Surface Laptop 3 15-inch review roundup: Fails to meet the expectations

Early this year, Microsoft announced the new 15-inch variant of the Surface Laptop 3 at its press event. For consumers, this 15-inch variant of the Surface Laptop 3 will be powered by custom AMD Ryzen CPU. During the launch, Microsoft mentioned that this is the most powerful mobile processor from AMD and hence making Surface Laptop 3 the most powerful in its class. Today, the reviews of this 15-inch variant Surface Laptop 3 was published by various blogs. Surprisingly, the device didn’t meet the expectations of most. Find the review round up below.

AnandTech:

AnandTech was happy with the device overall, but it pointed out key issues including poor battery life and performance when compared to other Intel devices.

What AMD has given Microsoft, in turn, is a potent processor. AMD has a stout GPU in Vega, which works surprisingly well at 15-Watts. But the Zen+ CPU core doesn’t offer the same CPU performance of even the previous gen Core-U series from Intel, leaving the Surface Laptop 3 trailing a bit in CPU tests. Meanwhile, platform power is a mixed bag; Microsoft and AMD have made some incredible strides here in bringing down AMD’s platform power, but on the whole even the highly tuned 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 is hobbled a bit by a higher platform power draw that eats away at battery life. Even with Microsoft’s help, there’s only so much AMD can do with their current-generation silicon, especially without LPDDR4X support.

You can read the full review here.

PCWorld:

Like AnandTech, even PCWorld found the performance and battery life of Surface Laptop 3 15-inch disappointing.

Where I’m really disappointed with the Surface Laptop 3 is battery life. Microsoft has always positioned the Surface Laptop as an always-on, always-connected device, and the first two Surface Laptops have performed quite well in this regard.

You can read their full review here.

LaptopMag:

LaptopMag liked the slim, lightweight aluminum chassis and vivid 15-inch display of Surface Laptop 3 15-inch, but it was disappointed with battery life.

Mediocre battery life; Underwhelming performance;

You can read their full review here.

The Verge:

In addition to average 6-hours battery life, The Verge noticed an interesting performance issue. The Surface Laptop 3 15-inch struggled playing back a 4K video. And it also struggled during video editing.

Still, if you were hoping that the 15-inch Laptop 3 would be more than just a bigger Surface Laptop, I’m sorry to report that you’ll be disappointed.

You can read their full review here.

I think Microsoft’s decision to go with AMD for Surface Laptop 3 15-inch backfired. While the GPU performance was better than competing Intel devices, the CPU performance and battery life have led to poor reviews.  I hope Microsoft and AMD will deliver much better products in the coming years. Recently, we highlighted why you should buy an Intel variant of Surface Laptop 3 15-inch, you can find it here.