Surface 3 review

Microsoft has unveiled Windows 10, which will be released on July 29 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8 users - including all Surface 3 owners - for one year.
It's hard to believe that it's almost been a year since Microsoft launched theSurface Pro 3. A tough act to follow, it remains one of the best 2-in-1 devices around and sets the bar high for the Surface 3, the newest member of Microsoft's Surface family, to follow.
If the mood leading up to the launch of the Surface Pro 3 was quietly cautious following several Windows RT-shaped mis-steps, there is an almost palpable sense of excitement for the tech coming out of Redmond today. FromWindows 10 and Edge to DirectX 12 and HoloLens, Satya Nadella's Microsoft has been anything but dull on its quest for innovation in the past 12 months.
In that sense, it almost seems disappointing that the Surface 3 isn't an all-singing, all-dancing upgrade; you'll likely have to wait for the Surface Pro 4 to launch along with Windows 10 for that.
Instead, Microsoft has effectively made a smaller, less powerful and cheaper Surface Pro 3. It features a 10.8-inch touchscreen display that's housed in an attractive magnesium-alloy body, this time attached to a three-position kickstand. A magnetically-reinforced Type Cover keyboard and numerous other accessories can be picked up for it - but as usual you'll have to cough up extra.
Despite the lack of a Pro moniker, and the fact that it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Surface 2 (it's almost exactly the same size and weight), the Surface 3 has killed off Windows RT and instead runs full-fatWindows 8.1. It can run any Windows program out there (within reason) and is ready for a free upgrade to Windows 10 when Microsoft's new OS launches later this year.