The Surface Pro 3 may be the little brother of the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, but it stands toe-to-toe with it in design and build materials. Both offer magnesium alloy chassis with premium ceramic finishes and a svelte tablet/laptop form factor. Both offer support for pen input and a high-resolution display that's optimized for productivity. And both run Windows 8.1.
What's more, the Surface Pro 3 has better cameras: a 5MP rear and a front camera capable of recording 1080p video. It's also a heavier device at 1.76 pounds.
That said, the fifth-generation Core M in the Yoga 3 Pro does a fair job of keeping up with the latest Haswell-based Intel Core i5 processors when running simulated work and light gaming. It's not as fast at handling intensive tasks like video editing or hardcore Photoshop, but you shouldn't notice any performance deficits during normal productivity use on a device this thin and portable.
But where the Yoga 3 Pro really shines is in battery life. The fifth-generation Intel Core M chips in the Yoga 3 Pro are a lot more energy efficient than the quad core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processors found in many Netbooks. This translates to much longer battery life when using the Yoga 3 Pro as a laptop. During our tests, the Yoga 3 Pro lasted 141 minutes with 18 percent battery left to get a PCMark 8 score of 9,863. That doesn't quite match the best current Ultrabooks and MacBooks but should be plenty for most people.