Battery Life

Microsoft made no sacrifice in battery capacity in pursuit of Surface Pro 3's thin chassis design. The new tablet features an integrated 42Wh battery just like the previous two models. Charging duties are handled by an external 31W charger with a brand new magnetic connector. Microsoft never seemed to get a good MagSafe clone working in the previous models, so Surface Pro 3 abandons the previous design entirely in favor of something a bit more sensible.

The new connector no longer looks like an oversized MagSafe connector, and instead features a thin plastic insert that mates with the charge port on Surface Pro 3. Charge time hasn't changed, you can fully charge the device in around 2.62 hours:

Charge Time

The device-side connector features 40 pins but you only need 12 of them to charge the device. The remaining pins are used for Gigabit Ethernet, USB, DisplayPort (up to 4096 x 2304) and audio. Microsoft seems hell bent on avoiding Thunderbolt at all costs so instead of embracing the standard it has created a custom alternative of its own doing. The benefit to Microsoft's connector is it can obviously deliver more power than Thunderbolt can, the downside is that it can't send PCIe and thus you don't get support for any ultra high bandwidth external storage devices. I still would rather see Microsoft implement Thunderbolt as there's at least an existing ecosystem built around that but here we are three generations into Surface and if we haven't seen it by now I don't think we're ever going to.

The supplied power adapter includes a USB charge port capable of delivering 1A at 5V.

As Surface Pro 3 is designed to be both a laptop and a tablet I've run it through both our Windows laptop battery life tests and our tablet battery life tests.

Laptop Battery Life

As a laptop, Surface Pro 3 delivers comparable battery life to other optimized Haswell ULT designs. I threw in Sony's Vaio Pro 13 into the mix because it has a similar sized battery (37Wh vs. 42Wh) and is one of the most power efficient Windows Ultrabook platforms on the market. Surface Pro 3 manages to deliver similar battery life, which means it's a little less power efficient but the two are within the same range at least.

Compared to Surface Pro 1 and 2, Surface Pro 3 at worst delivers similar battery life and at best increases range on a single charge by up to 20%. We're looking at 3.75 hours - 7.6 hours of notebook usage on a single charge depending on usage.

It's worth noting that there's a substantial advantage in battery life if we look at the 13-inch MacBook Air running OS X. I only mention this because of Microsoft's insistence on comparing Surface Pro 3 to Apple's popular line of notebooks.

Battery Life 2013 - Light

Battery Life 2013 - Medium

Battery Life 2013 - Heavy

Tablet Battery Life

Tablet workloads are going to be far more display power bound than anything else. Here we see 7.58 - 8.03 hours of continuous usage, a slight regression compared to Surface Pro 2. Video playback remains more power hungry than web browsing, which is something I've noted in previous tablet-evaluations of Intel's Core silicon. I don't believe Intel's Core processors are very optimized for video decode power consumption. If anything is going to change with the move to Broadwell and Core M I suspect video decode power may be it.

Video Playback Battery Life (720p, 4Mbps HP H.264)

Web Browsing Battery Life (WiFi)

Thickness, Thermals and Core: Understanding how Surface Pro 3 Got so Thin Display Analysis
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  • MarcSP - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tablets/micros...
  • kedesh83 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    I picked mine up last Friday and I am loving it. I took it to class and used OneNote to write all my notes for the day. It worked really well. I was also able to install sketchbook pro 6 and sketchup and do some quick design work. I have the 8GB/256GB model. I was coming from an Asus T300-LA which was too cumbersome, and an iPad 3 which was too limited.
  • vision33r - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    That's a pricey notebook you have there. My $2 yellow notepad is jealous but still works well.
  • bkydcmpr - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    do you know what "sketchbook pro 6" he was talking about is?
  • Razzy76 - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link

    But your yellow notepad can't turn into a laptop like Surface Pro 3 can ;) Yes Surface Pro 3 works just as good as a laptop.. I have one. No one can tell me it's not a laptop. And it's great as a tablet as well. I really love the Surface Pro 3. /advertising
  • ruthan - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    It looks that it is still without 3G version, i need to be mobile.. so im not interested in.
  • bkydcmpr - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    I think microsoft didn't do that because macbook air doesn't have 3g or lte either. I wish microsoft could have done better but they are so scared to move ahead of apple too much.
  • ymcpa - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    Or more likely they found that the vast majority of tablets and laptops sold don't have built in mobile broadband. Most people don't want to pay monthly for another data connection. Plus they would have to make another SKU that will require the wireless carriers to sell. We already see that salespeople at the carriers stores don't push devices that are not android or Apple. I personally find that tethering to my phone works well and is free.
  • joaoasousa - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    Bluetooth tethering?..... I would never pay for another subscription when I can use my phone's 4G.
  • skiboysteve - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link

    Get a USB 3g / 4g / lte stick and you are good

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