nice devices and although there are problems with the docks display port, its still excellent. If I was asked to select a work PC again knowing what I know now, I would choose a Pro 3 for sure.

It still love it if they just produced a Surface 3 Monitor, that is the same size as the pro, but is just a dumb displayport driven monitor, with daisy chaining support. Suddenly, in <2kg, you could get an amazing workspace.

As a fellow traveller/worker, assuming they had the same kick stand and build quality as the Pro3, that would be utter bliss.

My initial thoughts were... oooh nice, not too bad then it all went down hill.

It's quite simply too expensive, by the time you add in a pen (which is on the s3pro) you can get the i3 64gb model for only a small amount more. The keyboard cover is looking to be ANOTHER £100+ too (sorry but why are they so expensive...).

Surface Pro 3, from £639.00 is wrong in the table, it's available for around £530 in some places and even MS's own store has it at £579.00. It just shows how much of a bad deal this is in my opinion.

The price simply put needs to be inclusive of the pen and keyboard in my opinion, if the likes of asus can do a product with a keyboard/stylus and tablet for around £300-400 there's no reason that MS can't.

I agree with you here, this model does not seem to make a lot of sense, although remember the i3 model was based on a -y CPU which is ultra low power.
I actually couldn’t find any benchmarks on the the ‘cherry trail’ CPU used in this, so we don’t actually know for sure how far the gap between them will be.