The Ultimate Laptop for Coding & Productivity

Welcome to my channel. My name is Jossie Lynn Jay, but you can just call me Jossie. And in today's video, I'm going to be talking about my new laptop setup for programming and productivity that I've been trying out the past few weeks. Now, the focus of this video will primarily be the new Surface Book 3 that I'm very grateful that Microsoft gifted me. I want to quickly mention that Microsoft is not paying me to talk about the Surface Book 3, but this is a laptop I've been excited to test out for coding and productivity because of the massive screen real estate with that 3 by 2 aspect ratio, which is incredible, along with the 30 to 40 by 2060 resolution. And of course, I don't want to forget to mention that this is a two-in-one and that's something I've actually taken advantage of even more than I thought, especially from a productivity standpoint. So the color variation that I got for this pro model Surface Book is platinum, which looks really good in person. When I unboxed it, I was actually blown away at how nice this model looks in person. The specs are great for productivity and coding. This Surface Book 3 comes powered with a whopping 32 gigs of RAM, two terabytes of solid state, and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, six gigs of graphics memory. Now, one of the main things that does hold this Surface Book 3 back that I've noticed is the fact that it's only quad-core and has a U-series processor. So for that price point compared to the XPS and MacBook Pro, if your focus is video editing, then you're going to want to go with those laptops for sure. But if you're just needing a laptop with nice screen real estate, great design, you know, a premium laptop, a nice keyboard, trackpad with some power for sure still, along with the fact that it's a two-in-one, this will be a good model for you. However, this video is about productivity and programming. And after using this model for a few weeks, here is my experience with coding and productivity. One thing I want to mention before we get started is in this review, I'm not going to take too much time, you know, going into a deep dive into the specs, especially since this laptop is more than powerful to handle programming, especially web development, which is what I do primarily, but also productivity as well. So I'm going to be talking about using this laptop from a more practical sense and just my overall experience. The design of the Surface Book 3 is stunning. Like I mentioned earlier, probably the best looking laptop. I definitely still think that 16-inch MacBook Pro gives it a run for its money, but definitely one of the more impressive looking laptops I've used along with having a vibrant display with the resolution of 3240 by 2160. As I mentioned earlier with the three by two aspect ratio, I thoroughly enjoyed using that for productivity and tablet mode with the pencil that Microsoft also sent me to use with this device. So in terms of form factor, I'm impressed. At first I was disappointed that the trackpad wasn't larger considering the size of this laptop, but the trackpad actually feels great and is really responsive. The laptop is also fairly light. So if you're a student who is looking for a 15-inch laptop that doesn't weigh too much because you're going to be trekking, you know, miles each week to get to different classes on campus like I was, then this laptop is actually pretty light. Now I've been a Mac user for most of my life outside of the past year where I use the XPS 15 7590 as my main device. But one reason I was hesitant to switch to PC was form factor and design. So if you're in the same camp as me, no need to worry. The surface book design from at least the keyboard, you know, trackpad and the display standpoint is great from the display standpoint, better than the MacBook Pro for sure. It's actually an exciting device to use. I don't get bored with it. And that's because of the two in one capability flipping it into tablet mode. I can like take the display off. I could flip it around. I could reattach it, flip it down, and then I could obviously just use it in tablet mode. You may not care a whole lot about the trackpad, but that's an underrated part of the laptop, especially when it comes to programming, because you're going to use a lot when inspecting and debugging, you know, websites and just code in general. The keyboard feels great when I type. It feels really natural and responsive. The surface of the keys, no pun intended, feel great on my fingertips. The only thing I would change is just the space in between the keys. Other than that, the typing experience is great, which is also a very important aspect that should not be overlooked if you're a programmer, because the only way to code is to type and you do a lot of that. I've been using the Surface Book 3 in tablet mode for productivity. One of the main reasons is because the size of the screen and aspect ratio makes it easy to multitask with split screen when writing notes and OneNote with the Surface Pen, handwritten notes, that is, along with taking programming courses. The tip of the Surface Pen nib feels really accurate when handwriting in apps like OneNote, easily handwrite your notes on the side of the screen and even write code in the terminal or whatever IDE you use on the other screen. Outside of the keyboard popping up or not popping up at the right time here and there, the tablet mode experience is almost perfect. All right, my experience coding with this machine. So I've been talking about building my own personal site from scratch because my current site's on Squarespace, and I just feel weird as a dev to not have my own personal site built from scratch. So I built this personal website with GridSum, which is a Vue.js powered Jamstack framework for building static generated websites and apps. I also use Bootstrap and Material Design because one, I wanted the website to be responsive. And since I wanted to get this website up and running quickly, I don't have time to build my own layout or grid system for now. Everything installed lightning fast. I didn't really run into any issues outside of trying to run my project with GridSum in a VS Code terminal, but that's probably just a setting I need to fix. So I wasn't surprised by this experience, considering the fact that this laptop has more than enough power to write code. I mean, one of my work laptops has 16 gigs of RAM. It's an HP. I use it for VS Studio with much larger projects, and it's pretty fast. And this is way faster with that lightning fast, two terabytes of SSD and 32 gigs of RAM. Now, this isn't a super thorough review because I haven't had it long enough, but I could recommend this laptop to anyone studying comp sci, software engineering, you know, information, tech, along with any engineering major, really because of its power, bright digital canvas and versatility. However, the caveat is that this laptop is really expensive. You definitely don't need 32 gigs of RAM. It has the same processor as the XPS 13, which starts at around 1500, which is almost a thousand less than the base 15 inch. The Surface Book 3 will give you a better gaming experience and video editing experience because of that dedicated graphics opposed to integrated graphics in something like the XPS 13. So if that is important to you, this could be for you. Now, if you're someone who has a budget, then it really just comes down to preference and how much you'll use a tablet mode. One of my good friends is a senior designer, and he has a Surface Book 3, and he loves it. So maybe if you're in that same camp, this is for you. Regardless, I actually really enjoyed this laptop, especially when it comes to being creative, coding and having portability. With that being said, thanks for watching this video. Give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it at all. Subscribe to the channel. I'd love for you all to become part of this amazing community of creatives, developers, and of course, the curious. As always, have a blessed rest of your week, and I'll see you soon. Peace.