Microsoft Surface Pro 3 12" Intel Core i3 64GB Tablet (Renewed)

Been 2 days and it's working amazing. Condition was great. Speed of laptop is good. Had to purchase a new computer when my Mac let me down. Thought I'd give this a shot because it was a good price to get me through to while I search for a new Mac but I think I found a keeper.

It worked great for about 6 months, then one day I went to use it and got the blue screen of death. After countless tries to recover, the notice was hard drive failure. So after buying two failed refurbished surface pro 3's, I am moving on to an iPad.

I want to preface with I wanted this device as a large premium tablet and not fully as a laptop replacement or productivity on the go device, though I have considered that an extra. I was looking to replace my Nexus 9 and this hit pretty much every tick box I had and finding this refurbished model meant the price was right as well. My other main consideration for a large media consumption tablet was the Samsung Tab S 10.5 because it's larger 10.5" screen at 16:9 that wouldn't be black boxes when I watch Twitch or Youtube in landscape, the screen is gorgeous, and the specs would be good enough to play Hearthstone, and that's all I care for in a tablet. The Surface Pro 3 manages to do all I need without any issues, save for the issues of having to deal with a full operating system on a mobile device. The screen is a massive 12.3" which is hard to find on a tablet below $600, and it's gorgeous to boot. It gets nice and bright, though I wouldn't mind a little brighter, and is much more responsive to touch then I thought it would be. It's been a pleasure to use without the keyboard and pen. Doing general tasks is a little harder because we're dealing with a full operating system and that's my biggest gripe with this as a tablet. If you just want to sit down and use it to surf the web you have to deal with system updates, you have to take a little bit longer to generally do anything. There's no Twitch or Youtube app so you have to create an internet shortcut on the desktop, you can't pin those as tiles for whatever reason (tablet mode in general just seems like an unrealized waste) so you need to see your desktop still to use them, if you're like me you're going to need to download .ico images to associate with those links so they don't have a generic symbol. Just to set custom Win10 personalization colors I had to edit registry keys. Simple things like that make this device less suited for leisure activities, but it's capabilities make up for it as a work product. The i3 and 64 Gb SSD are snappy for watching videos and playing Hearthstone, the device does start to run a little hot, but not even close to a snapdragon 820. I haven't noticed any slowdown but I haven't used this for prolonged gaming sessions either, that's not really what a tablet is for.As far as this refurb I haven't had any issues, the device looks brand new, very clean, even inside the ports and all of the heat vents around the top. I have connected a pen or keyboard as I don't have either, and I've seen some reviews saying that's been their issue, but from the general condition of my device I would expect those are rare one-off issues. Either way Amazon is great about returns so I didn't feel like I was taking much of a risk. Overall I'm extremely happy and impressed with the device and I'll probably get the keyboard and pen and use this as a laptop at a later date, because it's been a pleasure to use.

I'll start with this: I had read a lot of reviews of companies selling 'refurbished' Microsoft Surface devices, but just basically reboxing them without actually doing anything. In some cases, shipping dead devices. I had previously purchased a refurbished Surface 3, and had good lock with that. So, I would have bought from that company, but they didn't have any more of those, so I had to do a lot more seller review checks on Amazon before I pulled the trigger on this purchase. So it bought this one from some company named "DealFisher" selling through Amazon as their warehouse / shipper.I wanted just another Surface 3 (Atom based) as a Windows based beside tablet. My wife wanted one, so I gave her my current one, figuring I didn't really need it and would go back to using my old iPad. That is when I got hit with exactly why I went away from the dam* iPad: Websites that crash the browser. Everyone is using things the poor browser in iOS can't cope with and it crashes them. So they have to reload the page over and over. And it is happening more and more frequently. This does not happen in Windows - thus back to a Surface 3.So the price on this was even cheaper than on a Surface 3. At $300, it was a steal. I didn't even know they made a Core i3 version of the 3 Pro. This is it. The 4 gigs of memory you should really have, but only 64 gigs of storage space. For bedside browsing, this is more than enough.When I unboxed it, the battery was totally dead. I had to charge it for 15 minutes before it would start. But, start it did. And it immediately went into the 'welcome/configuration' screens of a fresh OS install. So it had been wiped and an OS reinstalled. But.. I think it was Windows 8. However I wasn't given much time to figure that out, because once I stepped through the install screens, it immediately pulled down updates, decided it was ready to upgrade to Windows 10 and did so. I didn't mind that because Win 10 is actually an okay tablet OS if you can live with the privacy invasion. (Hint, never use your real name or information if you have concerns. Or if you own an official license, then install Windows 8.1 ) **note: I did revert an older Surface Pro down to Windows 8.1 because it also works an a tablet OS and I feel a little more in control of it when I am going to put important things in there like my company work files and such.Thus began the 24 hours of updates. There were so many updates this thing had to apply. Very often when you finish installing updates, you should make it check again to see if there are updates to the updates. Yes, this really happens. In my case there were many updates. Quite a few required you to reboot so they could finish installing. Then you start again doing the next set of updates. That is life of a fresh install.But, that has nothing to do with the item in question. This Surface 3 Pro is a bit slower than the Core i5 version. If you can afford it, get one of those. If you want a simple adjunct / side computer to whatever you already own, then this works fine. Add on a Micro SD card like a 128 gig card, then you have enough secondary space to store things rather than the tight 64 gig drive. (The card slot for the Micro SD card, is behind the kickstand(llap on the back), out of the way and not along the edge.)This refurbished unit has a great screen with no scratches of chips. The magnesium body doesn't show any scratches or scaring either. I guess I got lucky with this one.Everything on this seems to work, from USB port to charging port, touch screen to speakers. The screen is bright and shows no signs of 'spots' or discoloration. I really think that for every other hangup I have a about Microsoft software, their hardware offerings are always pretty high quality compared to their direct competitors. So I expected and found this to be of the quality I have seen on other new and used Surface devices.The interesting thing with this purchase; It came with a charger to recharge it, as you would expect. However, you would expect a used charger nicely cleaned, twist tied, and tossed in the box. What I actually received was a brand new Microsoft charger for the Surface 3 Pro. I know it is new because (besides the spotless look and the plastic baggy it is in) it came with the cables carefully wound in that pristine way they do at the factory, then each one wrapped with that single band of polyester tape that a knock-off factory would likely not expend the money on. So I felt good about that part of this.The only thing I could ding on this experience was the packaging. It wasn't horrible, and no damage resulted from it, so it is a very minor touch point. The Surface was placed in a padded envelope of the kind they make from bubble wrap. It wasn't sealed, but was just tight enough that the device didn't slide out. That and the charger where then placed in a generic white box, much like a cut-to-fit pizza box of some sort. Good enough to stack on Amazon shelves. Amazon shipped it out in their typical 'way too big' box with just the very minimum of padding. In the end it survived.Why four stars? The device works. It shipped without damage. It had no signs of internal issues so far. It even appears to have shipped with a new power supply / charger. So far so good. I think the only thing I could complain about was packaging. It did't impress me. I don't know who does it. There was a included sticker / slip in the box detailing how vendors had to meet a certain level of quality to sell through Amazon. So maybe the vendor put that in the box, or maybe Amazon just packages the bits into a box. No idea. But it didn't really make me feel like: 'Wow, look at this packaging'. My last Surface 3 was also a refurbished unit. It came in a very nice box. Clearly branded as a Surface 3 and refurbished. And this wasn't a sticker, but a full on printed-on-shiny cardboard paint job. Some good money spent on that experience. I am pretty sure it was identical to the original shipping box, as it have the tray it floated in, and a separate box for the power supply. It could easily be that Microsoft had someone doing the official refurb and boxing, and then having someone handle the sales. However, this one was not presented in any such nice fashion.Sometimes you get lucky buying used, and I can't say I did not. It works just fine and I am using it right now to type this up right now, on battery power (which has lasted an expectedly nice amount of time, which on a device that you can not replace the battery in, is a significant issue).

Older unit, but flawless.I didn't purchase this as my main computer, but rather a tablet/second screen I could use in a pinch. Honestly its snappy if you want to use as tablet, and it's come in handy as a light work computer.Screen is gorgeous, surround speakers literally make me forget I'm not watching tv when I walk away . Battery is solid. For the price, similar to a super budget phone?....can't go wrong.Do it