Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review

Display Analysis

I published an analysis of Surface Pro 3's display shortly after receiving my review unit. For those of who you haven't seen it already, the results and analysis are reprinted below.

With Surface Pro 3, Microsoft finally accepts that while 16:9 may be a great aspect ratio for watching movies but it's not optimal for a multi-purpose tablet. The tablet features a 12" 2160 x 1440 display (RGB stripe, not RGBW/PenTile), which ends up being a 3:2 aspect ratio. The difference is immediately noticeable in notebook-style use. While the Surface Pro 2 was never quite all that comfortable to use as a laptop, Surface Pro 3's display makes it substantially more laptop-like. There doesn't appear to be a big impact to tablet use either with the larger display. Particularly with Windows 8.1's split screen mode, the larger display ends up working extremely well. The LCD continues to be laminated to the cover glass just like with previous Surfaces.

Default 150% Scaling on Surface Pro 3, the 2160 x 1440 display behaves like a HiDPI 1440 x 900 display

Color accuracy is improved out of the box as well. The original Surface Pro had a display capable of being quite accurate, if calibrated, but out of the box it was a bit of a mess. Microsoft slowly improved out of box calibration over the years, eventually culminating in what we have today with Surface Pro 3.

Max brightness drops a bit compared to Surface Pro 2, likely due to the Pro 3 having 50% more pixels to light. Black levels at max brightness are pretty good, thanks in part to Microsoft's optically bonded LCD/cover glass stack. Contrast ratio remains competitive with previous designs.

Grayscale accuracy is the biggest issue with the new display, green levels are just way too high:

Our basic sRGB gamut test paints a great picture for Surface Pro 3. Full saturation color reproduction is excellent:

The saturation sweep also looks solid:

Unfortunately Surface Pro 3 doesn't do so well on our GMB color checker test. Part of the problem is its performance in the grayscale swatches included in this test:

Overall the Surface Pro 3 display is a huge improvement over the previous two generations, but it doesn't quite meet the high standards set by some of the other competitors on the market today from both notebook and tablet spaces.