The Microsoft Surface Book 3 is now available in SA for R38,000

Last year bore some unsatisfactory events, but if there was one that stood out as… something particularly exciting, it’s that Microsoft finally decided to bring its Surface kit to South Africa. June 2020 graced South Africans with more options when it comes to office machines in the shapes of the Surface Go 2, the Surface Pro 7 and the Surface Laptop 3. Now we’re getting the cream of the crop — the Surface Book 3, for a pretty penny too.

Below the Surface

If you think about one of these machines, the image of the Surface Book 3 should pop up in your mind palace — it’s a tablet-shaped device that’s attached to an accessory keyboard. You’ll find it in either 13in or 15in variations, both powered by 10th-gen Intel Core processors, Nvidia GPUs and garnished with some high-res PixelSense displays. 

“We are excited to expand our Surface family with the addition of Surface Book 3 – our most powerful laptop yet. It is a portable powerhouse that provides the performance to tackle any task, from intensive video and graphic files to high-octane gaming. Developers, designers and professionals can rely on it for coding, compiling workloads, and for gaming,” says Vithesh Reddy, consumer and channel marketing director at Microsoft South Africa.

It may look like a tablet, but these badboys feature some impressive insides (as outlined above). So when it’s paired with the proprietary keyboard/trackpad accessory, it’s even capable of gaming, according to Microsoft. Of course, here at Stuff we rarely take their word for it, and we’re keen on testing out its supposed gaming capability. 

They attribute this to the addition of an Nvidia GeForce GTX1650 in the 13in version or the GeForce GTX1660 Ti in the 15in. Though impressive, these GPUs are fairly mid-range, so don’t expect to run Cyberpunk on the Book 3 — it’ll look worse than it did at launch.

You can still opt for up to 32GB RAM and a variety of SSD sizes if you’re interested in real speed, and it’s nice to have those options. It’s just that… the Surface Book 3 enters the retail market at R38,000 for the base variation. These detachable notebook/tablet gizmos are already available from Incredible Connection.