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Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 wins plaudits for display, says researcher

Microsoft's newest 12-inch tablet has one of the best displays of any tablet out there, according to DisplayMate Technologies. That's no mean feat.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
Brooke Crothers
2 min read

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The Surface Pro 3 "is neck-to-neck with the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 in most performance categories," according to DisplayMate. Microsoft

Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 has one of the biggest and best tablet displays going -- so says DisplayMate Technologies, one of the most prominent display evaluation firms.

Microsoft's newest 12-inch tablet that can double as a laptop "has one of the very best and most accurate displays available on any mobile platform and OS," wrote Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, in a review posted Wednesday.

The display is good enough to give the top-performing Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 a run for its money.

"The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 remains the top performing mobile display in our Display Technology Shoot-Out series. However, the Surface Pro 3 is neck-to-neck with the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 in most performance categories," Soneira wrote.

The Pro 3 hit the market in June and boasts the highest resolution display (2,160x1,440) of any Surface tablet to date. But resolution is just part of the story. It excels on a number of important metrics, according to Soneira.

Below are some of the highlights of the review:

Color accuracy:The Pro 3 has the most accurate on-screen colors of "any tablet or smartphone display that we have ever measured for all standard consumer content," said DisplayMate. Color accuracy is the single most important performance characteristic for a display, according to the testing firm.

Power Efficiency: Despite having a larger surface area than other tablets, the display "is more power efficient and it actually uses less power than many smaller tablets." In fact, the Apple iPad Air uses 66 percent more display power than the Surface Pro 3.

Brightness: Brightness is rated as "very good" though somewhat lower than other tablets, like the Apple iPad Air and the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

Screen Reflectance: Also rated very good. Soneira puts reflectance between the iPad Air (worse than the Pro 3) and Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 (better). The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 has the least reflectance of all top-tier tablets.

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The Surface Pro 3 garnered some of the best display scores from DisplayMate. DisplayMate Technologies