
For example, I saw a 30% battery drain after playing an hour’s worth of Diablo III when connected to the dock.Įssentially, that made the Surface Dock useless for the Surface Book 2, and it meant that adding additional displays was a real problem. The problem? The original Surface Dock only provided 60 watts of power to the laptop, meaning that even light gaming while plugged in would suck down battery life. With the Surface Book 2, the only real way to connect external displays is through the Surface Dock. The Surface Dock 2 also provides the power That’s far more convenient, and it means you won’t be facing a worn-out battery way too early in the laptop’s life cycle. It was such a relief that no matter how hard I pushed the Surface Book 3, the batteries remain untouched.
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I ran the same tests, including encoding a 13 GB video using Premiere Pro and running Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and not once did either of the batteries drop below 100%. Here’s the good news: The Surface Book 3 now uses a 127-watt power supply. Even worse, it meant extra charge cycles for a battery that can’t be replaced.
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That meant that you couldn’t simply pack up and go with a full battery - you needed to take some time to recharge. Use a demanding creative app like Premiere Pro that may rely on the GPU or engage in some intensive gaming sessions, and battery life would be reduced - even when plugged in. That bizarre decision severely limited the laptop’s usefulness and longevity. The Surface Book 3 now finally uses a 127-watt power supply. That’s because the power supply only provided 95 watts of power to a machine that could easily exceed 100 watts and a lot more. Use the CPU and GPU together while plugged in and push them even remotely hard and you start tapping into the battery.

With the Surface Book 2, Microsoft made the odd - and utterly terrible - decision to provide a power supply that simply could not keep up with the laptop’s components.

Whether that’s true or not, I wanted to give the Surface Book line another chance to see if Microsoft had ironed out some of those issues. It’s been said that you shouldn’t judge a Microsoft product until its third generation. From its power supply to its display issues, it plagued me with so many annoyances that I eventually wanted to ditch it. I was a big fan of the Surface Book 2 15-inch when it launched - that is, until I tried to use it as my daily driver. The Surface Book 3 is a viable desktop replacementīut I needed to test the third entry in the trilogy for a very specific reason.The Surface Dock 2 also provides the power.The power supply is no longer a bad joke.
