Microsoft Surface Book 15" 3 Review

The Microsoft Surface Book 3 is a unique 2-in-1 laptop that tries to do it all. It's got a detachable 15-inch touchscreen that turns into a tablet, a dedicated NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q graphics card, and a sleek magnesium build. If you're searching for a 'detachable laptop for drawing' or a '2-in-1 with a good GPU,' this is one of the few options out there. It's a machine built for people who want a single device for note-taking, light creative work, and some gaming, all wrapped up in a premium package. Just know that the specs, especially the older Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU and the 256GB SSD, show its age.

Performance is a mixed bag. The NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q GPU lands in the 70th percentile, which is solid for a 2-in-1. It means you can play modern games at 1080p with medium to high settings, and it handles creative apps like Photoshop or Lightroom just fine. But the Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU is a weak spot, sitting in just the 15th percentile. That means it can feel sluggish for heavy multitasking or CPU-intensive tasks like video editing or compiling code. The 16GB of RAM is decent, but that tiny 256GB SSD is in the 20th percentile. You'll fill it up fast with games and projects.

At its original price, the Surface Book 3 was a tough sell. But if you can find it for around $999 like it is now, it becomes a more interesting proposition. You're paying for that unique convertible form factor and build quality more than raw power. Just know that for the same money, you could get a much faster modern laptop, but it wouldn't detach into a tablet. It's a niche product, and the value depends entirely on how much you want that specific feature set.

Compared directly to others, the trade-offs are clear. The Apple MacBook Pro 14" with an M4 chip runs circles around it in CPU performance and battery life, but it's not a touchscreen or convertible. The ASUS Zenbook Duo offers a dual-screen setup that's better for productivity, but lacks a dedicated GPU for gaming. Gaming laptops like the MSI Vector 16 or Gigabyte AORUS 16 will offer far better performance for the money, but they're thick, heavy, and have no tablet mode. The Surface Book 3's main draw is being the only device in the room that can be a decent gaming-capable laptop and a large drawing tablet.

So, should you buy the Surface Book 3? Only if the detachable screen is your absolute top priority. If you're an artist who needs a large Windows tablet with enough power to run your apps, and you also want to play games on the same device, it's basically your only choice. But for almost everyone else, it's a compromise. The CPU and storage are too weak for the price, even at a discount. You'd be better off with a powerful traditional laptop and a separate drawing tablet. Buy this for the unique form factor, not for the specs sheet.