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 bills itself as “the world's first AMD 3-in-1 Windows tablet.” Available for purchase now. And shipping in a little over a week.

Minisforum can be a bit grandiose in its description of the V3 — it's not that the Ryzen platform was ever impossible to use in the Surface form factor, it's just that no one saw much 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, it is base on configuration, which includes a detachable keyboard.

The screen and body are quite large, 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 for using the tablet as a portable monitor), a full-size SD card slot, a headphone jack, and Power includes a fingerprint reader. Button

Miniforum

Miniforum

Miniforum

All that technology is going for $1,199 for an 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 same build as the Surface Pro 9 Cost over two grand. And even after more than a decade of listening to this complaint, Microsoft even now Want to pay extra for your keyboard?

Even so, I'm nervous about dropping over 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'll wait for the first batch of reviews to come in.