Debugger

Microsoft Finally Made a Perfect Laptop for Coding, Gaming, and Zooming

The Surface Book 3 is a true powerhouse

Owen Williams
OneZero
Published in
6 min readMay 21, 2020

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Photos: Owen Williams

When I was hunting for a MacBook alternative three years ago, I gravitated toward the Surface Book. Its unique, detachable design blurred the boundary between tablet and laptop, while providing enough power to code and game on a single device — it felt like the best of both worlds, and I kept coming back to it, despite trying a ton of different devices over that time.

This year, Microsoft is finally back with an update to that design with the Surface Book 3. At first glance, the Surface Book 3 looks largely the same as the previous versions, but there are improvements under the hood: better performance across the board and a series of tweaks that iterate on one of my favorite laptop designs.

If you’re not familiar with the Surface Book, it’s Microsoft’s top-end portable computer. Its design uses a keyboard that can be ejected from the display, allowing you to use the Surface Book as a giant tablet, or flip the screen around entirely when you’re sitting at a desk. Unlike the Surface Pro 7, which is a tablet with a soft keyboard attached — you might compare it to an iPad — the Surface Book has a real keyboard and trackpad (and good ones at that).

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Owen Williams
OneZero

Fascinated by how code and design is shaping the world. I write about the why behind tech news. Design Manager in Tech. https://twitter.com/ow