When evaluating grayscale, we’re looking for values under the 3.0 level to be basically imperceptible to the human eye, and the Surface Laptop 3 easily achieves that. For those that are interested, the display will go all the way down to 4 nits at minimum brightness, so there’s a pretty wide range here. While not quite the contrast of a Surface Book, it’s still a great result. The Surface Laptop 3 gets reasonably bright, with up to about 400 nits of maximum brightness, but still offers great black levels, resulting in a solid 1400:1 contrast ratio. To see how the Surface Laptop 3 performs, it was tested with Portrait Display’s CalMAN software suite, along with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter for brightness and contrast testing, and an X-Rite i1Pro2 spectrophotometer for color accuracy assestment. The Surface Laptop display only opens about 135°. The touch works great, and pen support is also a nice option, although less useful than on something like the Surface Pro where you can use the display as a notebook.

Microsoft also offers touch and pen support on the Surface Laptop 3.

With regards to calibration, Microsoft includes a sRGB calibration, as well as the “Enhanced” profile that was first introduced on the Surface Pro a few years ago, which doesn’t stick to sRGB exactly, but provides a bit richer color tones without affecting skin tones. The Surface Laptop 3 features a 3:2 2496x1664 display, offering a 200 pxiels-per-inch density. They’ve also fully embraced the 3:2 aspect ratio for all devices, which initially made their convertible designs better at being convertible, but also makes for a better experience on the Surface Laptop. Microsoft continues to be one of the few PC manufacturers that calibrates all of their device displays, from the lowly Surface Go, all the way to the ultra-expensive Surface Studio range.

Surface laptop 3