Image: Minisforum
Some people have been waiting a long time for an alternative to Microsoft’s Surface series, and niche small form factor manufacturer Minisforum is ready to give it to them. The company’s V3 tablet, which proclaims itself the “world’s first AMD 3-in-1 Windows tablet,” is now available to purchase and shipping in a little over a week.
Minisforum might be being a little grandiose in its description of the V3 — it’s not as if it was ever impossible to use a Ryzen platform in a Surface form factor, it’s just that no one saw a huge demand for it. But that being said, there’s no doubt that this is some pretty impressive hardware on paper. The base model of the V3 tablet uses an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 8840U processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Again, that’s the base configuration, with a detachable keyboard included.
The screen and body are considerably larger than the Surface, with a 14-inch 2K panel and a 165Hz refresh rate. Other hardware features include three USB-C ports (two USB-4, one with Vlink DP-in to use the tablet as a portable monitor), a full-sized SD card slot, a headphone jack, and a fingerprint reader in the power button.
Minisforum
Minisforum
Minisforum
All that tech is going for $1,199 for the early bird special. Early buyers also get a free stylus, laptop sleeve, and glass screen protector. The price will go up to $1,499 after the first batch, but the equivalent build of the Surface Pro 9 is priced at over two grand. And even after more than a decade of hearing this complaint, Microsoft still wants you to pay extra for the keyboard.
Even so, I’d be trepidatious about dropping more than a thousand dollars on hardware from a company that hasn’t made a portable device before. Feel free to put your money down, but I’d wait for the first batch of reviews to arrive.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer
Michael is a former graphic designer who’s been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.