Surface Pro 3: all the news from Microsoft's third try at tablets

What can you do in 30 seconds? If it’s an advertisement for the Surface, the answer is: a lot. For the past two years, Microsoft has been showing the tablet running the full version of Office, editing photos in Adobe Photoshop, and converting into either a tablet or a notebook on the fly. But one thing Microsoft hasn’t been able to do very well in 30 seconds is explain why the Surface needs a stylus, which in an era of stroking our screens has long seemed antiquated.

The new Surface Pro 3 is on sale and Microsoft has finally achieved its vision of combining a laptop and a tablet into a device that doesn't have too many compromises. This is simply the best hardware that Microsoft has ever produced and even if you aren't a big fan of Windows, you can at least appreciate the flagship hardware it runs on.

The tablet weighs 1.76 pounds (without the new Type Cover) and is .36 inches thick. The display is now bigger too, it's a nicely-sized 12-inch touchscreen with a tack-sharp resolution of 2160 x 1440. One of our favorite features is the new kickstand, which uses friction and can hold the device up at any angle. The Type Cover has been redesigned too, and is much better than previous models.

Imagine if you had a time machine that could send you back exactly 13 years. The rules of time travel don’t let you change the past, but they do allow you to ask one question of a single person (time travel is, after all, very complicated). If your question for somebody in 2001 was “What will the future of computing look like,” they’d probably give you an answer that would sound very much like the Surface Pro 3.

That’s both good and bad. It’s good because the Surface Pro 3 is indeed a futuristic machine, a marvel of engineering that combines tons of crazy features into a thin and light package. It’s bad because, well, in 2001 we had almost no way of knowing that in 2014 the whole idea of what a computer is and does would be changing so rapidly.

"I am sure, Satya. I am sure that is the tablet that can replace the laptop."

Microsoft corporate vice president Panos Panay ended his marathon unveiling of the Surface Pro 3 by addressing his CEO, Satya Nadella. It seemed as if he was simultaneously pointing out that Nadella had helped create this vision and asking Nadella to have faith in the plan. Panay certainly wants to convince the rest of us to have faith — he had spent the last hour on the stage, extolling the virtues of the new tablet in a strident tone.

Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 3 today, and now more than ever before, the company is pushing the message that this is a product capable of replacing your trusted and proven laptop. In his usual style, Surface chief Panos Panay boldly proclaimed that the Surface Pro 3 will remove the conflict of choosing between a tablet and laptop — that it's been designed without compromise with the best aspects of both.

"I am sure that this is the tablet that can replace the laptop," Panay said. Those are big words indeed. Aside from Apple's MacBook Air, which Panay mentioned repeatedly on stage, Microsoft is finally facing improved (and genuinely impressive) competition from Windows machine manufacturers like Lenovo too. The Surface Pro 3 has clearly been designed to be more productive than an iPad Air, but can it really unseat leading laptops like Apple's MacBook Air and Lenovo's Yoga 2 Pro?

Details of Microsoft's rumored Surface Mini first appeared more than a year ago, so it was expected that the product would see an official reveal at today's event. No such unveiling happened. According to Bloomberg, even though Microsoft has been developing a smaller tablet for some time, CEO Satya Nadella and Executive VP Stephen Elop backed away from the project. It's now not clear if and when it will ever come out.

Microsoft made one thing clear: it wants its new Surface Pro 3 to be able to replace your laptop. It's a bold goal, but Microsoft thinks it has the right combination of power and portability to make it work. The new Surface is bigger than the earlier two models with a 12-inch display, but it's also thinner, at 9.1 millimeters thick, and lighter, at 1.8 pounds. Inside all of that is one of several different Intel Core processors, running from an i3 up to an i7. Surface chief Panos Panay says it's "the thinnest Intel Core product ever made," and it certainly makes for a device that feels extremely light to hold.

One of the other big improvements to the Surface Pro 3 is its new "friction-hinge." It feels really firm, reliable, and smooth, and it's able to sit at a much lower angle now, which should make it easier to use while writing from above. This hinge works at any angle within its range and at least at first blush, we're not too worried that it will not be able to hold its angle over the life of the device. Microsoft is touting the Surface Pro 3's "lapability" and indeed, putting the Surface on your lap is much less awkward than it used to be (but no, it's still not quite as hassle-free as an actual laptop).