- So back in 2015 Microsoft announced the Surface 3,
a budget version of its now popular Surface tablet,
well looked really nice that atom processor,
two gigs of RAM on some devices and slow storage,
well it betrayed that design.
Fast forward to 2018 and we have the Surface Go which
is technically not a sequel but spiritually it is.
Today we're going to compare and contrast the two,
to tell you if the upgrade is really worth it, stay tuned.
(intro space music)
So here we go, Surface 3 from 2015, Surface Go 2018,
obviously the Surface Go is gonna be big step down in size
but it actually makes it that much more, well let's just say
adorable, it's pretty cute device.
Alright let's take a look at the ports on this Surface 3
which was a little bit controversial at the time,
you do have a three and a half mm headset jack
which is closer to the bottom on the right side,
actually a nice design there,
but is where the problem started the micro USB port,
so instead of having Surface connect you used micro USB
for charging, a lot of people lost their chargers and
you got slow charging from it and this is just a terrible
port, let's just all face the music on that one.
Over here you have a standard USB type a port which
that was pretty nice to have and then you had a mini display
and Microsoft was always a big fan of using this,
although I rarely ever used it,
I don't think many consumers did either.
Below the kickstand you did have a micro SD for expansion
which is pretty nice and you have this kickstand which well,
look at that, it did open so you have that but it only had
three positions and that was all you could do
and they snapped into place, that was the big change
that happened later with Surface Pro.
Interestingly this is the ETT version which did have LTE,
it came out much later but you did put the SIM card
in the bottom here which was a little bit awkward,
but hey it worked.
Coming to the top we have the power button and volume
rocker nothing much has changed, and this is still
the same antenna bar that we see on Surface Go.
Finally on the back we did have an eight megapixel camera,
along with a microphone.
Now turn to Surface Go and my how things changed,
so you still get the kickstand but now it's completely
functional so it works at all angles just like Surface Pro,
much better kickstand, feels really nice
and we see the return of Surface connect which is
a really nice port for charging and let's face it,
you probably won't lose that charger.
And instead of USB type a, we now have a type c port
that's 3.1 for display, power, and data and you still
have the headphone jack which is no longer near the bottom,
but it's also not near the top so, you know
nice little happy compromise there.
And below that kickstand you still have a micro SD slot
for expansion, built to 500 GB but you could probably do
a terabyte and it'll be okay too.
And at the top area you can still see the antenna line
and you do have the power button and volume rocker on top.
And on the back you still have a eight megapixel camera
but now it's auto focus so that is a change over Surface 3,
and you still have the microphone hole as well.
Turn to the front of the devices and Surface Go has a five
megapixel front facing camera, which matches Surface Pro
however on Surface 3 it is just three and a half megapixels
so obviously Surface Go is gonna be the better choice.
You also get Windows Hello facial recognition with Surface
Go and Surface 3 you get nothing, there was just no
Windows Hello at the time when the device came out.
Turn to the bezels, both are kinda thick but Surface Go
actually has slightly thinner bezels than the Surface 3.
They're both kinda similar, you also notice on Surface 3
we still have had a home button at the time which had
the little Windows logo there and you'd press it, it'd bring
you the start menu, that is not longer the case on Surface
at all, so I actually kind of miss that button but a lot
of people accidentally hit it so kinda understandable.
In terms of the display on Surface Go you're talking
a 10-inch 1800 by 1200 resolution, so it's going to be
a little bit smaller than the Surface 3's 10.8-inch
which is 1920 by 1280 resolution.
However, the pixels per inches are actually in the favor
of Surface Go which is 216 PPI versus 214 of Surface 3.
Let's talk about input so here are the Surface type covers,
obviously Surface Go now is alcantara which is really nice
and smooth, they also do have one that's non-alcantara
for 99 dollars otherwise it's 130.
The big differences here is gonna be that track pad,
look at the size of that thing, it is about the same size
as the one found currently on Surface Pro, when we compare
it to the one on Surface 3,
well it's a vastly different experience.
You also get four finger taps with this tracking pad which
again was not a thing when Surface 3 came out,
so you can only do three finger taps on this track pad
and it's not nearly as good as an experience.
In terms of keys, the Surface Go's is using the
newer chiclets style so they're separated more,
meanwhile Surface 3 had the older style,
They're actually both good keyboards, I don't really have
any complaints, the one for Surface 3 is gonna be
a little bit larger and little bit easier
for you to type on but after a few hours of adjustment
you do get used to typing on Surface Go.
The travels also very good on this keyboard,
I really don't have any complaints about it outside
the time it takes to get used to.
Let's talk a little bit about pens, my have times changed
in three years so the original Surface 3 didn't even
come with a pen, not that Surface Go does either but
this is the first device that you had yet to buy separately.
That pen only supported 256 levels of pressure,
it was intrigue but it was just an okay pen experience.
Fast forward to Surface Go and yeah the new pen works
on it so it's gonna be an extra 99 bucks, hey treat
your color at least, you're talking 4,096 levels of pressure
versus 256 and you also get tilt support with this new pen,
and it does work on Surface Go which is kind of crazy
when you think about it, that was a very pro level feature
last year and here it is on the budget Surface Go.
Now when it came to storing that pen you would just clip
it to the, oh wait there is no, nothing happens.
This pen does nothing on this device, you had to get
a pen loop if you wanted to attach it to the keyboard.
That's right though with Surface Go, you'd get
not only magnets but wow, these are very strong magnets.
In fact it's so strong I can pull the whole device with it
so, this pen will really stick to it much better than
design than the original Surface 3.
So far comparing these devices, it works in the favor
of Surface Go, the ports are better, the kickstand is better
you get Windows Hello, the design is better,
I mean everything about it is, just well better.
So when it comes to the processor Surface 3 ran an Atom
Cherry Trail processor, it was notoriously slow but
it also got pretty good battery life and could be
in a frameless design.
Fast forward to Surface Go and we now have an Intel
pentium chip which came out actually last summer of 2017
so it's the newest one in it's category and let me tell you
it's a very good processor.
For instance when it comes to Geekbench scores,
well the pentium processor is gonna basically double
single core, you get a significant improvement on multi core
as well and in fact it falls just below the
Surface Pro 4's core m3 processors, so you only
get very good performance out of this 1.6 GH processor.
The other change comes down to RAM so on the Surface 3
you had two or four gigabyte configuration options,
Surface Go you have four or eight gigabyte,
that eight gigabyte obviously being the sweet spot.
The other big change between these two devices comes down
to graphic processors so the original Surface 3 had
an intel HD chip and it's score was around 8,000
on Geekbench which was not very good.
Looking at the Surface Go though we're talking intel HD
615 and man it literally doubles the graphics performance
of the Surface 3 and you notice this when you play
video games like Minecraft you're getting full 60 frames
per second, it's absolutely smooth and really enjoyable
experience, that's a huge change from the Surface 3.
Perhaps even bigger though than the graphics processing
and single core scores, its gonna be that storage.
So you can get up to 256 GB now with the Surface Go
although it's coming a little bit later, the 128 is now
available and the Surface 3 only went up to 128 GB
but it's the type of storage that they're using.
So on the 128 model, which we have here, we tested
the SSD score and it blows away what the Surface 3
was capable of doing, we're talking a 10 fold increase
in read speeds, getting over a thousand megabits per second
on Surface Go, it's actually better than Surface Laptop
which is pretty insane.
Those write speeds are also gonna be 500 megabits
per second too, I can't even compare how slow it was
on the original Surface 3 and this makes all the difference
when you combine that with your graphics and that
new processor, well the Surface Go feels like a real PC.
You don't get as much slowness compared to Surface 3.
Alright now shout out to the hardcore Surface fans
who are wondering what about wifi?
Microsoft famously has used Marvel AVASTAR in all
of their Surface devices, a lot of you complained about it,
I personally don't have any issue but I know you do,
well good news here Surface Go is using Qualcomm Atheros.
Yes for the first time we're seeing a different wifi
chips out on Surface, I find no issue with it so far
fingers crossed it stays that way.
Alright finally there is pricing so the original Surface 3
started at 499 dollars at the time,
plus you had to buy the cover, plus you had to buy the pen
and that hasn't changed with Surface 3
but the price did drop down to 399, now that's gonna be
the slower 64 GB model which has a different type of storage
so you probably want to go for the 550 dollar model
but that was always the case anyway Surface 3,
the one really wanted was the four GB which was the upgrade.
So, not much has changed there but the price
is now lower and your getting much more.
The other change can be availability so starting on
August 2nd the United States and Canada, you can pick up
the Surface Go but by the end of August,
it'll be in another 25 countries and by October another 10.
That's an impressive launch from Microsoft,
who's been slowly improving their ability to launch devices
in more countries at once so more of you can enjoy this.
The only downside I can see with Surface Go is gonna be
its size, it is a little bit smaller than the original
Surface 3 but that's also part of its charm,
it's just actually adorable and fun to use.
How do you not want to carry this device around with you?
But the real story here is the performance gain
which a lot of you want to know about.
The Surface Go absolutely destroys the Surface 3,
it's night and day, that thing is a core i7 Surface Laptop
out there but it is a very fast device.
It's gonna allow you to run most of your apps
at a pretty good speed without being frustrated
and that's really important.
Sure, I'd still like to see an improvement when it comes
to the processor but overall it doesn't throttle,
we ran it at maximum power for 20 minutes
and didn't see any throttling with this device and
the heat stayed very cool as well.
It's just an excellent experience when you combine it with
that Windows Hello, the much improved pen support,
the improvements that came with Windows 10 in general,
the improved kickstand.
All around this is just a much better device,
if your coming from the Surface 3 there's really no reason
not to upgrade to the Surface Go.
It's just a outstanding experience in comparison,
I would never go back to the Surface 3 after this.
So there's a quick comparison between the original
Surface 3 and the brand new Surface Go.
Now if you like this video, guess what
you can hit that subscribe button below as we'll be
covering a lot more of the Surface Go in the coming weeks
with lots of tips and tricks.
You can also leave me a comment and tell me what you think.
Thanks for watching, take care everybody.