Massive let down so far.

[LukeLog]

Firstly a bit of back story. almost 2 years ago now I bought an SP4 i7, I'm a commercial director and thought it would be good for writing up scripts, drawing storyboards and some basic editing when on the road.

I found it to be a nightmare, very buggy and the pen latency just wouldn't allow me the accuracy I needed. I sold it after 3 weeks and picked up an Ipad pro and pencil. Drawing on the ipad has been fantastic and it's help me win plenty of pitches. However, at £500 or so, it's a big expense for something that essentially I only use for drawing boards, I saw the new Surface Pro and with amazon offering the m3 version for £569 in the sale I thought if the drawing was improved then it would be a better all round tool for the money.

Anyway, it turned up on Thursday so I've had it 3 days now, and whilst it has shown glimpses of being fantastic, the overall experience has been nothing less than infuriating.

The first day was all good, setup went relatively well if a little slow, but then it's only the core m3 version so I didn't expect a rocket ship. However it then took the best part of the last 2 days to do updates, with multiple random failures. Finally this evening the updates actually installed and I got some proper time with the device.

Now I find that the touch screen no longer works for more than 20 seconds at a time, I went through the whole remote access repair thing with a microsoft agent, who was very helpful and polite. The issue seemed to be fixed so I loaded up sketchable only to find that I can't draw a straight line on the right hand side of the page, the line just jitters up and down, the left hand side of the page is fine. Two minutes into this experience the touch screen stops working again, I'm now back in a queue with microsoft support, for the second time on a 3 day old device!

I feel like the premise of the surface is great, but the reality of it so far over 2 devices is one of frustration. As it is at the moment I don't dare do any work on it as I just don't trust the reliability.

 

[techiez]

Firstly a bit of back story. almost 2 years ago now I bought an SP4 i7, I'm a commercial director and thought it would be good for writing up scripts, drawing storyboards and some basic editing when on the road.

I found it to be a nightmare, very buggy and the pen latency just wouldn't allow me the accuracy I needed. I sold it after 3 weeks and picked up an Ipad pro and pencil. Drawing on the ipad has been fantastic and it's help me win plenty of pitches. However, at £500 or so, it's a big expense for something that essentially I only use for drawing boards, I saw the new Surface Pro and with amazon offering the m3 version for £569 in the sale I thought if the drawing was improved then it would be a better all round tool for the money.

Anyway, it turned up on Thursday so I've had it 3 days now, and whilst it has shown glimpses of being fantastic, the overall experience has been nothing less than infuriating.

The first day was all good, setup went relatively well if a little slow, but then it's only the core m3 version so I didn't expect a rocket ship. However it then took the best part of the last 2 days to do updates, with multiple random failures. Finally this evening the updates actually installed and I got some proper time with the device.

Now I find that the touch screen no longer works for more than 20 seconds at a time, I went through the whole remote access repair thing with a microsoft agent, who was very helpful and polite. The issue seemed to be fixed so I loaded up sketchable only to find that I can't draw a straight line on the right hand side of the page, the line just jitters up and down, the left hand side of the page is fine. Two minutes into this experience the touch screen stops working again, I'm now back in a queue with microsoft support, for the second time on a 3 day old device!

I feel like the premise of the surface is great, but the reality of it so far over 2 devices is one of frustration. As it is at the moment I don't dare do any work on it as I just don't trust the reliability.

you shd try samsung galaxy book, spen experience is far superior

 

[Ekhangel]

Right after buying my i5 I had to spend endless hours trying to fix different problems and annoyances with it (including the ill-famed random hibernation issue), so I feel you. The device works okay now, although Internet connection sometimes drops in Edge (!) after waking it from sleep.

On the other hand, my mom's SP5 m3 died on her within a month from purchase.

So yeah, the product tends to be a nightmare, and - in all honesty - I wouldn't recommend it to business people due to severe reliability issues pertaining both to hardware as well as the wretched system itself (Windows), with its stability problems and endless infuriating minor annoyances.

Had Surface been executed properly, it would be great. But it isn't. I sometimes wish Apple just released an actual competitor, like an iPad with MacOS and decent keyboard.

 

[Adventurer64]

I have an SP2017 i7 that I purchased at launch and have not encountered any issues. I use daily for work, personal, consumption, etc. Pen works great, much better than SP3 I used to own. Too bad some are reporting issues because it's an awesome device. My SP3 was trouble free until I sold it after purchasing SP2107.

 

[LukeLog]

I've been sent a replacement through Amazon, I will do one more setup and update, if this one has issues I give up.

 

[Adventurer64]

Both SP's I've owned were purchased at MS store. Wonder if that makes a difference. It shouldn't, but who knows.

 

[Ekhangel]

Mine was too, and had the most problems of all three I bought in total...

 

[stodge]

I bought one too but the virtual keyboard is very inconsistent and it always ran warm, even with light web browsing. I returned it after two days.

 

[Blackhivemedia]

I've actually had quite the opposite experience, as far as reliability goes. As a graphic artist for the last 13 years (wow I feel old) the Surface has been a dream come true, tho it took some iterations for it to work with my flow.

I sold my MacBook in 2013 and got a Surface Pro. It was promising, but I still reverted to using a Wacom due to the screen real estate and lackluster pen. I never had any problems with it tho, thing was a tank (still works perfectly to this day; my brother in law has it).

I got a Surface Pro 3 when it came out. Was wow'd by everything EXCEPT that without a discreet GPU, pushing a lot of layers in Photoshop really bogged it down and the screen was still small for painting. I still used it as my sole computer though (with a Wacom connected), until I sold it last year. Never had any show stopping issues aside from fighting with Wacom drivers (known issues across PC and Mac).

Wife had a Surface 3 (the cheap Atom one I think). She used it at the office all the time for notes and even development (she is a programmer). But, when she moved on to another project she needed something with more power. Never had a single issue with it and my nephew uses it for school now.

Finally, I recently bought a (refurb) Surface Book. I decided to go with a refurb since I read they had some launch issues; figured a refurb was a safer bet (and cheaper). I have had great luck so far. Very minor issues on occasion (once it didn't detect the keyboard and I had to restart), but overall it's been very solid. Excellent in Photoshop (with the dGPU), great screen real estate for painting, and all around slick computer. Quite honestly if this SB didn't do it for me, I'd be done with the Surface line. Not because they haven't been dependable, but because they haven't been something that worked with my workflow... until I got the SB.

 

[vodda]

How is m3 for office performance? I just need a tablet for browsing the net, some mailing, youtube,..., and thats it. I currently have an old asus t100 which is still fine, just screen is too small. I prefer m3 due to its long battery life.

 

[real0395]

I guess I'm one of the more fortunate ones, but I have the microsoft surface pro 2017 and haven't had any issues. Prior to that I had the surface book which was also great. Though my use case is probably different from yours, I mainly write notes though I haven't noticed any issues with drawing straight lines. I'm wondering, including with the software issues in the beginning and the drawing issue on the right side that maybe there's a hardware defect with yours.

 

[ClintRo]

How is m3 for office performance? I just need a tablet for browsing the net, some mailing, youtube,..., and thats it. I currently have an old asus t100 which is still fine, just screen is too small. I prefer m3 due to its long battery life.

The M3 was made for you... I am sure you will be happy with those uses.

 

[Isaiah Heart]

So, is it advisable to go for the Surface pro 2017 m3? I'm saving to get one for reading books, email, office etc.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

Is m3 the new/similar to the i3?

I just bought i5 8/256. Being able to hold more in memory and a number of web pages, apps.

 

[Reynaldo Navedo]

Firstly a bit of back story. almost 2 years ago now I bought an SP4 i7, I'm a commercial director and thought it would be good for writing up scripts, drawing storyboards and some basic editing when on the road.

I found it to be a nightmare, very buggy and the pen latency just wouldn't allow me the accuracy I needed. I sold it after 3 weeks and picked up an Ipad pro and pencil. Drawing on the ipad has been fantastic and it's help me win plenty of pitches. However, at £500 or so, it's a big expense for something that essentially I only use for drawing boards, I saw the new Surface Pro and with amazon offering the m3 version for £569 in the sale I thought if the drawing was improved then it would be a better all round tool for the money.

Anyway, it turned up on Thursday so I've had it 3 days now, and whilst it has shown glimpses of being fantastic, the overall experience has been nothing less than infuriating.

The first day was all good, setup went relatively well if a little slow, but then it's only the core m3 version so I didn't expect a rocket ship. However it then took the best part of the last 2 days to do updates, with multiple random failures. Finally this evening the updates actually installed and I got some proper time with the device.

Now I find that the touch screen no longer works for more than 20 seconds at a time, I went through the whole remote access repair thing with a microsoft agent, who was very helpful and polite. The issue seemed to be fixed so I loaded up sketchable only to find that I can't draw a straight line on the right hand side of the page, the line just jitters up and down, the left hand side of the page is fine. Two minutes into this experience the touch screen stops working again, I'm now back in a queue with microsoft support, for the second time on a 3 day old device!

I feel like the premise of the surface is great, but the reality of it so far over 2 devices is one of frustration. As it is at the moment I don't dare do any work on it as I just don't trust the reliability.

 

[Reynaldo Navedo]

Seems like you just had bad luck with the device everytime. I have had a couple of surface and have no experience none of that. Sorry I can’t tell the same about it.

 

[superdude07]

I purchased the SP4 M3 model in March 2016 and it hasn't missed a beat since then. I have been very pleased with the performance, general web browsing, YouTube and other video streaming. I dont use the pen very often but when I have it has performed perfectly. I have done a little video editing and performed acceptably.

I have looked at upgrading but there is really no advantage for me so I'm sticking with it. I have the base model 128gb storage 4gb Ram, while it would be nice to have more RAM I have never needed to restrict what I was doing, frequently I have multiple Chrome tabs open with no problems. The only thing I think it could have been a little better with is battery life, but its still perfectly acceptable.

I work in IT and frequently get asked to recommend laptops/pc's and quite often advise 'normal' users they really dont need more the then M series processors. Of course, if you can get an i3-3-7 for reasonable money its worth considering but the big draw for me and the SP4 CoreM was the fan-less design.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

I debated a bare bones Surface M but given the difference in my Note 8 over S8+ I wanted 8GB. And two cores.

Would be nice to try with using i5 or even i7. There are other brands with 12GB too that would allow more memory. I read about improvements in new MS pen but won't have it until next week.

I am disappointed with using keyboard on Surface. It seems to be sluggish at times or forgetful.

 

[ClintRo]

So, is it advisable to go for the Surface pro 2017 m3? I'm saving to get one for reading books, email, office etc.

I think so, the i5 or i7 would be more future proof but for the usage you listed it should be fine.

 

[AyeBang]

For me New SF m is ok for simple job like that including Microsoft Office too.