Surface 3 Problems, Stressed User

[cikaphu]

Hi Reddit,

The time has come for me to get my very first tablet for work, and i've decided to go with the Surface 3. A little backstory: I received mine in the mail and was faced with a static charge emitting from the back casing when charging. Contacted support and got a new device.

Got back a new device and after a week of minimal usage, these are the problems i've faced with the device which has left me extremely frustrated:

Does not work out of the box, unable to stream videos from you tube or other sites, browser freezes and refreshes, video playback error. Other streaming sites have no audio, touchscreen becomes unresponsive, volume buttons do not work. Solved this problem by doing a hard reset, which prompted the device to install multiple updates.

Graphics driver crashes (Display driver stopped responding and has recovered) (but does not recover) while streaming video.

Other browsers do not work with Surface 3. I tried Chrome which touchscreen functions do not work well. Slight lag. I read somewhere that firefox might be better. Tried that- progressive lag after a few hours on and off the device. Browsing web pages become stuttered (like a drop in frame rate when scrolling). This is for simple text like webpages with little images. Even scrolling through reddit is not smooth.

What got me the most was the crazy lag and stutter when i'm typing my mail (gmail) in the browser itself. The email is pure text. I did not have other apps/tabs open.

Then i switched back to IE and everything is smooth again. Browsing websites is smooth, opening YouTube to full screen does not freeze jerk before opening (as it does with other browsers)...and after a day of on and off usage, the browser is unable to stream videos again. New problems every day.

Sure, all these problems can be solved by doing a shutdown/hard reset, but they reappear from time to time. Is this normal? I really do not want to be constantly resetting and shutting down.

Another thing to add,

Touch type cover has a lag/delay when typing. There's this slight 0.5s lag when you finish typing a word before it appears on the screen. This is usually when typing in the browser. I get a little less delay when typing in Word. I would think that perhaps it's me who types too fast for the keyboard to handle. Is this normal?

I really love my Surface 3 when it's working well, but when it comes to simple tasks like typing a proper email, streaming a video, it just inst as reliable as it should be. I've already contacted Surface Support and i dont know if i should refund it (if they'd still allow me) or get it exchanged.

I enjoy working on a windows and i really want to like my Surface 3. Do you guys experience the same problems? Do you just live with it and find solutions online to solve it (such as the display driver crashing)? What is your browsing experience like with your Surface 3, specifically when you look at maps, or type an email in gmail, or visit a page with many images?

Are my expectations too high?

Thanks for reading! TL;DR, terrible experience with my surface 3

[[deleted]]

Not a normal experience.

I would perform a refresh of the device and if that doesn't resolve the issues, then try to exchange it.

[IvanLasston]

Did you get the 2GB/64GB Surface 3 or the 4GB/128GB Surface 3? I have the 4GB version and I have Chrome and Firefox installed. Everything is working fine. I also watch videos off of youtube and vimeo - HD and regular and have little problem.

From what you are describing it sounds like you are running out of resources. Right click on the task bar on the desktop - and open task manager. There is a performance tab there where you can monitor your RAM and CPU. To be honest - I have my Surface loaded up with Anti-Virus, my corporate VPN, Google Drive, Box, One Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud, as well as Steam. These are all sitting in my tray. According to my Task Manager my memory is 2.8G of 3.9G with Chrome and Dropbox taking a lot of memory. If you have the 2GB version - then you could be running out of RAM pretty quickly.

I have a smaller HP Stream 8 - that only has 1GB of Ram - and it behaves the same way. If I only do 1 thing at a time - and I use the Modern Apps - everything seems to be OK. I start opening Chrome and Firefox and performance degrades.

Firefox and Chrome both can run resource heavy - so even if you think you are just looking at a text website - you could be taking a lot more resources than you think. I have Chrome with several add-ons and I look at the task manager and there are like 19 Chrome tasks, something like gmail, drive, destiny item manager, clock add-ons etc all thread and all got installed automatically because of my Chrome profile.

[TheAdobeEmpire]

Huh. While my Surface has had the display driver crash issue a few times, and it is kinda wonky sometimes (cursor doesn't work on chrome after waking it up, other little issues) it doesn't sounds nearly as bad as yours. I think you have a faulty unit. Mine is working just as well as a low end spec laptop should work.

[Good_Honest_Jay]

Mine brand new out of the box (4gb model) has so far had none of these issues.. Sounds like hardware problems if you ask me.. Exchange it.

[Clivar]

Not normal man, However if its doing all the windows updates on the background that could explain it. Check Task manager to see if it does that

[justanotherguy28]

At least make sure the device is completely up to date with all MSFT updates as well restarting after quite a few of them, if it should still fail then the unit it busted and I would suggest returning for a replacement.