Even before you can start talking about the new 15-inch Surface Laptop 3, or AMD’s custom Ryzen inside of it, you simply have to admit: Microsoft’s new all-metal Surface Laptop 3's are gorgeous.

Full disclosure: I’m typing this on a Microsoft Surface Book 2, so there’s some justification for my love of shiny metal. And that’s where the Surface Laptop 3 starts: with metal options in Sandstone, plus Matte Black, Cobalt Blue and the traditional Platinum. Yes, the Alcantara fabric is still an option, but if you want a Surface Book-like option without the price, Microsoft has you covered.

The Surface Laptop 3 ships in two options: the traditional 13-inch form factor, and the new 15-inch option. But while the original Surface Laptop may have been priced affordably for students, the Surface Laptop 3 soars into higher budget ranges. The base prices are $999 for the 13-inch version and $1,199 for the 15-inch. A tricked-out 15-inch laptop costs a whopping $2,799—the same price as the MacBook Pro. However, both the memory and storage in the top-tier Surface Laptop 3 exceed the MacBook Pro's.) The most expensive 13-inch Surface Laptop 3 is $2,399, $400 more than the most expensive MacBook Pro. Daaaaamn.

Though the Surface Pen can be used with the new Surface Laptop 3, that’s not really the point. They can also be used with the Surface Dial, though it’s a bit awkward to use while in laptop mode.

The keyboard’s fairly comfortable, with 1.3mm of travel. After checking the specs, we discovered why it didn’t feel quite as good: The key travel decreased from 1.5mm on the previous generation. In any case, the “feel” of a keyboard is largely subjective. The size of the trackpad is now 20 percent larger.

Internally, of course, what makes the Surface Laptop 3 so very intriguing is the new Ryzen chip inside of the 15-inch version, with—wait for it—the Ryzen 5 3580U Radeon Vega 9 Surface Edition. That’s a mouthful. My colleague Gordon Mah Ung offers an in-depth explanation of the new “Surface Edition” AMD Ryzen processors, but basically, it boils down to this: The Surface Edition chips have more on-die computational and graphics cores than AMD will offer other PC partners, making this technically a custom core.

We’d like to say that we noticed differences in each laptop's performance, but the reality is that we didn’t have time to do much with them. We'll have more to say if we're able to test the units. So far, though, we’re liking what we’ve seen—as long as it’s not our credit cards footing the bill.

Abigail Smith is an inventive person who has been doing intensive research in particular topics and writing blogs and articles on Printer Customer Support and many other related topics. He is a very knowledgeable person with lots of experience.