I believe that Microsoft will attempt a software fix to existing Surface Pro 3 units but more than likely over time they will change out both hardware, firmware and software to tweak this issue. It’s also clear to me that this laptop/tablet did not get tested fully and was rushed to the market, a sign of the times. It’s quite clear Microsoft played some games here to attempt to reach the 9 hour battery life claims on the Surface Pro 3. Once you do this, your WiFi will no longer drop the connection and the experience of the Surface Pro 3 will be much more enjoyable.

Once you have the smaller screen open, line down until you find the “Wireless Adapter Settings” option, open it and here you now have various options for the amount of power that the WiFi adapter will get, I changed mine to “Maximum Performance”. The key is getting your S-Pro3 to allow all three of the power plans, and do to that, you have to enable Hyper-V. You can read more about this new power plan design here, Microsoft available power plans. With the current setup, Microsoft has tried to create a power plan for when the S-Pro3 is running on battery that gives maximum life to the batter, and in doing so, they created a plan that does not give a constant enough power supply to the WiFi, so it momentarily drops thus losing the connection. You also don’t have as many options to fine tune the power management. Instead all you will find is the “balanced” option. When you go to Power Management options you will no longer find the “power saver” and “high performance” options. One thing that is different about the S-Pro3 is how Microsoft implemented the Power Management. I went ahead and upgraded that, but it did not really seem to make a difference. Microsoft did release a large driver/firmware update on 06/14/14, and my unit was running the 05/27/14 driver/firmware. Net, I didn’t think it was a driver issue.

When I checked the WiFi driver for the Surface Pro 3 (S-Pro3) I noticed it was also the Marvell driver, so it’s safe to assume it’s pretty much the same WiFi that is on the Surface Pro 2 (S-Pro2). I also own the Surface Pro 2 and the WiFi on it has been rock solid from day 1. It happened enough that I was considering returning the unit, thinking that the WiFi on the system was defective. I have had my Surface Pro 3 now for about 2 weeks and during the first week, I was driven crazy with the WiFi, constantly dropping, reacquiring and dropping the connection. However there seems to be one glitch, WiFi drops. This new form factor with a larger LCD, and thinner form factor will be turning a lot of heads. With their release of the new Surface Pro 3, Microsoft has definitely created a winner.

Surface pro 3 screen keeps turning off