US, under $1000, 13.5'' or under - Surface Pro 3, Zenbook or Mac Air?

the click-clacky keyboard, which may be a problem.

Try it out at a Best Buy or Microsoft Store. Personally I don't like it, but that's just my opinion. I'm used to better keyboards on laptops.

The display. Some say it doesn't have great resolution, some say the display is "atrocious" in dark environments.

The Surface Pro 3 has a 1440p display, which is more than enough on a 12.5 inch device. You will have to increase the DPI so that text and icons won't be too small. It's absolutely not an low resolution display. You have more pixels per square inch than on a Retina MacBook Pro 13. Furthermore the display brightness can be turned up to 350 nits, which is quite bright. Even broad sunlight it should be readable. You can find more information about the display in this review.

The top-heavy design, which may be hard to use on my lap. The kickstand also requires additional space, and I have to prop it up on the awful narrow plastic little boards that come with school seats. Not sure it'll work so well. Pros: It's certainly light. Acceptable price.

One of the other points I don't like about the Surface Pro 3. If you're more of a keyboard type person, I would search for something else.

UX305FA is $790 on Amazon which is a great price, but I'm not sure just how different the several versions of Zenbooks are?

The UX305FA comes with a new Intel Core M CPU. These aren't as good as the Core i CPUs you see in other ulrabooks (MacBooks, Dell XPS, Surface Pro 3). Will be more than enough for every day work like web browsing or watching videos, but more demanding work (Photoshop and so) could be sometimes a little bit laggy (depends on what you're going to do in PS).

Another disadvantage of the ZenBook UX305FA is that it doesn't come with a backlit keyboard.

I would try out the Surface Pro 3 and see if you like it. Which version can you get for $925? The i5 or i3 model?

A decent alternative to the Surface Pro 3 would be the Dell XPS 13:

  • 13.3 inch, 1920x1080p IPS display (anti-glare)
  • Intel i5-5200U + 8 GB of RAM
  • 128 GB SSD
  • Intel HD5500 graphics
  • Price: $999

It's a little bit more expensive than the Surface Pro 3, but maybe you can find a coupon for it reduce the price. Dell managed it to build a laptop with a 13.3 inch display and the footprint of the MacBook Air 11 (just look at the thin bezels). It's 2.6 lbs light and has a battery life of around 10 hours or more. Here is a video of a comparison between the XPS 13 and the Surface Pro 3:

Dell XPS 13 (2015) vs. Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Comparison Smackdown

/r/SuggestALaptop Thread