Powered by an Intel® Core™ M3-6Y30 Processor the Surface Pro 4 gives you the amazing performance of a laptop plus the long battery life of a tablet in one device. The 12.3 PixelSense™ screen has extremely high contrast and low glare so you can work through the day without straining your eyes. Go from tablet to laptop in a snap with the multi-position Kickstand and improved keyboard.
The versatility of a laptop and tablet in one. Surface pro 4 powers through everything you need to do, while being lighter than ever before. He 12.3 Pixelsense™ screen has extremely high contrast and low glare so you can work through the day without straining your eyes. Go from tablet to laptop in a snap with the multi-position kickstand and improved keyboard.
Exceptional performance. Surface Pro 4 with 6th gen Intel® core™ M3, i5, and i7 processors is not only more powerful – it is quieter, runs cooler and is even more efficient than before, .
CPU, Memory and Operating System:
Intel m3-6y30 dual core processor.
0.9GHz processor speed.
4GB RAM.
128GB solid state hard drive.
Microsoft Windows 10.
Up to 9 hours battery life.
Size H20.1, W29.21, D0.8cm.
Weight 0.77kg.
EAN: 889842014006.
Edit: £10 gift card also (thanks Interloper it slipped my mind)
EDIT: Credit to NeoTrix for editing the price to £679.
Top comments
roycom
10 Nov 1612#7
I'm not saying it's a bad device or price and it might be perfect for some people, but personally, I wouldn't touch a 700 pound device with a cheap as chips Celeron equivalent in it. But that's just me....
fishmaster
13 Nov 168#39
There isn't a perfect OS, however Windows 10 is far from perfect. I use MacOS (formerly OSX), Windows 10 and Linux, they all p*ss me off to some extent, just Windows 10 does a much better job of p*ssing me off than the rest.
meglaman2000
10 Nov 163#14
If you completely ignore all of the reasons you might need a portable machine, and you are comparing using the Surface only sat at your desk, and never moving to a desktop computer with a Wacom plugged in then sure.... your logic is sound.
trakker1
10 Nov 163#3
Think he said £200 more than this Surface
Latest comments (76)
fishmaster
3 Mar 17#76
This is fairly easy to answer, Windows 10 is not a finished concept and it's a bodged evolution or rather it hasn't evolved as well as OSX/Mac OS has, because it hasn't had the time to evolve. To make a straight point about what I mean, Windows 10 has Control Panel and it also has Settings, on a production OS this UI flaw is a major problem. Settings is a Windows App and Control Panel is legacy. Microsoft hasn't given up on Control Panel and many other legacy features because they don't want to alienate users of their previous systems, however their UI decisions are bonkers. Windows Update is not in Control Panel anymore because the system has been overhauled to a much better system of single cumulative updates, however this is a source of confusion. I'm not sorry to say but Windows 10 just doesn't have the optimisation of OSX/Mac OS or the right UI decisions, go and have a look at XP, the icons in XP look better than the low-fi Windows 10 icons. OSX has had since early 2001 to mature. This is how Microsoft are concentrating on updates, although they're doing more major updates per year than Apple.
The weakness of OSX/Mac OS is if you've used Windows, you expect fully featured right click menus, nope you don't get those is OSX/Mac OS. Spotlight is massively better than the search system in Windows 10. Windows 10 has on more than one occasion after a monthly update broken a major feature of the OS such as NAS connectivity and wireless! Unacceptable, it also didn't help that Windows 10 in its first incarnation was a heap of junk. It's progressing and it has some likeable features, but it's nowhere near as polished as OSX/Mac OS.
ZapGod
3 Mar 17#75
Just mentioned the iphone to show I am not anti apple - I now just think windows 1o is better than mac os
Make note of this in the comments for Photoshop CS3 and older:
"You can get this to work for older versions of photoshop by changing the exe name. Ie rename the exe from Photoshop.exe to PhotoshopCS3.exe and rename the manifest from Photoshop.exe.manifest to PhotoshopCS3.exe.manifest.
I did this with CS2 and works fine so presume it will work in CS3 also.
May have to update any program shortcuts to ref new file too – I didn’t need to in win 10, but for ppl with older versions this may be required."
I've used this hack with an old version of CS5 and can confirm it works perfectly.
Proveright
15 Nov 161#56
Can someone explain to me the advantages of a MS Surface pro that makes it worth £679 over any other tablet with a keyboard or compared to a lap top ?
mbuckhurst to Proveright
17 Nov 16#70
It really depends on your needs, this is a laptop specification machine in a tablet. I work away from home a lot and have to carry a machine for evening entertainment and work. Originally I had a Dell Latitude tablet, which was ok for most things, but Visual Studio and SQL Server soon slowed it to a crawl.
When the Venue Pro 11 came along with a core M processor, I switched to that, with a similar specification in other areas 8GB ram, 256GB ssd, it was a workable solution, but still struggled a bit on the heavy tasks and the screen size is still too small/low res to be able to do real work comfortably.
When the Surface i5 8GB 256GB SSD arrived at £971, with Quidco and an Xbox One (now sold for £200) it was time to update to this, helped by the knowledge that it's a business purchase so effectively tax free. This machine is almost as fast as an older generation i7, the SSD on mine is much faster than any other SSD I have in other laptops, the screen is really nice, the high resolution makes everything nice and sharp but you do have to rely on windows scaling, which some apps (Photoshop CS3) don't do well, though in the case of photoshop this is a benefit for me.
The pen input is clever, but a the moment I only use it for sticky notes.
A big hang up people seem to have is that this isn't as powerful as the latest generation CPUs, but it doesn't need to, unless you're into benchmarks an i5 will do fine, for most people, most of the time. I'd say roughly equivalent to the i7 for laptops around 3 years ago.
mike
fishmaster
17 Nov 16#69
An iPhone is irrelevant in terms of desktop operating systems. I personally don't like Windows 10 and I realise that not everyone agrees with me and it would be wrong of me to state that one OS is better than the other, which I haven't done, and after all I do use them all.
ZapGod
17 Nov 16#68
Well I still use an iPhone and unlikely to ever switch, but I now prefer windows 10 massively to Mac OS. Switching experience initially like this guy expresses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQtEN4FB9cU
in$anity
14 Nov 16#40
Not trying to cause a war here because i'd snap one of these up if the specs were good. But these are some of the most woeful specs i've ever seen. This should be minus 5000.
But then i'd be looking to run a few virtual machines on this device and I don't think it is designed for that. So for me it's cold for a few reasons.
For people who think this is hot? What exactly am I missing? I feel as if i'm missing something vital about the cost of this product and why that's the asking price (serious question.)
Interloper to in$anity
17 Nov 161#67
booboobeaker
16 Nov 16#66
Each to their own - my work bought me a MacBook Pro to use, but I can't work out any of the common shortcuts that I use every day with Windows! Point taken about Ruby etc out of the box with a Mac, but it's easy to install and configure on Windows (as well as using Cmder etc instead of command prompt), but let's face it for most users it's completely irrelevant. There really aren't many issues with Win 10 - I've found it to be very stable.
I think it just boils down to what you're used to a lot of the time, and the time wasted struggling with a Mac just wasn't worth it to me. Also everything seems to cost extra money on a Mac which really cheeses me off. My Mac hasn't been turned on for 3 months.
booboobeaker
16 Nov 16#65
I bought one of these for my wife about this time last year and a Dell XPS 13 for me.
I far prefer the latter, as I don't like the ergonomics of the Surface - the keyboard just doesn't sit right and you can't really use it successfully as a normal laptop with it sat on your knees.
However if you look past this (maybe others don't run into the issue) and if you're just using it for general day-to-day activities the Core M processor is plenty fine, and because it draws less power and produces less heat the Surface M3 is silent. I slapped a 200gb sandisk ultra to store extra data and it's fine.
fishmaster
16 Nov 161#64
There's loads of issues with Windows 10, running extremely slow on some hardware due to utilising too many system threads, the start menu problem still occurs, I get to see all the faults in my line of work. Even Skype screwing up. Yes I do know you can change the icons, that's not the point is it, the icons that come with the default install are like Amiga 500 icons from 25+ years ago. I do agree somewhat about OSX/MacOS with regard to peripherals, the only thing I really don't like about that OS is the right click menus I find them more convenient for tasks, however the Mac system is quicker, way quick to search using Spotlight and generally degrades in performance over time a lot less than a Windows system. Windows is designed to run on as many hardware configurations as possible, MacOS is designed to run on a very limited range of hardware and it's based on a Unix variant. You can literally type python or irb in to the terminal and use those interpreters, as well as the full gamut of over 40 years worth of Unix commands. I couldn't use Windows 10 over MacOS in preference but everyone is different.
mikebuzz
16 Nov 16#63
£849 now
mikerob1986
16 Nov 16#62
Still @ £849.00 for me
topgeezah
16 Nov 16#61
ITS BACK DOWN TO £679 AGAIN, BUY IT QUICKLY AS THE £10 VOUCHER OFFER ENDS TOMORROW (17/11) :wink:
NinJaSQUARE
16 Nov 16#59
Anyone getting a price of £849.00 on checkout? It's giving me that price even though in the basket it says £679.00...
NinJaSQUARE to NinJaSQUARE
16 Nov 16#60
Gah now price updated to normal price...damn it, I was going to get one.
fishmaster
10 Nov 16#22
Way way cheaper than a Mac, but Windows 10 is a disaster, I use Windows 10 everyday and it's urgh such a horrible OS. I had to install XP on a customer machine and the icons in XP look next gen compared to Windows 10! No one uses the Windows store, no one. There's been 3 versions of Windows 10 so far so they've had 3 goes at getting it right and more versions to come, I dislike the nasty ugly buggy crappy OS. Right click menu is way better in Windows though, I miss that in OSX when I use it. I bet you've guessed by now that I don't like Windows 10, the only reason to use it is DX12 and I hope Vulkan eventually kills off that reason.
swfarrington to fishmaster
12 Nov 161#32
Glad it's not just me with those feelings then! Only boot into it when I have to and then remember why I don't use it!
Does make the question of selecting the next machine to get that much more difficult as I have to factor in Linux compatibility into it, but on the plus side, my 7+ year old machine in the lounge still runs well now it's got an SSD in it :sunglasses:
ZapGod to fishmaster
13 Nov 161#36
I am amazed you hate Windows 10
I absolutely adore it and have used Macs and every flavour of Windows.
Swapped to Macs because of Vista but now loving everything Microsoft these days.
I am going to buy a Surface Studio next.
OrribleHarry to fishmaster
15 Nov 162#53
Can you tell me what "bugs" your talking about please? I have never encountered a single problem. Also you do know you change the icons?
I ditched Mac OSX after buying this (albeit i5 256go version) it's simply much more usable and compatible than my Mac ever was, I had lots of problems trying to get my Mac to work with peripherals I don't need to worry with windows as its standard and works with any hardware you can think of, you cannot say that about a Mac.
Zakcee to fishmaster
15 Nov 161#58
Don't be silly. Windows 10 is amazing I have it on 3 devices. A desktop, and on 2 surface pro 4's. And they all work flawlessly. Your living in the dark ages with windows xp.
JustLikeArkwright
15 Nov 16#54
Are the m3 units fanless?
trakker1 to JustLikeArkwright
15 Nov 161#57
Fanless
jaydeeuk1
10 Nov 16#1
Nice machine, bought a rose gold spectre x360 other day for about £200 more with bigger SSD, 8gb ram and a 6th gen i5 with 10-12hr battery life, better vfm imo.
edit - was £200
bouncy99 to jaydeeuk1
10 Nov 161#2
out of interest, where did you get a machine like that for £200
Interloper to jaydeeuk1
10 Nov 161#8
It's only better value if you don't need pen support. The x360 is a versatile laptop; the SP4 is a pen-enabled tablet with laptop functionality. Great machine you got there, though, at a decent price.
This is a great price including the Type Cover (m3 usually £749 + Type Cover £109). Don't forget you also get a £10 voucher for Argos purchases over £100, bringing this down to £689, a saving of £169. Heat!
Elbandito to jaydeeuk1
11 Nov 16#25
Hard to compare the 2 when one is a tablet and one is an Ultrabook. On a side note, for another 200 more than your HP I got a Dell precision 5510 with a 4k screen, 6th gen i7-6820, Nvidia Quadro graphics and 16gb ram and an SSD (that's only 256 but I'll upgrade to 1tb) and 3 year nbd warranty, which I believe is even better value, but it's hard to compare them as they are all different devices (yet I can see more similarities between a 13 and 15 inch Ultrabook than an Ultrabook and tablet).
mail-stephens to jaydeeuk1
15 Nov 16#55
Seriously have to keep an eye on those hinges though - working for a University all the Profs wanted these for their styling so we shelled out for 20...at least 10 have had their hinges replaced under warranty.
Michaelr1986
15 Nov 16#52
Thanks, I looked at the Q&A and it stated Windows Pro.
Michaelr1986
15 Nov 16#50
Hi,
Can anyone tell me what version of Windows 10 i.e. Home or Pro is on this surface?
Thanks
yimpster to Michaelr1986
15 Nov 16#51
Pretty sure it's PRO. I ran Bitlocker straight away on mine which is only included with Pro and Enterprise.
hamzahuk
12 Nov 16#30
How is this for on the go, to use mainly just for work. Also the M3 (i7 version) will it compare to my I7 4790k?
mcaf123 to hamzahuk
15 Nov 16#49
The M3 is a processor and the i7 is a processor. 2 separate products.... There is no i7 version of the M3
yimpster
15 Nov 16#48
I own the M3 version of this from John Lewis and find it perfectly usable for Office, Browsing and video playback. No performance issues whatsover. I'd actually describe it as quite nippy. My wife uses it for work and takes it out and about with her all day. She likes the form factor, weight and the fact the battery lasts for hours.
Good price for a good machine with the keyboard.
cooa99
15 Nov 16#42
Hi Guys,
I was wondering ( you Surface pro 4 owners) if it is possible to use it on my lap comfortably?
Thats the only thing holding me back .....
andrewpmoore to cooa99
15 Nov 16#45
I find it fine, it's a little different to a laptop due to the kick stand but still works fine on my lap.
halap3n0 to cooa99
15 Nov 16#47
It is not ideal, not as comfortable as a laptop. However, works fine on a desk, can be used in table mode standing up. Downsides for me are that it takes up a little more space on a train table, and is pretty bad on a lap, but the flexibility just about makes up for it. It is a lovely device, but not without issues including power management, issues when using an external monitor with different display scaling, and is fussy about cables if using a 2k monitor.
captainbeaky
15 Nov 16#43
£679 now with £10 voucher but rumours of big discounts from Microsoft on Black Friday (in America anyway).
This will be USD600. My (uneducated) guess is that'll it'll be around the GBP599 mark here.
badasschris
15 Nov 16#44
see here https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2623&cmp[]=2631
yours is about 30% faster but uses more energy. The benefit of the m3 is no fan and longer battery life but yo get a performance hit. If you check youtube you will see that the actual performance of the m3 surface is actually pretty decent and I can't think of much apart from gaming that will cause a problem on a device like this
Donk1979
14 Nov 16#41
I got a HP Pavilion x360 15-bk057sa from currys a couple of weeks ago when it was £469 with the active stylus and then with some discount the guy at the till gave me, due to it qualifying for their insurance, down to £433. Ive stuck an SSD in and it's quick at whatever i throw at it. How would this surface compare speed wise?
fishmaster
13 Nov 168#39
There isn't a perfect OS, however Windows 10 is far from perfect. I use MacOS (formerly OSX), Windows 10 and Linux, they all p*ss me off to some extent, just Windows 10 does a much better job of p*ssing me off than the rest.
tonyt3rry
13 Nov 16#38
would love it if these had proper performance processors in them for the price you are paying, always wanted a surface for taking my dj'ing portable and lightweight
roycom
13 Nov 16#37
You absolutely adore an operating system and are now going to buy a 3-4 grand Surface Studio?
Each to their own I guess... :laughing:
bigdai77
12 Nov 16#35
I don't disagree in many ways and I am no troll. I can only go on personal experience. I love it when it works which is 95% of time but it does still freeze and it annoys the hell out of me when this happens. This is especially true when using it to present and I have to hold down power for ten seconds and then restart. There are formums on this problem. For me it is nearly great but buggy.
bigdai77
10 Nov 16#17
Mine still has a tendency to freeze from time to time despite all updates. Great idea and when working superb but I wouldn't buy again for this reason.
mbuckhurst to bigdai77
12 Nov 161#34
My i5 has never frozen and personally I like windows 10, especially once you introduce touch and pen input. The pen on the surface is a whole lot better than any I've seen before and I've had a few tablets with pens of different technologies.
The surface i5 seems to run roughly equivalent to my 3-4 year old i7 powered laptop, can't compete against modern i7s, but that's fine, it's good enough for me to run SQL, Visual Studio, Photoshop and Office. I get around 6-7 hours battery life, but have just acquired a big lithium batter pack that's supposed to charge it 2-3 times, so it can cover a 9 hour flight.
For me the overwhelming reason to buy the surface not an ultrabook, was the weight, I needed a tablet first and a laptop second, mine has effectively replace 2 machines, so although the price is a bit high, by getting rid of 2 machines, it's made it a little more palatable.
mike
DarrylJohn
12 Nov 161#33
At this price, surely you'd be better off getting an I5 Surface pro 3 as those will be around £150-200 cheaper too for probably the same performance? Cheaper still if going second hand (sub £400)
I mean, solely comparing the CPUs check this link here
The only thing this M3 CPU has, is energy efficiency. Which is also negated as the Pro 4 has a smaller battery.
To counter that a little, the Surface pro has better resolution (SP3 is no slouch here though, it looks great) and the screen size is also 0.3" bigger.
On the face of it, is it worth the additional £? I certainly wouldn't spend £300 to upgrade to it if I could get £400 for me SP3 with the keyboard.
wallsend
11 Nov 16#27
can you play 'no man's sky' with these specs
plewis00 to wallsend
12 Nov 16#31
Wouldn't bank on it, that game is so poorly coded I've seen it bring gaming super-computer equivalents to their knees. Especially with it being CPU-bound rather than GPU, you're really after a quad-core CPU at least and a dedicated GPU, neither of which this has.
Core m3 CPU is fine for basic tasks and slightly more advanced ones too, it's nothing like as underpowered as an Atom-class Celeron (which are actually pretty usable these days) despite what synthetic benchmarks say and it has a fast SSD backing it up so the whole setup feels snappy.
livo86
11 Nov 16#29
You can also get this with 0% Apr on their credit card over 24 months
Solidfunk
11 Nov 16#28
I got the surface 4 i5 4gb 128gb for £720 through very after £100 cashback, it was also on sale. Really happy with it, sadly I didn't have the extra £300 to get the 8gb version :disappointed:
roycom
11 Nov 16#26
If I was replacing any desktop/laptop/2in1 with a new 2in1 I would want to know how much faster or slower it is likely to be for the money, and CPU is a factor in that. It would after all be the main/only computer.
"as is every portable machine ever made", I think you underestimate PCWorld mate, they have £300-£350 desktop PCs with vastly inferior CPUs to sub £300 laptops. :laughing:
iz123456789
10 Nov 161#4
Finally a decent price from Microsoft for Surfaces but I dont know how I feel about M3 processor... its pretty basic!
roycom to iz123456789
10 Nov 16#5
Looking at benchmarks it's about the same speed as a 35 quid Celeron. :confused:
Mind you, the Celerons at that price are surprisingly good value for money.
MrPuddington to iz123456789
11 Nov 16#24
Yes, it is, but then again this is the budget model of the Surface. You will never get the performance of a decent workstation in this form factor anyway (even the i7-U is beaten by a mid range PC), and for light tasks it is ok.
meglaman2000
11 Nov 16#23
It's like taking any laptop, comparing it to a desktop cpu and saying "I think thats underpowered for the money". If your only metric is how powerful the CPU is for the money the of course its underpowered, as is every portable machine ever made.
Johnmcl7
10 Nov 162#21
I have a couple of Core-m powered tablet 2 in 1 devices (a Latitude 13 7350 and a Latitude 11 5175) and a Latitude 12 E7240 with a Core i5 ULV. I much prefer the Core-m processors particularly for thin devices, they offer better performance than BayTrail/Cherry Trail Atoms for simple stuff like running embedded plugins (I find the Atoms can sometimes struggle a bit with that) but their power consumption is far lower allowing them to run entirely passively.
I don't find the ULV processors offer such a good balance, their much higher power consumption means when they're packed into a small chassis they need a fan which can be very audible and the machine heats up considerably. For all that, the ULV processors are not that fast either and I've found I rarely use the i5 ULV machine - it's hot and loud even in normal use but its processor isn't nearly fast enough to make that worthwhile. If I was wanting a single machine to cover all my uses I wouldn't even consider a ULV processor, even a normal mobile processor is not that fast so I'd take a larger chassis to get a reasonable processor in it.
roycom
10 Nov 16#20
If someone is going to outlay this kind of money on the device they will quite possibly be replacing their laptop and/or their desktop PC, a good friend of mine is thinking of replacing both his laptop and PC with an i7 SP4. My comparison is simple, if you are thinking of using this as a replacement for one of those types of machine, it's similar in performance to a recent generation desktop equipped Celeron CPU. I didn't say it was a poor device, I just think it's a little underpowered for the money, that's all.
grimboj2
10 Nov 16#19
The CPU is ok (comparable to an i5) but 128gb is just too small. It's fine for a works laptop but if you want iTunes, photo editing or some games then it will become a problem quickly. get m3/i5 256gb model.
Also HP Spectre x360 got much better reviews, so if you're gonna spend £1,000 on a 2 in 1 then you're better off with that.
amour3k
10 Nov 16#18
That's a yes and a no.
£10 Argos Voucher is as per 'future purchases'?, eg. £10 counter-balanced against any/all your near future Argos purchases and the like?.
As opposed to that of being counter-balanced against any/all here and now purchases instead, or whatever?, so .....
But yes, the £10 freebie is a nice touch mind?, lol. :-)
abdiman
10 Nov 16#16
Got the i5 model with Xbox One and keyboard for just over a grand. Brilliant product and the keyboard is an absolute must. However the battery life is nowhere near 9 hours. More like 4-5 hours.
Donk1979
10 Nov 161#15
I got THIS a couple of weeks ago from Currys. How would the M3 cpu in the surface compare to the i3 the x360 i got?
I swapped out the HDD for a SSD i had and it flies. Should of been £469 with pen but the lad on the till said it qualified for their insurance with the first 3 or 4 months free and dropped the price down to £433 because i said i didn't want the insurance and he said i could have the discount anyway. He signed me up to the direct debit and told me just to cancel it before it started and it would be fine because there was no commitment with the insurance. I've cancelled it already so i thought it was pretty good for £433
meglaman2000
10 Nov 163#14
If you completely ignore all of the reasons you might need a portable machine, and you are comparing using the Surface only sat at your desk, and never moving to a desktop computer with a Wacom plugged in then sure.... your logic is sound.
Nutkin
10 Nov 161#13
Yeah but fruit is fruit dude.
roycom
10 Nov 161#12
Performance results are performance results dude....:wink:
Eez1
10 Nov 161#11
Apples and oranges dude :laughing:
roycom
10 Nov 161#10
Desktop.
Eez1
10 Nov 16#9
You talking desktop or mobile celeron chips? :/
roycom
10 Nov 1612#7
I'm not saying it's a bad device or price and it might be perfect for some people, but personally, I wouldn't touch a 700 pound device with a cheap as chips Celeron equivalent in it. But that's just me....
trakker1
10 Nov 162#6
The specs are far from mind blowing but if you look at the pros and cons this could suit some people's needs.
It's far cheaper than the i5 and i7 variants, has no fan, cooler and marginally lighter. This also includes the keyboard.
On forums I've looked at people have been very happy with this model, it's a nice middle ground from tablet to PC I would say.
![Microsoft Surface Pro 4 12.3 Inch M3 with Keyboard - £699 [Now £679.00 + £10 voucher] @ Argos](/images/topics/98872_1.jpg)
![Fresh Breakfast Meat Box (Using code) @ Campbells Meat [Haggis / Lorne Sausage / Bacon / Black Pudding & More]](/images/topics/208684_1.jpg)
![[Xbox One] Q. u. b. e: Director's Cut on Deals with Gold](/images/topics/208716_1.jpg)
Opening post
The versatility of a laptop and tablet in one. Surface pro 4 powers through everything you need to do, while being lighter than ever before. He 12.3 Pixelsense™ screen has extremely high contrast and low glare so you can work through the day without straining your eyes. Go from tablet to laptop in a snap with the multi-position kickstand and improved keyboard.
Exceptional performance. Surface Pro 4 with 6th gen Intel® core™ M3, i5, and i7 processors is not only more powerful – it is quieter, runs cooler and is even more efficient than before, .
CPU, Memory and Operating System:
Intel m3-6y30 dual core processor.
0.9GHz processor speed.
4GB RAM.
128GB solid state hard drive.
Microsoft Windows 10.
Display features:
12.3 inch screen.
High definition display.
Graphics:
Intel HD Graphics515 graphics card.
Shared graphics card.
Dedicated graphics card.
Interfaces and connectivity:
1 USB 3.0 port.
Bluetooth.
Multimedia features:
Built-in webcam.
Built-in mic.
Dolby sound system.
Software included: no.
General features:
Up to 9 hours battery life.
Size H20.1, W29.21, D0.8cm.
Weight 0.77kg.
EAN: 889842014006.
Edit: £10 gift card also (thanks Interloper it slipped my mind)
EDIT: Credit to NeoTrix for editing the price to £679.
Top comments
Latest comments (76)
The weakness of OSX/Mac OS is if you've used Windows, you expect fully featured right click menus, nope you don't get those is OSX/Mac OS. Spotlight is massively better than the search system in Windows 10. Windows 10 has on more than one occasion after a monthly update broken a major feature of the OS such as NAS connectivity and wireless! Unacceptable, it also didn't help that Windows 10 in its first incarnation was a heap of junk. It's progressing and it has some likeable features, but it's nowhere near as polished as OSX/Mac OS.
http://www.lovemysurface.net/fix-scaling-issues-older-windows-apps/
Make note of this in the comments for Photoshop CS3 and older:
"You can get this to work for older versions of photoshop by changing the exe name. Ie rename the exe from Photoshop.exe to PhotoshopCS3.exe and rename the manifest from Photoshop.exe.manifest to PhotoshopCS3.exe.manifest.
I did this with CS2 and works fine so presume it will work in CS3 also.
May have to update any program shortcuts to ref new file too – I didn’t need to in win 10, but for ppl with older versions this may be required."
I've used this hack with an old version of CS5 and can confirm it works perfectly.
When the Venue Pro 11 came along with a core M processor, I switched to that, with a similar specification in other areas 8GB ram, 256GB ssd, it was a workable solution, but still struggled a bit on the heavy tasks and the screen size is still too small/low res to be able to do real work comfortably.
When the Surface i5 8GB 256GB SSD arrived at £971, with Quidco and an Xbox One (now sold for £200) it was time to update to this, helped by the knowledge that it's a business purchase so effectively tax free. This machine is almost as fast as an older generation i7, the SSD on mine is much faster than any other SSD I have in other laptops, the screen is really nice, the high resolution makes everything nice and sharp but you do have to rely on windows scaling, which some apps (Photoshop CS3) don't do well, though in the case of photoshop this is a benefit for me.
The pen input is clever, but a the moment I only use it for sticky notes.
A big hang up people seem to have is that this isn't as powerful as the latest generation CPUs, but it doesn't need to, unless you're into benchmarks an i5 will do fine, for most people, most of the time. I'd say roughly equivalent to the i7 for laptops around 3 years ago.
mike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQtEN4FB9cU
But then i'd be looking to run a few virtual machines on this device and I don't think it is designed for that. So for me it's cold for a few reasons.
For people who think this is hot? What exactly am I missing? I feel as if i'm missing something vital about the cost of this product and why that's the asking price (serious question.)
I think it just boils down to what you're used to a lot of the time, and the time wasted struggling with a Mac just wasn't worth it to me. Also everything seems to cost extra money on a Mac which really cheeses me off. My Mac hasn't been turned on for 3 months.
I far prefer the latter, as I don't like the ergonomics of the Surface - the keyboard just doesn't sit right and you can't really use it successfully as a normal laptop with it sat on your knees.
However if you look past this (maybe others don't run into the issue) and if you're just using it for general day-to-day activities the Core M processor is plenty fine, and because it draws less power and produces less heat the Surface M3 is silent. I slapped a 200gb sandisk ultra to store extra data and it's fine.
Does make the question of selecting the next machine to get that much more difficult as I have to factor in Linux compatibility into it, but on the plus side, my 7+ year old machine in the lounge still runs well now it's got an SSD in it :sunglasses:
I absolutely adore it and have used Macs and every flavour of Windows.
Swapped to Macs because of Vista but now loving everything Microsoft these days.
I am going to buy a Surface Studio next.
I ditched Mac OSX after buying this (albeit i5 256go version) it's simply much more usable and compatible than my Mac ever was, I had lots of problems trying to get my Mac to work with peripherals I don't need to worry with windows as its standard and works with any hardware you can think of, you cannot say that about a Mac.
edit - was £200
This is a great price including the Type Cover (m3 usually £749 + Type Cover £109). Don't forget you also get a £10 voucher for Argos purchases over £100, bringing this down to £689, a saving of £169. Heat!
Can anyone tell me what version of Windows 10 i.e. Home or Pro is on this surface?
Thanks
Good price for a good machine with the keyboard.
I was wondering ( you Surface pro 4 owners) if it is possible to use it on my lap comfortably?
Thats the only thing holding me back .....
http://blackfriday.bestbuy.com/?category=doorbusters&filter=&sub_cat=Laptops,Tablets&cat=Computers%20%26%20Tablets
This will be USD600. My (uneducated) guess is that'll it'll be around the GBP599 mark here.
yours is about 30% faster but uses more energy. The benefit of the m3 is no fan and longer battery life but yo get a performance hit. If you check youtube you will see that the actual performance of the m3 surface is actually pretty decent and I can't think of much apart from gaming that will cause a problem on a device like this
Each to their own I guess... :laughing:
The surface i5 seems to run roughly equivalent to my 3-4 year old i7 powered laptop, can't compete against modern i7s, but that's fine, it's good enough for me to run SQL, Visual Studio, Photoshop and Office. I get around 6-7 hours battery life, but have just acquired a big lithium batter pack that's supposed to charge it 2-3 times, so it can cover a 9 hour flight.
For me the overwhelming reason to buy the surface not an ultrabook, was the weight, I needed a tablet first and a laptop second, mine has effectively replace 2 machines, so although the price is a bit high, by getting rid of 2 machines, it's made it a little more palatable.
mike
I mean, solely comparing the CPUs check this link here
The only thing this M3 CPU has, is energy efficiency. Which is also negated as the Pro 4 has a smaller battery.
To counter that a little, the Surface pro has better resolution (SP3 is no slouch here though, it looks great) and the screen size is also 0.3" bigger.
On the face of it, is it worth the additional £? I certainly wouldn't spend £300 to upgrade to it if I could get £400 for me SP3 with the keyboard.
Core m3 CPU is fine for basic tasks and slightly more advanced ones too, it's nothing like as underpowered as an Atom-class Celeron (which are actually pretty usable these days) despite what synthetic benchmarks say and it has a fast SSD backing it up so the whole setup feels snappy.
"as is every portable machine ever made", I think you underestimate PCWorld mate, they have £300-£350 desktop PCs with vastly inferior CPUs to sub £300 laptops. :laughing:
Mind you, the Celerons at that price are surprisingly good value for money.
I don't find the ULV processors offer such a good balance, their much higher power consumption means when they're packed into a small chassis they need a fan which can be very audible and the machine heats up considerably. For all that, the ULV processors are not that fast either and I've found I rarely use the i5 ULV machine - it's hot and loud even in normal use but its processor isn't nearly fast enough to make that worthwhile. If I was wanting a single machine to cover all my uses I wouldn't even consider a ULV processor, even a normal mobile processor is not that fast so I'd take a larger chassis to get a reasonable processor in it.
Also HP Spectre x360 got much better reviews, so if you're gonna spend £1,000 on a 2 in 1 then you're better off with that.
£10 Argos Voucher is as per 'future purchases'?, eg. £10 counter-balanced against any/all your near future Argos purchases and the like?.
As opposed to that of being counter-balanced against any/all here and now purchases instead, or whatever?, so .....
But yes, the £10 freebie is a nice touch mind?, lol. :-)
I swapped out the HDD for a SSD i had and it flies. Should of been £469 with pen but the lad on the till said it qualified for their insurance with the first 3 or 4 months free and dropped the price down to £433 because i said i didn't want the insurance and he said i could have the discount anyway. He signed me up to the direct debit and told me just to cancel it before it started and it would be fine because there was no commitment with the insurance. I've cancelled it already so i thought it was pretty good for £433
It's far cheaper than the i5 and i7 variants, has no fan, cooler and marginally lighter. This also includes the keyboard.
On forums I've looked at people have been very happy with this model, it's a nice middle ground from tablet to PC I would say.