Microsoft Surface Book 3

This device really blurs the line between a tablet and a graphically competent professional workstation.

Much like the Surface Pro line, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 takes a lot of elements from its predecessor and updates the core components for a service that’s even closer to being the ‘desktop replacement tablet’ the company pitches it as. The unit returns with either a 13.5-inch or a 15-inch 3:2 PixelSense display at 3000 x 2000 or 3240 x 2160 pixel resolutions, respectively. The smaller size can be configured with either an Intel Core i5-1035G7 or an i7-1065G7 CPU; and a choice of 8, 16 or 32GB of RAM and costs between $2,649 and $4,499. The 15-incher on the other hand only comes as an i7, with either 16GB or 32GB of RAM and ranges between $3,699 and $4,759. If you opt for the more powerful processor it comes with a Nvidia GTX 1650 GPU on the 13.5-inch and a GTX 1660Ti on the bigger model and the accompanying 256G, 512GB or 1TB PCIe SSD storage is pegged to variations in other components, which means you need to pay for more power if you want more storage. The most powerful 15-inch model performed within about 10% either way of the average laptop in the roundup (excluding the fully gaming capable powerhouses here), and performed more than four times better than devices relying on integrated graphics. This is enough for reasonable 1080p gaming and decent graphical workloads. Battery life was solid at six hours and 37 minutes in PCMark 8, which means you’ll easily get a full day’s work out of it (unless you’re leaning heavily on the GPU).

A tablet that’s at least as powerful as the best professional ultrabooks and is even a competent gamer and graphics worker.