Microsoft Surface 3 Review - In Depth : Performance, Minecraft, Pen, and more!

Buy it on Amazon - http://lon.tv/7equq (affiliate link) - Microsoft just released the little brother to its premium Surface Pro tablet called the Surface 3. Buy this used item at my store for a discount! http://lon.tv/g6bke Unlike the previous iterations of their low cost tablets, this one runs the full version of Windows 8.1 vs. the crippled Windows RT that did not run regular Windows software. CORRECTION: Apparently it is made out of magnesium and not plastic. But it really feels like plastic and not a metal. I will be making a followup video on this soon. Video Index: 00:02 - Hardware overview 00:28 - Kickstand demonstration 00:55 - Portrait web browsing 02:21 - Type Cover overview 03:06 - Using Surface as a laptop 03:41 - Overview of ports 04:26 - Keyboard and Surface Pen overview 05:46 - Web browsing performance and benchmarks 08:52 - Surface Pen demonstration in One Note 10:35 - Microsoft Word demonstration 11:56 - Minecraft demonstration 12:53 - Battery Life 13:57 - Conclusion and final thoughts The $499 price tag is only the beginning. The keyboard, called the Type Cover, commands an additional $130. The Surface Pen (a fancy stylus) costs an additional $50. So with the keyboard the Surface 3 costs about as much as some of the Core M devices I've looked at recently. But the Surface 3 only has 2 gigs of RAM (compared to 8 on a comparable priced Asus UX305), 64 gigs of storage (compared to 256 on the Asus) and the surface runs a much slower Atom processor. On one benchmark the Asus was twice as powerful as the Microsoft Surface 3. So what are you paying for? Premium industrial design. This is a nice and very light weight tablet that does function well as a laptop too. I have yet to find any Windows device fill both roles successfully. It even works on a lap although not as comfortably as a true laptop computer. This is a nicely constructed device that is, for the most part, worth its premium price tag. But Microsoft's choice of the Atom processor limits its performance and it's puzzling why they would go this route while many of their competitors are using faster Core M chips. Subscribe to my email list to get a weekly digest of upcoming videos! - http://lon.tv/email Visit the Lon.TV store to purchase some of my previously reviewed items! http://lon.tv/store Want to chat with other fans of the channel? Visit our forums! http://lon.tv/forums Want to help the channel? Start a Patreon subscription! http://lon.tv/patreon Follow me on Facebook!   / lonreviewstech   Follow me on Twitter!   / lonseidman   Catch my longer interviews in audio form on my podcast! http://lon.tv/itunes http://lon.tv/stitcher or the feed at http://lon.tv/podcast/feed.xml Follow me on Google+ http://lonseidman.com