Customer Ratings & Reviews

Great computer, does what I want it to do. Powerful to run the many programs I need it to run.

Rock solid and reliable, this laptop does it all with a powerful CPU and memory.

Laptop, For my son as he went off to college he loves the product

Great for my college student. He is able to take notes In class and conduct all his work.

Love this laptop 2 in 1, amazing for photo editing, digital drawing and good for some 3D work

this is a great laptop and should be able to take on anything that college can throw at it.

Bought this as an open box and bought the protection plan. I was having technical problems from day one with it, did some troubleshooting yet the problems persisted. I took it to the geek squad and the initial response with no troubleshooting was that they were not responsible because the issue wasn't hardware related. After several go-arounds with management, they agreed to diagnose it free of charge (as my argument was why should I have to pay to diagnose a machine I just bought. That it should be there responsibility.) Turns out the issue was a hardware failure and they wouuld send it back to Microsoft. Had I not persisted, the onus was all on me. I felt that that was a poor way to handle my issue. At the end of the day, the managers were nice, but I shouldn't hav had to fight so hard for the right thing to be done. I really like the product and hope it comes back problem free.

I received the Surface Book 3 as a part of Best Buy’s Tech Insider Program. Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews. The short and sweet version of this review? The Surface Book 3 is a beast. BUILD The Surface Book 3 is all metal, and solidly built. My favorite feature is the keyboard deck. It’s a little hard to see in pictures, but there’s a slight downward curve to the left and right of the keyboard that is incredibly comfortable. It almost feels soft, for lack of a better word. The keyboard is great, and one of the better ones I’ve used. The keys seem like they might be a little more spaced out than most keyboards I’m used to, but it only took a few minutes of typing to get the hang of it. The travel is great, the clicky-ness is great, and there are multiple stages of backlighting. The trackpad is a little small, but I’m actually a fan of it being a little smaller. I tend to rest my hands on the keyboard deck while typing, and I tend to get a lot of “ghost” taps on the trackpad because of it. The size of this trackpad is perfect, as my hands rest on the solid metal while typing instead. HINGE The hinge is the most unique thing about the Surface Book line, and I have no complaints. Even though the screen doesn’t sit flush with the keyboard deck like most laptops, it’s built so solidly that there’s no weird flex or bending. I do worry a bit about something getting in the gap in my bag, but so far so good. SCREEN The screen is outstanding. It’s a 3:2 aspect ratio, which is my favorite for productivity. There’s black bars when watching a video fullscreen, but that’s the only downside. The screen is so high-resolution that Windows comes out of the box set at 200% scaling, and it looks fantastic. The colors are great, the viewing angles are great, and it gets plenty bright. If this isn’t the best screen I’ve used, I don’t know what is. TABLET MODE/DETACHING The Surface Book 3 detaches from its base easily and quickly. There’s button on the keyboard that you hold down and about a second later, a message on the screen pops up that says “Ready to detach.” It pops right off and is surprisingly light. I don’t have much of a use case for tablet mode besides browsing YouTube or making a quick drawing with the Surface Pen. Even though it’s a 15 inch tablet, I’ve had no issues using it in the short bursts that I do. SPEAKERS The speakers are adequate. They’re on the screen instead of the keyboard deck like most laptops, but they need to be for when the Surface Book is used in tablet mode. They get decently loud and are pretty clear. I mostly use bluetooth headphones no matter what device I’m on, but these speakers are solid for when I don’t have (or don’t want to use) my headphones. PRODUCTIVITY PERFORMANCE This is where the Surface Book 3 really shines. I do a lot of audio and video editing for my job, and I’ve used the Surface Book exclusively for those projects for the last week and have been blown away. RAM is very important for editing multitrack audio sessions, and the model I’ve been reviewing has 32GB of it. That, combined with the i7 CPU, has chewed through every audio session I’ve thrown at it. One thing I didn’t expect to have an impact on audio editing was the screen, but this is the first 3:2 laptop I’ve used for that task and the extra real estate is great when working with a lot of audio tracks. But video editing...I’m stunned at how well this processes and renders video. My main job is on staff at a mid-sized church, and with Covid-19 that’s been a little chaotic. We’ve been doing the majority of our communication through videos, and I add graphics and animations as a part of the production process. We don’t shoot anything in 4K yet, so keep in mind that all of my testing has been with 1080p video. The longest project I’ve rendered out since working with the Surface Book 3 has been 65 minutes in length, and it rendered out in 6:02 through Adobe Media Encoder. Some shorter 3-4 minute videos have rendered in less than 20 seconds. Those numbers are crazy. I use Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects to assemble the videos before rendering, and no matter how many menus and effects I have open, I have not noticed a single slow down. I may not ever go back to my work-issued laptop for my video work; that’s how impressive the Surface Book is for my workflow. GAMING PERFORMANCE I’m not a huge gamer, but I did want to put this through its paces on a few games from Steam and not surprisingly, it crushes gaming too. I haven’t tested it with anything too rigorous, but I have played about 10 hours total of Civilization 6 with the graphics on their high settings without any noticeable lag or frame rate issues. I’ve also tested it on a game called Foundation, which is particularly resource heavy, and similar to Civ 6 have noticed no issues. I also tested the game Papers, Please with the screen detached since that game can be played with touch controls and it ran like a champ. CONCLUSION There’s no denying that the Surface Book line is on the expensive side. But based on my experience, the quality is there to match the cost. The build is solid, the screen is impeccable, and the horsepower is there. If it’s in your budget range and you’re looking for something to chew through a multimedia-intensive workflow, you’d be hard-pressed to find something better than the Surface Book 3.

This is our 5th consecutive purchase for the company. Solid multifaceted hardware.

The service man is very helpful and knowledgeable, the surface book 3 looks very cool

works good with me learning adobe photoshop and Microsoft windows.

The little gap that doesn’t close it might be a problem but overall love the product

I’m enjoying my surface book and it’s many features. This was a great purchase!

So far so good. The laptop is performing well with no issues

Only problem was no pen was included. Otherwise It runs well and startup was easy.

Fast, works well for my college classes and programming.

Item arrived late. Received updates via email of status of computer.

Great laptop, 2nd surface book I've owned. Very reliable and trouble free.

What can I say, powerful, flexible, easy to set up. Expensive but worth it.

I'm loving the sleek look of this Surface and the resolution of the screen.