Surface Laptop 3 – 15" Touch-Screen – AMD Ryzen 7 Surface Edition - 32GB Memory – 1TB Solid State Drive – Matte Black

If you don't want a MacBook Air/Pro because of macOS, or other Windows manufacturers such as Dell/HP/Lenovo have let you down in the past, the Surface Laptop 3 (i7 1065G7, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Matte Black) is quite the option. In my opinion it's the best premium Ultrabook on the market, especially impressive as Microsoft has only been at it for about 3 years.As performance between 85% of Ultrabooks is relatively similar, build and design is a big deciding factor to me, and the Surface won out against worthy competitors such as the Dell XPS 13 (9300), HP Spectre x360 13, and Razer Blade Stealth. A lot of Microsoft + Intel intangibles like Instant On, smart backlighting, and adaptive brightness help this feel like a polished machine that's been innovated for over 10+ years like the XPS lineup.The display on the Surface is excellent. The resolution is higher than standard full HD (not quite QHD because of the 3:2 aspect ratio), and doesn't sacrifice on either battery life (4K Ultrabooks make no sense) or picture quality. Apple and Microsoft seem to be the only ones who believe in making QHD+ displays for 13-14" instead of 4K. It just makes more sense for everyone.Performance is great for a 15W laptop, although I don't need much horsepower from my laptop as I have other desktops for heavy workloads. It's good in short bursts, and at lasting long. The quad core i7-1065G7 has the highest level graphics config for Intel's Ice Lake processors, so this is as good as it gets for this generation. I would recommend 95% of buyers to just buy the 8GB RAM models, as you'll find more use in just having 4 cores than 16GB RAM.Battery life is good, not amazing. I get about 6-7 hours of active use out of a full charge. It can top up pretty fast while in sleep mode with the included Surface Connect charger. Coming from a device that gave me 2 hours max off of battery, I'm not asking for much. There is some endurance left to be desired, but it's enough for what I need.The touchpad and keyboard are amazing. They're both among the best that Windows Ultrabooks have to offer (although that's not saying much..)Some minor gripes/annoyances:-Intel's Bluetooth and Wi-Fi drivers seem to mess with reception on this device. My range with my Bluetooth headphones is unexpectedly shorter than usual. When waking the device from sleep, Wi-Fi takes a long time to reconnect properly; I sometimes have to restart the machine to get online.- I knew that ordering a matte black metal device would be a challenge to keep clean, but yeah.. pretty hurts doesn't it?Overall, I think this should be the default recommendation for a Windows Ultrabook. at $1299 for the i5, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD, value isn't the best but you have what is the best looking Ultrabook on the market other than the new XPS 13.

I just received the laptop. It came in the original packaging, all accessories never opened, and it looks and feels like brand new. So far, I'm very impressed. Let's see in the following days , excellent valeu for the money, even with the taxes to get in in Brazil.

I purchased this machine because I recently purchased several Native Instruments plugins for use with my application copy of Fruity Loops. My old computer was struggling to even eek out a full measure without crackling or stuttering, so it was time.This computer is simultaneously running FLStudio with multiple heavy Native Instrument channels without any stutter. I will say that it initially did have a little lag, but upping the buffer threshold has taken care of it. I have seen some complain that the I7 processor is insufficient for heavy music production, but if you are concerned about that, look up a tutorial about turning off the turbo boost since this should rectify the problem that many described.As for graphics, I have been using Flowscape to create ambient animated scenes, and the processor deals with this as well as most high end laptops would. I had a scene with thousands of animated 3d models (plants and particle effects included), and the framerate hovered around 8-10, which is fine for the initial setup of the scene. When I rendered it, it output about 1 frame per second at 4k quality, and the end result was as smooth as butter.Beyond that, it is a good quality, metal body, extremely high resolution machine with a lot of power for only weighing 2 pounds. If you are producing music with 30 different instruments or if you are a professional animator or heavy gamer, then you probably already know that you should spring for a tower with adequate cooling and hardware. If you enjoy moderate/heavy mixing and casual graphics work, this machine is absolutely perfect.The only warning I have is that this does not come with an SD slot. If you are worried about storage space, spring for the model with a bigger hard drive.

Pros: screen brightness, reliable, slim, lightweight, sleek, Mac alternative, didn't come with a large amount of bloatware.Cons:- It does get pretty hot and the fans come on pretty liberally. I had to hack the processor state to 99%, which seems to help. I say hack because it's definitely a bit beyond the normal setting changes and not 100% advised by the community.- I had to modify the dimming issue that people were complaining about. Even if you uncheck the 'change brightness automatically when lighting changes', it's not you! It will still dim unless you modify something called the "Vari-Bright" which isn't easy to figure out and change. I relied on other user's help.- I still have one remaining issue - the touchpad's erratic mouse cursor. Spent many hours trying to fix and used other user's possible solutions around the web. It's better but I will still get the occasional erratic movement. @Microsoft - please fix.Finally, do yourself a favor and don't buy from a 3rd party on here. Spend a bit more money and get an officially sealed, 100% brand new laptop from a reputable retailer or 1st party. Skimp on some items, not your laptop...just my two cents.