Is M3 version that Bad? Technobuffalo says don't buy it.

[tboy2000]

My wife had the same question and was using an sp3 I7. She wanted the new sp4 because of the improved pen and screen, so she preordered another sp4 i7. in the meantime, she traded her sp3 for an m3 sp4 to try out the fanless version and see what it's performance was like.The question she had was, mainly due to the fan, should she go i7 or m3? She uses lightroom and photoshop, along with the other task. once she finally got her spr i7, she found that there wasn't a significant enough improvement for what she does to justify the additional expense or noise of the fan.

While you're looking at these, I would highly recommend looking at HP's Spectre x2. it's available with a more m processor choices(m3, m5, and m7), less expensive, and with an LTE radio for Verizon. the problem is that it's got a smaller screen, and it simply isn't a surface. I've become slightly leary of this after owning devices where they cut support for updating drivers, although I have no reason to suspect HP doing this.

Sorry just to clarify are you saying your wife prefers the M3 and it's good enough for her Photoshop and lightroom usage?

 

[rory753]

yes, but also recognize, she does have a i7-16gb desktop to fall back on. if you shop around, you can get both a thin client i7 desktop and an m3 sp4 for less money then 1 sp4 i7. but I will say that I've seen her using the docked m3 more times then her desktop.

 

[dirtyvu]

A desktop doesn't really help much with PhotoShop unless you get a Wacom tablet to go with it. PhotoShop is terrible with a mouse. That's probably the reason she uses a Surface. I also have a beast of a desktop but it's primarily for video encoding, video editing, gaming, and long document editing. Lightroom makes far more sense with a desktop than Photoshop. However unless you calibrate monitors properly, it's much better to do your workflow on one color profile and monitor to ensure consistency. I edit with adobe camera raw and definitely need all the speed I can get (since I'm often editing hundreds of pictures).

 

[Eric J F]

I just woke my m3 after 13 hours of sleep and the battery lost 15% over that period. Before you get too excited, I have to add that it was with Windows Hello, Cortana, and Bluetooth all turned off.

At least now there is a rough baseline sleep loss of about 1% per hour. If someone wants to be ambitious, they could incrementally enable each feature to see the impact.

 

[zkyevolved]

I just woke my m3 after 13 hours of sleep and the battery lost 15% over that period. Before you get too excited, I have to add that it was with Windows Hello, Cortana, and Bluetooth all turned off.

At least now there is a rough baseline sleep loss of about 1% per hour. If someone wants to be ambitious, they could incrementally enable each feature to see the impact.

In reality, it slept for 2 hours and then hibernated (which is turning it off for all intents purposes). So, realistically speaking, you lost 15% in 2 hours... After those 2 hours your computer hibernated and turned off, therefore not losing anymore :-\ It's a current bug.... The MS team says we'll be getting a fix for this in the following months.

 

[Eric J F]

Good point, but by your interpretation it would have dropped roughly the same amount if I'd left it 20 or 30 hours.

The main thing I wanted to emphasize is that the 'base' device, both in terms of models and enabled features, doesn't show the extreme losses lots of people are complaining about.

 

[zkyevolved]

Good point, but by your interpretation it would have dropped roughly the same amount if I'd left it 20 or 30 hours.

The main thing I wanted to emphasize is that the 'base' device, both in terms of models and enabled features, doesn't show the extreme losses lots of people are complaining about.

Actually, it's been studied. If you have no apps running, no browser or documents or anything in ram, you will see between 1.5-3% drop per hour. If you have lots of tabs, dynamic websites refreshing, documents and PowerPoints open, then it'll jump to at least double. It's all about what is loaded into memory.

 

[tboy2000]

You know what, it seems that the M3 is the best of the bunch in terms of weight, fanless and price. It's more than capable to do what we expect a tablet to do. Also there are many videos on YouTube running games with acceptable quality and framerate. Why anyone would buy an i7 surface puzzles me slightly. I think I am sold. M3 it is. Thank you all.

 

[tboy2000]

Just placed my order for the M3. Can't wait!

 

[Brownartist]

Just placed my order for the M3. Can't wait!

I can feel you, same here!

 

[Grimmric]

You know what, it seems that the M3 is the best of the bunch in terms of weight, fanless and price. It's more than capable to do what we expect a tablet to do. Also there are many videos on YouTube running games with acceptable quality and framerate. Why anyone would buy an i7 surface puzzles me slightly. I think I am sold. M3 it is. Thank you all.

It depends what you are buying it for.
If its only to use as a tablet then i think a i7 could be overkill.
But if you buy it as a laptop, then you have to think about how you are going to use it.
Nobody can tell you that a i7 is overkill as only you knows what you want to do with it.

 

[slysy]

You know what, it seems that the M3 is the best of the bunch in terms of weight, fanless and price. It's more than capable to do what we expect a tablet to do. Also there are many videos on YouTube running games with acceptable quality and framerate. Why anyone would buy an i7 surface puzzles me slightly. I think I am sold. M3 it is. Thank you all.

I wouldn't take the weight into account personally. Yes it is the lightest, but the difference is so small it's not noticeable in real world usage. Being fanless is awesome though, as is being cheaper than the other models

 

[slysy]

While you're looking at these, I would highly recommend looking at HP's Spectre x2. it's available with a more m processor choices(m3, m5, and m7), less expensive, and with an LTE radio for Verizon. the problem is that it's got a smaller screen, and it simply isn't a surface. I've become slightly leary of this after owning devices where they cut support for updating drivers, although I have no reason to suspect HP doing this.

The X2 looks like a nice machine, but has quite a few things I didn't like:

Weight - Significantly heavier
Screen - Lower resolution and not as bright
Speakers - Poor quality
Bezels - Pretty big
Kickstand - I didn't like as much (subjective I guess)
Logo - HP logo on front of device (I prefer having no logo like Surface)
Keyboard - does not have colour choices
Pen - don't think it has eraser at the top (instead it's button on the side)
Support - Doubt HP Support will be as good as MS Support
New Model - Newer model is coming soon already (HP Elite X2)
USB-C - Great in a way, but then you cannot plug in any USB-A devices without an adapter
Charger - Uses a USB port (could be seen as advantage or disadvantage)
Windows Hello - not supported
SSD - Half the speed of 256Gb+ version of SP4

Also my X2 came DOA which did not give me a great first impression.

Of course the big advantage is that a fanless 8Gb model is available and it's much cheaper (and USB-C maybe depending on your point of view)

 

[anon(10083381)]

I would never buy the surface Pro 4 with the Core m3. Trying to drive a screen with a resolution higher than 1080p is just a death wish and the 4gb of ram is just a joke. My daily driver is an Asus ZenBook with a Core m3, 1080p screen and 8gb of ram and it is powerful enough for basic office tasks (word, emails, google chrome) but I have a desktop for anything more demanding that I want to do.