The Surface Laptop 3 and its intolerable issues
There I was, watching some suave guy from Microsoft repeat the word “beautiful” with two fingers pinched like he was serving French cuisine.
“itsza beautiful laptop,” he (didn’t really say but felt like he) said while describing the no-compromises approach Microsoft took to their new product.
And I ate up every word.
When the release date came around, I packed up my 2018 15" Macbook Pro, had a little photoshoot and posted it on Facebook Marketplace, dreaming of my future trip to the Microsoft Store.
16gb ram? Yes, that will be an extra $300
As someone who abuses multitasking features, I knew I needed 16gb ram. Unlike Apple, Microsoft does not let you opt for an i5 processor with 16gb ram, so I was stuck at a minimum $1599 price point.
That wasn’t a big deal to me, as there is a certain satasfaction in checking your system page and seeing the 10th gen i7 in all it’s glory, but still hard to dignify with logic.
Mac OS uses it’s ram efficiently because of improved memory compression, so it’s easier to settle with an 8gb system. Windows on the other hand could use the extra ram. This is partly because Safari is more tolerable than Edge, which forces Windows users to use Chrome. Everyone knows chrome is a memory hog, which means less battery life and more closing passive applications.
If I really valued ram more than storage or processing power, Apple would allow me to add 8gb of ram to a Macbook Pro or Air for $200. This would bring the base model of the Macbook Pro to $1499. People talk a lot of an unreasonable “Apple premium” where the extra cost per spec doesn’t make sense, but the price of the 13" Surface Laptop 3 makes Apple pricing seem eerily reasonable.
No compromises, except for some backlight bleed
Usually when setting up a Windows laptop, the noticably annoying thing is Cortana yelling instructions at you until you mute her. I didn’t even notice her this time because seemingly gradient color change at the bottom of the screen was so new and different.
I’ve experienced backlight bleed with gaming laptops, but only when I’m on the black GTA V loading screen and a corner is disturbingly bright. This time was different. The bleeding wasn’t as noticable on black screens as it was on frames with color.
Whites were turning yellow, grey was turning white, and my OCD was turning on. I wouldn’t have had a problem if it only happened on black screens, because I understand the physics. The problem was that it appeared all of the time, when I was doing day to day things.
So, I went back to Microsoft and checked out the 13" Surface’s on display, so that I wouldn’t waste anybody’s time getting another one with the same issue. I could tell that the laptop on display had the same issues, but the sales person convinced me into giving one more a try.
It had the same issue on the one I exchanged it for, and saw people complaining on Reddit and Windows Central.
And the backlight just died
Screw it, normal people don’t notice this kind of stuff, I’ll just live with it.
I felt like a bastard for exchanging a whole laptop just because of backlight bleed issues, so I decided to just fight the voice in my head.
My girlfriend sleeps earlier than me, so I was typing something in bed with the backlight on minimum and the keyboard backlight on. Then, for whatever reason, my screen shuts off.
I hold the power button in attempt to restart the computer, and the backlight comes on again with everything as I left it. From then on, the backlight would shut off every 30 seconds.
At first, I thought the display was completely turning off until I shined my phone’s flashlight at it, and could see the pixels without any light shining through them, like it was a Gameboy Advanced.
The only way I could get this issue to reproduce itself was having the brightness on minimum and the keyboard light on. I could just avoid being in that situation until a driver was fixed, but I just payed $1599 and was really starting to miss my Macbook, which only had an unreliable keyboard.
Besides those issues, I see it as the best Windows ultrabook
Everything else was there, the great battery, unique aspect ratio, comfortable keyboard, brand new specs, Windows Hello and a very appealing design.
If only they hadn’t cheaped out on the display and had a bug that literally made me unable to use the computer under certain conditions.
I’ve heard that it is harder to seal a touchscreen display because of extra layers, but it’s something that I’ve never noticed on the iPad Pro 2018 that I am typing on right now. Even if I did see some backlight bleed on an Apple product, the general smoothness of the UI helps make up for a common shortcoming.
It seems Microsoft puts touch screens on their Laptops just to one up Apple in the laptop world. If they could have hit the same margins without a touchscreen and used better manufacturing techniques, I’d still have the laptop.
I’m not saying don’t buy it
I just had an experience with a luxury laptop that I wouldn’t expect from a luxury laptop line up.
