Upgrade your Surface Pro 3/4/5 to Windows 11

When Microsoft announced the very strict hardware requirements for Windows 11 and the end of support of Windows 10, they basically killed the older end of their Surface product line. In reality the decade old Surface Pro 3 is fully compatible with Windows 11, while not officially supported.

While I generally dislike anything Microsoft or Windows, one has to admit that their hardware products often are pretty neat. The Surface Pro 3 was an engineering masterpiece, considering that it was released in 2014. It is still a decent device for light computing a decade later and well worth the Windows 11 update. I found a barely used SP3 Core i7/8GB/256GB, the top of the line model, from recycle bin and could not resist taking it. After trying ChromeOS Flex and various Linux distros on it, it became obvious that Windows is the best fit for this device, but since Windows 10 is approaching the end of life, I decided to go for the 11. The installation involves only a simple hack using Rufus and the system runs great.

The installation procedure

1. Download Windows 11 installation media as an .ISO file from Microsoft
2. Flash the .ISO file to a USB stick using Rufus
   1. Before starting the flash, Rufus will ask whether it should make some changes to the installation media, including the disabling of hardware requirements check (4GB+ RAM, Secure Boot, TPM2.0). Choose this option.
   2. You can also make other adjustments to the media, like disabling the BitLocker encryption and mandatory Microsoft account.
3. Insert the installation USB to your SP3. Then press and hold Volume up while pressing power button. This gets you to UEFI settings - modify the boot order to set the USB as the first booting device.
4. Boot up and install Windows 11 as usual.
5. Once you reach the desktop, check Windows Update for a updates to the system and drivers. Wait patiently until you have all the updates installed. This involves reboots.
6. All done!

Compatibility, performance and other findings

There are some interesting findings with this upgrade, even though the actual procedure is simple. I was surprised to find out that the SP3 seems to be 100% compatible with Windows 11. All the hardware features work, including volume buttons, detachable keyboard detection and Bluetooth.

Windows 11 ships with all the required drivers and even pushes firmware updates via Windows Update. In the end, the Device Manager shows no un-identified or un-installed devices in the system. So even though this is an unsupported device, Microsoft is actually supporting it.

Windows 11 runs quite nicely on the 10 year old hardware. It is not blazing fast or buttery smooth, but perfectly usable – I am actually writing this article on the Surface Pro 3. This device was originally released with Windows 8 and the Windows 10 update was not great on it. Windows 11 is not any worse, to say the least.

Running Windows 11 instead of some Linux variant or Chrome OS Flex gives you certain benefits, even though Linux generally is lighter on the system resources.

• Better touch screen support, with a tablet mode if you detach the keyboard.
• Better hardware acceleration for the web browser.
• Better support for streaming media - you get Full HD in Netflix and others, hardware accelerated.
• Significantly better battery life. The difference is literally hours.

Final thoughts

It pisses me of that we toss away perfectly good hardware for software reasons. A decade since it's release, the Surface Pro 3 is still a very capable device that can browse the web and perform most everyday tasks effortlessly. It is a nice media player, thanks to the high quality display panel. It is a good travel device that can do just about anything on the road, in a compact form factor. So don't throw it out the window just yet.

Note that my unit was the top model with 8GB RAM and Core i7 processor. The cheaper variants of SP3 will be slightly slower, but the performance on Windows 11 should be quite similar to what you are getting on Windows 10. While Microsoft is providing all the drivers and even firmware updates on the 11, the device still isn't officially supported, so there won't be any help from their side in case you run into issues. I have no access to Surface Pro 4 or 5, but since this is the oldest of the three, I see no reason why the upgrade would work with newer models as well. The Surface Pro 6 is the first one that supports Windows 11 officially.

The upgrade is dead simple to do and the end result great, so I see no reason to stay with Windows 10. The improved UI of the 11 actually fits this convertible a lot better than the 10 ever did.