Hi /r/surface.

I upgraded from the SP2 to the SP3 and have seen quite a few people on this sub considering the same thing. So here are my thoughts between the two

SURFACE PRO 2

I bought the 128 gig, 4gig RAM model secondhand but still under warranty for about half the price I got the SP3 new for.

SURFACE PRO 3

I splurged and bought the 128 GIG, 4 GB ram model new with a student discount, from the Microsoft Store site New Zealand.

FORM FACTOR

The Pro 2 was a poor form factor. Using it in portrait mode is abysmal and the size and rectangular rather than square shape means it is a poor desktop too. While these devices will always be a compromise the pro 2 felt like you compromised far too much. You could never hold it for long in tablet mode as the weight was concentrated into a smaller area. I found I seldom needed anything more than the two kickstand positions though.

The Pro 3 is an ideal form factor. It's much lighter and the aspect ratio means it better suits being used as a tablet. Once you adjust some minor scaling/ui settings it's practically perfect. The Pro 3's weight is dispersed so it feels lighter than the smaller pro 3.

PEN

The Pro 2 pen is excellent. It's light and thin but I prefer my pens that way. THe best drawing experience I've ever had was on the pro 2, if the screen size was a bit bigger it would have been perfect. The pen would always detatch from the magnet in the charging port though, it's hard to store the thing.

This was a concern for me upgrading to the Pro 3 since one of the main reasons I purchased the pro 2 was for its drawing capabilities. There's no doubt the N Trig is a poorer pen. I think it's a bit heavier than I would like it to be as well. It feels a lot less natural drawing with it than the WACOM did. I've found that on Sketchbook it has an annoying cross hair whereas the pro 2 had a precision dot that is less distracting. I have the latest wintab drivers and updates but have found it performs significantly better in onenote than other applications. Hovering over the screen is also much slower, if drawing is your only requirement then go for the pro 2. The pen fits quite nicely into the loop on the type cover 3.

KEYBOARD AND TRACK PAD

The Pro 2 more or less did not have a track pad. The type cover 2 was fine for typing but the trackpad was completely unusable, which proved a major issue if wanting to use the machine as a laptop. This was one of the main reasons I moved to the pro 3. One slightly annoyinng thing about both the type cover 3 and 2 is that the function keys require you to hold the function button to use them, so FN F5 to refresh a web page.

The Pro 3's trackpad on the Type Cover 3 is fine. It would be nice to be able to enable one finger scrolling but aside from that issue it's just like any other laptops. The keyboard is much the same and is perfectly adequate, maybe slightly cramped for long writing sessions but otherwise fine.

BATTERY LIFE

I bought mine secondhand so obviously it would be different from buying new, but the Pro 2 battery performed very poorly. I received the device completely reset, so there were no old drivers or memory hogging programs. I had the screen brightness down to about 25% and set max CPU useage to about the same and it still would only last 2-3 hours on average.

So far the Pro 3 has been better, but nowhere near the 9 hours advertised. I did a test and got 4 hours heavyish useage (Downloading steam games, running firefox with 10-15 tabs, writing an essay in Word, one or two metro open as well). For really light useage I imagine it's 6-7 hours.

PERFORMANCE

The Pro 2 I found did lag a little when using desktop applications. It always felt more like running a computer than running a tablet. The RAM useage seemed to climb higher on my pro 2 and slow it down a little, I don't know why though since they both have the same specs.

The Pro 3 has been fine so far. I haven't extensively tested games on it, but it runs Alan Wake and Civ 5 fine on lower settings.

OTHER THINGS TO NOTE

The Pro 2 had terrible scaling. I believe I had mine set to 160% at 1600 res with some other custom settings, but I could never seem to get the perfect setting.

The Pro 3's strange resolution and aspect ration means that some tweaks have to be made. When watching videos in VLC, force the resolution to 16:10 and the letterboxing almost completely disappears.

I might think of some other things later but those are my thoughts for now. Feel free to ask any questions if I haven't covered it all.