I tested the Surface Laptop 3 and I liked it

When I reviewed the Surface Laptop 2 at the beginning of the year, only a few small things bothered me. The lack of connections and the difficulties with hardly repairable products, for example. I did, however, understand that the price for its noble design and the good workmanship is rather high compared to other laptops without a dedicated graphics card.

As if Microsoft had heard my criticism, they have now launched Surface Laptop 3, a product that looks the same at first, but comes with quite a few great adjustments. Which ones? Well, there's the new 15-inch variant with AMD processor – and the following updates:

• The previously used Alcantara surface of the keyboard still exists, but models with an aluminium surface are now also available.
• The trackpad is 20 percent larger.
• The key stroke distance has been reduced from 1.5 to 1.3 mm and the keyboard seems to have become quieter; it's barely audible.
• The speaker holes have disappeared.
• The laptop can be opened with one hand.
• There's a USB A and a USB C port (without Thunderbolt).
• The hard disk or SSD can be replaced.

The proprietary charging connector still exists. It's said to make it possible to charge the Laptop 3 up to 80 percent in less than an hour. I couldn't find out whether this is also possible via USB-C yet. The battery of both models (13.5 and 15 inches) is supposed to last up to 11.5 hours if you set the brightness to 150 Nits, which isn't too bright.

Two form factors and new processors by Intel and AMD

I like the 3:2 image format of Surface laptops. And the new 15-inch model impresses me even more. With a resolution of 2496 x 1664, pixels are barely visible. And equipping it with an AMD processor is a great move anyway, as it revives the market. The processor is an AMD Ryzen 7 3780U, which Microsoft calls Ryzen Surface Edition. It consumes 15 watts. The graphics card is an AMD Radeon RX Vega 11.

The 13.5-inch model is equipped with an Intel Core i7-1065G7 with Iris Plus Graphics 950. This is a quad-core processor of the 10th generation (Ice Lake). In their presentation, Microsoft can't resist claiming that it is three times faster than the processor of a MacBook Air and twice as fast as the Surface Laptop 2. The PixelSense display's resolution is still 2256 x 1504 pixels.

Of course, both models have an IPS multi-touch display, which offers great colours. The only downer is the glossy surface, which won't appeal to every customer. But it does undeniably make the colours a bit crisper.

Both models are available with either 8 or 16 GB RAM. The 13.5-inch model comes with 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB SSD. The 15-inch model offers up to 512 GB. Scheduled delivery date in Europe is 22 October 2019.