Microsoft’s Surface 3 involves a lot of work (the same probably goes for it’s Pro-rated brethren) and this is something any consumer should be aware of before making a purchase.After sorting through several reviews on Amazon and various online sites, it seems you roll the dice upon buying a Surface and you might end up with: a brick, a defective/slow unit, a blue-screen-of-death (BSOD), or a perfectly normal laptop/tablet.If you still decide to go through with the purchase make sure to do these two simple things in the following order:

1.In the search bar of your Surface type in "recovery" and select "Create a recovery drive".You’ll need a flash drive that’s 16GBs or 32GBs, and it’ll need to be formatted to FAT32 before you proceed.This process will take a few hours but it’ll save you a lot of pain in the long-run (see below), so store this drive somewhere safe for when you need may eventually need it.
2.Download and install all required updates for your Surface.

Within the first 24 hours of operating my Surface 3, I encountered what I initially thought was a slow-running computer that started to get exponentially faster with each update I installed, but upon my 3rd or 4th required restart I hit a BSOD that said I’d need a "recovery drive" to boot the tablet back up.Unfortunately I didn’t have an Amazon review to tell me the importance of one, so I had to resort to downloading a recovery image off of the official Microsoft/Windows website and this was a herculean task to say the least.How could an official website like Microsoft boast such poor speeds and an unstable connection for an important download??The 7.4GB file took somewhere between 2 to 3 hours at around 900kb/s, something a lot of other online users were experiencing (with much POORER speeds), but the other issue I and multiple other users encountered was a severed connection at random stages of the download.The first time at 60%, the second at 30%.I tried for a third, a fourth, and finally by the ump-teenth download it finally finished!Why is owning and operating a Surface 3 so difficult?!Users complaining on the Microsoft help threads often got the same answer from Microsoft lackeys, "make sure you’re on a stable connection, try a different browser or a different laptop", but who has the luxury of working through all these options?I was stuck with just downloading the file over and over until I won the "finished download" lottery.

So to repeat:you play the lottery of owning either a bricked/BSOD/working Surface, and if you encounter a BSOD like me and several other users, you play the lottery of trying to download a file to FIX your broken Surface.Fun, right?So make that recovery drive as soon as humanly possible and it’ll save you a day of babysitting a download.

Problems aside, once I had that recovery image uploaded to a flash drive and I applied the proper fixes, I had a perfectly working laptop/tablet and I’ll admit I do love this device.Yay!Some actual PROS after a CON-filled rant.

-Cheap and effective laptop/tablet combo.I’m a video editor that primarily works off of a Windows desktop unit running Premiere Pro, but I still wanted a laptop to replace my Macbook Pro that I could take notes on while on set (using the amazing Surface pen), take pictures for scene continuity, pull up previous continuity stills or scene-blocking diagrams, and run various other applications that are excellent on this laptop/tablet combo.
-A beautiful screen.It’s no "Retina Display", but i’m not doing any video/photo editing and if you are, consider the Pro-editions for the internal/external hardware upgrades.
-Can run Android emulators in case you want to access certain applications that aren’t available on Windows.I’m an avid comic reader with a Marvel Unlimited subscription and have been in the market for a tablet for a long time since I didn’t enjoy being tethered to a desktop while reading or zooming in and reading from panel-to-panel on my smartphone.I’ve come close on several occasion to purchasing an iPad for this very reason, but found running a program like AMIDuOS on this Surface 3 to be sufficient for my comic reading needs.Plus the 10.8-inch screen makes it so I hardly ever have to zoom-in and I get the closest experience to holding hard copies of my favorite weekly issues.
-As I already mentioned briefly above, the pen is marvelous.It’s half as cheap as the Apple Pen, pretty responsive for my needs and I can do some pretty decent sketches when i’m story-boarding.
-Windows OS.For me this is a huge and personal PRO as I’ve grown up operating Windows.My 5 year stint with a Macbook Pro still had me doing my fair share of troubleshooting, going against Apple’s mantra of "it just works", so working on an OS that i’m more experienced with is a huge relief.

I’ll have to update this review in a few months since it also seems like people encounter more errors down the line, but for now i’m satisfied with my purchase despite all the work I had to put in to get it in working order.

Great product when it’s working, but to remind and repeat to all potential purchasers:

1.Use a FAT32-formatted flash drive to create a recovery drive as soon as you can.
2.Update your Surface 3 until Windows Update says your computer is up-to-date.

Good luck!

I’ve been using Apple products since 2009, and I’m also have two Wacom tablets. I’m so impressed with the Surface 3 despite it being an older model.

If you plan on drawing with it, you NEED the pen. You can’t use your finger with Photoshop. I also downloaded an Asian drawing app, and it recognizes pressure very well. Drawing on glass takes getting used to, but at least I can clearly see what I’m drawing compared to a matte screen like Cintiqs.

For browsing the web and watching videos, it’s also great! I don’t notice that it’s only 2GB of RAM at all. Sound is nice as well. I only put the volume up to 25% to watch a movie at night.

So spending less than $450 for a Surface 3 and the pen — compared to a $1000+ Wacom Companion or $500+ for the smaller iPad Pro without the Apple Pencil. If you’re an experienced artist, you don’t really need fancy brand-name tools anyway to create great illustrations. What matters is the work you put out.

Now, with that said, this review is based on that unit. This unit has some issues that I haven’t heard anyone else have so I’m assuming it’s because it’s a refurb. But it has problems restarting. It gets stuck and I have to force it to cut off and cut it back on. This only happens during updates but still scary as it could brick the device, but thankfully didn’t.

Most people may be concerned on whether 2GB and 64GB is enough. 2GB is indeed enough for most people. Heck I can even run photoshop cs5 on it fine. During heavy raw images it will struggle but it could get the job done if you’re in a pinch. For regular web browsing, youtube, watching movies, etc. it does hiccup a bit. I personally think it’s because it’s a refurb because my Asus t100ta which is 3 years older ran fantastic with an older atom processor and the same 2GB of ram. (Which is why I’m giving it 4 stars for now.)

The 64GB isn’t a concern for me because I had a high speed 64GB sd card lying around and I use onedrive to store pretty much everything so I can have access to all my files and photos and what-nots on any device, so 64GB will be fine for anyone that uses a cloud service such as I do.

The resolution on paper isn’t the highest, but this thing has a high quality screen so everything is bright (WAY brighter than my much more expensive Lenovo Yoga 900) and images and fonts are very crisp. I also haven’t run into any scaling issues like on my Yoga 900.

Another thing with the kickstand… it’s perfect! I’ve heard complaints of it only being 3 position…. Look, if you need more than these 3 perfect angles then I don’t really know what to say. It fulfills all viewing angles for me and my wife. I’m 5’9" and she’s 4’11". Standing or sitting we can both ind the perfect view for it. So don’t let that discourage you.

I have a replacement coming today. Hopefully that isn’t refurbished too. All in all I like the machine and will keep it once I can get a brand new one and not a refurb. Hopefully that irons out any issues I had with this refurb unit. I’d say go for it!

UPDATE (5/7/2016): Ohhhh kaaayyy. So, got the replacement from another seller: Shira Sales 1. ANOTHER REFURB!! Terrible sellers, and received even worse customer service from Amazon. Anyway, I ended up getting one from Best Buy. The even more comical thing is the difference in packaging. For everyone’s awareness I’ve taken side-by-side pictures of the box I received from Amazon and the one I picked up at Best Buy. The Amazon packaging is on top while the Best Buy packaging is on the bottom.

I also ended up getting the 4GB 128GB version because it was only $50 more at Best Buy. Runs a great deal smoother with no hiccups at all so far. I really think the other one ran poorly due to being refurbished at this point because it’s night and day. Anyway, I like the machine even more now so I’m updating to 5-Stars, however, I do NOT recommend you buy it from Amazon, at least not a third-party seller.