hi it's mark Hoffman from PC world and we're checking out not one but two new
surface laptop 3s and a surface event in New York so we're here at the surface
event and normally we'll be talking about a single new surface laptop but
this time around we have to the surface laptop three 13-inch as well as a new 13
or a new 15 inch surface laptop three normally we talking about screen sizes
but here we're actually talking about processor changes in the 13-inch there
is an Intel isolate core i7 but in this there is a new special edition a special
surface Edition AMD Rison five this is the first time not only we really have
seen a rise in five in a laptop and this is the first time we're seeing a surface
edition in a laptop as well and this is what differentiates the two most
strongly but first let's talk about sort of the basics now historically this has
all been sort of Alcantara right that fabric that has been sort of coating the
outside of these things that's gone or at least it's an option anyways now
there's sort of that surface book feel to it all brushed aluminum it shines
it's smooth it's cool both literally and metaphorically it's a nice addition to
the hardware we've also gotten rid of the rubber bumpers that used to be sort
of on the back of the machine that's gone too we have a nice sort of sleek
slimline look to it again sort of black the black is still in vogue although
we've seen a couple of others colors as well physical changes to this one thing
they haven't gotten rid of is the service connector that's a plus it
obviously holds legacy with a surface dock and also potentially means that at
some point cross your fingers we might see a
surface dock that's updated instead of being remain fixed and Static for the
past couple of years we now have USBC we USBC has been on the
surface book - before it's been on the surface go but now comes to the surface
laptop it's mainstream it looks like we'll be able to use it for IO not
necessarily for charging we don't see any Thunderbolt capabilities even either
this is really more of an expansion slot you know baby steps right so but let's
again look at what's different about this machines that we can we get to the
13 inch of the 15 inch and the processor differences according to the tests that
we've done we've only had previews to date ice Lake is actually roughly about
the same speed as whiskey lake the previous generation isolate his tenth
generation whiskey Lake his 8th gen depending upon which application you're
running the performance is comparable slightly higher for ice Lake it really
leans hard though on the GPU anything to incur and involving encoding for example
we've looked at handbrake and if when we get into hand brakes this means hard on
the GPU ice lake performance goes up by about I think was about 40% anything
associated with graphics again you're gonna have some real positive here the
rise in 5 still remains something of a mystery we've had a rise in three laptop
this is the third this is mobile rising this is actually a Zen plus architecture
and not the Zen to architecture in the desktop so it's going to be sort of a
step behind in that regard it does however have additional graphics
horsepower that probably ice Lake doesn't have again the fact that this is
a surface addition is sort of a black box you saw Lisa sue AMD CEO wandering
about here we're hoping to get a little bit of more man
so later on we don't have those answers right now but what we would assume given
the fact that this is a 15 inch and 15 inches are typically more powerful is
that Microsoft at least believes that this in fact is a processor that can
keep up with ice Lake maybe even surpass it again testing is going to be what we
have or we use to determine this Microsoft tells us that this is going to
have all day charge of course our all-day battery life in quick charging
that's a nice feature that some of the other laptops here including the surface
the surface pro X has as well we don't know exactly what battery life is going
to be but if all day probably maybe a 12 hours or something like that sort the
keyboards look to be about the same as traditional surface laptops 1.3
millimeters of P travel 19 millimeters of pitch again if you look at them they
seem to be exactly the same the trackpad has increased a little bit on the
surface pro 7 and looks to be the same thing on the surface laptop 3 as well
that's a 20% increase that may make a difference to you there's still a long
large bit of screens or palm space for your palms the trackpad is is pretty
much what you would expect to find on a surface book it actually feels glassy
whereas the laptop has been a little bit more of a plastic appeal to it so you
might have some performance increase there the question is what should you
buy versus the 13-inch for the 15-inch we can't answer that question right now
we have some cursory guesses as to what you and I do but hopefully we'll get
this in the testing labs we'll be able to make a
determination a little bit later on pricing for these 999 1199 available in
November and that's it for the service laptop three continue watching PC world
for more from the surface launched here in New York City