If there was a flagship bearer of Windows 8, it would have to be the Microsoft Surface. The Redmond based company have released three different generations of tablets and the PRO 3 is the most recent edition to their family. Microsoft markets the Surface Pro 3 to different segments of people, depending on their budget.
The model we purchased was the 256GB Windows 8.1 Pro Tablet With Intel Core i7 Processor edition. All of the apps we tested performed moderately well, but this certainly is not a replacement for your laptop.
For one, it heats up super fast and the fan is permanently running at full throttle. Not only is this loud, but you can tell that it will drain your battery in short order.
This tablet also struggles with most games that people tend to play. League of Legends, Star Wars – The Old Republic and DOTA were 3 games we tested and even with minimal settings, the gameplay experience was sub-par. This is the kind of tablet you buy to play the dedicated RT style games from the Windows 8 store or run legacy apps like Microsoft Office, Photoshop or thousands of others. You can think of it as a productivity tablet, not a hardcore entertainment one.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.