Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 15-inch (Core i7): This is the one you should buy

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 (Core i7), also known as the Surface Laptop 3 for Business, finally delivers on what Microsoft has traditionally promised with its Surfaces: a great screen, a great keyboard, and great battery life. The Surface Laptop 3 with Intel’s 10th-gen Core i7 chip achieves roughly 10 hours of battery life. This is more than enough to get you through your workday, and significantly longer than what was achieved by the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 with AMD’s Ryzen 5 CPU, or the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 with Ryzen 7. Other than the CPU and storage variations, the Surface Laptop 3 units we’ve tested are largely identical.

We still admire what AMD has accomplished with its current Surface Edition chips, and look forward to next year when its 7nm process kicks in. For now, however, this Surface Laptop 3 with an Intel Core i7 is the only Surface Laptop 3 we’d recommend.

BASIC SPECS

Display: 13.5-inch (2256x1504) PixelSense; 15-inch (2496x1664) PixelSense (as tested); both touch-enabled

Processor: 13-inch, 15-inch: quad-core Core i5-1035G7/Core i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake)

Graphics: 13-inch, 15-inch: Iris Plus

Memory: 13-inch: 8GB/16GB LPDDR4x; 15-inch: 8GB/16GB/32GB DDR4 (16GB as tested)

Storage: 13-inch, 15-inch: 128/256/512/1TB (256GB as tested)

Ports: USB-C, USB-A, Surface Connect, 3.5mm jack

Camera: 720p (user-facing); Windows Hello enabled

Battery: 45.8Wh (as reported)

Wireless: 13-inch/15-inch: 802.11ax 2x2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0

Operating system: Windows 10 Pro (business)

Dimensions: 13-inch: 12.1 x 8.8 x 0.57 in. (14.51mm); 15-inch: 13.4 x 9.6 x 0.57 in. (14.69 mm)

Weight: 13-inch: 2.89 pounds; 15-inch: 3.36 pounds (tested), with charger: 4 pounds

Color: Sandstone (metal, as tested), Matte Black (metal), Cobalt Blue (Alcantara) and Platinum (Alcantara, metal)

Price: Orders start at at $1,099 at Microsoft.com; $1,599 as tested

Pay close attention to the Surface Laptop 3 prices: There’s a massive $400 bump between the SL3’s 256GB and 512GB SSD configurations. One of the new.