The Best Versus the Best: Microsoft Surface Book 3 and Apple MacBook Pro

The world of premium Windows laptops has recently received another member, as Microsoft released the third-generation Surface Book 3, obviously with a series of upgrades under the hood.

In fact, the only notable change takes place inside the laptop, as in terms of design, there’s literally no version as compared to the second generation.

The Surface Book has long been considered Microsoft’s own alternative to Apple’s MacBook, and after comparing the base configurations for both of them, we’re now going to have a look at what they come with in their top-of-the-range versions.

Needless to say, they ship with different hardware configurations and prices, and the full details are below.

Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch)

First and foremost, the top-of-the-range Microsoft Surface Book 3 comes only in the 15-inch version. In other words, you can’t have the best hardware that Microsoft offers right now on this lineup on the 13.5-inch model, so you must go for the larger model.

The high-end 15-inch Surface Book 3 ships with a quad-core 10th Gen Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor that is paired with a maximum of 32GB 3733Mhz LPDDR4x RAM. For storage, the top configuration features a 2TB SSD, while the GPU is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q design and 6GB GDDR6 graphics memory.

This is a surprising change, as many would have expected Microsoft to equip the Surface Book 3 with the newest GeForce TRX, but for now, users would have to stay without hardware-accelerate ray tracing.

One notable change is the addition of a 127W charger, as Microsoft has increased it from the standard 102W unit shipped with the Surface Book 2 (and still offered with the 13.5-inch Surface Book e Intel Core i7) in order to prevent the device from losing power then plugged in and running at full speed.

There’s still no Thunderbolt support, but you get two USB-A ports, one USB-C, a headphone jack, two Surface Connect ports, and a microSD card slot. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 are also offered.

All of these bring the final price of the Surface Book 3 to $3,399 without any extras added.

Apple MacBook Pro (16-inch)

As compared to Microsoft, Apple gives MacBook Pro customers the option to opt for more powerful hardware on the top-of-the-range configuration, so the final specs are rather impressive.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro can thus be configured with and eight-core 9th Gen Intel Core i9 processor (so it’s one generation older than the one on the Surface Book 3), all paired with no less than 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory.

When it comes to storage, the top MacBook Pro can be ordered with an 8TB SSD (four times more than the maximum option on the Surface). While Microsoft decided to stick with NVIDIA, Apple has picked AMD for the GPU on the MacBook Book Pro, so the one you’ll get on this model is the Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

As compared to Microsoft Surface Book 3, the best MacBook Pro comes with four Thunderbolt 3 ports and a headphone jack.

The top MacBook Pro configuration also comes with a 96W USB-C charger, and no power loss is happening when running at full speed.

On the other hand, all of these are available for no less than $6,099.

The conclusion

While the standard configurations that Microsoft has created for the Surface Book 3 appears to be a better option than the sibling in the MacBook Pro lineup, it all changes when looking at the optional hardware available on Apple’s laptop.

Apple has adopted a different strategy for the MacBook, and while Microsoft isn’t offering too many hardware configuration options for the Surface Book 3, the MacBook Pro can be further upgraded with more powerful components, including a faster processor, more RAM and storage, and an upgraded GPU.

Needless to say, it doesn’t come cheap, so the top MacBook Pro equipped with everything has to offer ends up becoming nearly twice more expensive than the standard top Microsoft Surface Book 3.