OFFICIAL I Now Have a Surface Pro 3 i7

[bamaster]

I picked up SP3 i5 when it was first released, and returned it after few issues I had after few weeks. I was at Best Buy today at they happened to have SF3 i7. I ended up walking out with new SF3 i7/256gb. I guess, I am back to this community.

I did the exact same thing. I wasn't happy with the SP3 at all. But I'm still drawn to it. I decided to get the i7/256 and see if Microsoft fixes a couple of my complaints... mainly battery life. So far, no. BatteryBar is showing 4:20 runtime from a full charge with brightness at 70% (the minimum I can really use) and only IE and Outlook running.

But I'm going to keep this one. The screen is beautiful and I'll adapt to the funky keyboard. I already ordered a second power supply and a Surface cable from MikeGyver so I can run on external battery pack.

Good luck to both of us!

 

[double07]

@bamaster, I doubt that the battery will get any better. I have not paid much attention on my battery, I just use it and recharge it when needed to.

Yes, good luck to you too. I think, I will keep mine as well.

 

[tallshorty]

Yes I'm very curious about battery life of the i7. If it is indeed only <5hrs, than I'm keeping my i5 even if it throttles more than the i7. On the i5 I can get 6.5hrs consistently

 

[Deryl McCarty]

Just finishing up some testing for my own edification.

Have 9% remaining after 5 hours...just regular surfing, MS office, e-mail, one long podcast and some minor board games. Also did a "erase deleted files" and a slack erase, which loaded up the processors to 100% and ate my battery for lunch. Still 5 hours is fair, but not what MS suggested. But it is certainly long enough for daily use since I only normally do an erase only once a week. Core temps got to 92/92C but only briefly (with load at 98-100% for some of that time) and did not seem to throttle noticeably. Temp ranges were 37-92 and 43-92. I have to admit that I keep my screen brighter than I should (over 50%) and that ate power as did WiFi and BT. For now I am plugging in and going about my daily life. Still I am pleased with the i7 performance and my IE response and game play is better than my SP2 which really seemed to lag when on line, despite the tweaking and cleaning I did.

 

[RIM]

So here are the passmark scores for a a Surface 3 i7, 512GB. Straight out of the box with nothing in particular done to optimize anything. Windows update shows only one minor security update for 8.1; don't know if WU did anything last night. Have not tested battery performance in any meaningful way

 

[macmee]

I'm going to go buy one right now but I am quite worried about this battery life issue. I love the battery life on my sp2. Does the i7 SP3 genuinely have worse battery life than the sp2?

 

[GreyFox7]

I'm going to go buy one right now but I am quite worried about this battery life issue. I love the battery life on my sp2. Does the i7 SP3 genuinely have worse battery life than the sp2?

Really? Where are you going to get it?
How long with it take you to get back and post an unboxing photo?

 

[os1019]

Surface Pro 3 owner for nearly 24 hours and so far I am impressed. Although a fair assessment of the SP3 abilities will not come until I get this puppy on the road.

 

[macmee]

Really? Where are you going to get it?
How long with it take you to get back and post an unboxing photo?

I'm in California so it's only 7:15pm, store closing in 45 minutes - apparently they have lots in stock and I didn't even have to put one on hold (not sure if it's because there's a disproportionately large amount of Mac users in SF or if the sp3 is buggy and I should be worried etc) but I'm getting one nonetheless. The kickstand is the main reason I want it. If you genuinely want an unboxing or any comparison pictures between it and the sp2 just let me know.

 

[fonzman78]

I decided to take back my SP3 i5 and got me an SP3 i7 256GB. So far I really like it. There was no real reason to do it other than because I can and the geek in me wanted the i7.

So far, my experience has been the same. I never had the fan come on with the i5 but I finally heard the fan on the i7 when I was installing all the updates. Nothing ever since then. My internet seems much faster. I normally get around 30-35Mbps (Speedtest.net) and now I get 46Mbps. Not sure why.

I will be on the road all next week so it will be a good chance to see how it fares.

 

[Jeffrey]

Congrats.. Enjoy your new toy...

 

[supervelous]

Just ran Passmark and got 2314.3. This is an i7 with 256GB, on battery power. Don't know too much about this, just saw others running it so downloaded and ran myself. Gave warning about running it on battery power may have an effect on results and it's recommended to plug in, but didn't have plug handy so ran it anyway.

PassMark Rating: 2314
CPU Mark: 4385
2D Graphics Mark: 699
3D Graphics Mark: 661
Memory Mark: 1739
Disk Mark: 2878