Microsoft had an event in New York on Tuesday and unveiled the Surface Pro 3, and the line they kept repeating on stage was "the tablet that can replace your laptop." Panos Panay said it like four different times, which tells you exactly how much they want that sentence to be true.
I'll admit up front that I burned myself on the original Surface RT back in 2012 (bought one about three weeks after this blog covered its launch, actually) and I've been skeptical of everything with the Surface name ever since. That thing sat in a drawer for over a year before I finally sold it to a coworker for $150. So take what follows with the appropriate amount of salt.
The specs, though, are genuinely different this time. The screen jumped from 10.6 inches on the Pro 2 to a full 12 inches, running at 2160x1440, and the whole thing is only 9.1mm thick and weighs 1.76 pounds. That's thinner and lighter than the last one despite the bigger screen, which is the kind of tradeoff that usually doesn't happen in year-over-year hardware.
The part that actually got my attention isn't the screen or the weight, it's the kickstand. Every previous Surface had two fixed positions and that was it, take it or leave it. The Pro 3's hinge apparently goes anywhere up to 150 degrees, which means you can lay the thing almost flat on a desk, aimed at people who want to draw or take notes with the stylus. Pricing starts at $799 for a Core i3 model and goes all the way up to $1949 if you want a Core i7 with 512GB of storage, and yes, the Type Cover is still sold separately, which annoys me every single time Microsoft does it. Charge me the extra hundred bucks up front and just call it a laptop. I don't know why this is still a thing four generations in.
They're taking preorders now and shipping starts June 20th, so we'll see actual reviews in a few weeks once people who aren't flown to NYC for a keynote get their hands on one.
Here's my actual opinion, no hedging: I don't think a kickstand and a detachable keyboard replace a laptop, not yet, not for anyone who spends real hours writing or coding on the thing. I tried working on my lap on a train with a first-generation Surface once and the whole rig wobbled every time the train hit a bump, kickstand and all. A MacBook Air just sits there and doesn't need a flat surface behind it to stay upright. Maybe the redesigned hinge fixes that, and 150 degrees of adjustment is a legitimately good engineering answer to a complaint people have had since 2012. But I'll believe the "replaces your laptop" line when I see someone doing eight hours of real work on one on an actual lap, not a demo stage with a conveniently placed table.
Also, completely unrelated tangent, but I've gotten about six emails this week from people asking if I'd changed my eBay password yet after that breach notice went out. Yes, I did it Wednesday night, and yes, it was as tedious as everyone's saying, mostly because I'd apparently had the same password on there since sometime in 2009 and had to update it in four other places that were quietly reusing it. Not proud of that. I'll leave that story for another post though, because I've already written more about tablets today than I meant to.
One more thing before I go back to actual paying work. The pen this time apparently has a button on top that opens OneNote straight from a locked screen, click and start writing, no unlocking involved. That's a small detail and probably the one I actually believe will get used daily, more than the hinge or the resolution bump. Most of the "creative" pitches at these keynotes are stuff nobody touches after the first week, but "click a button and jot something down" is the kind of feature that survives contact with a real desk. My handwriting is bad enough that OneNote will probably just transcribe my grocery list into nonsense, but I'd still rather try that than dig a phone out of my pocket every time I need to remember something for ten seconds.
If anyone reading this actually orders a Surface Pro 3, tell me how the pen feels, because that's the one part of the demo the livestream couldn't really show.