#SURFACE BOBOK 2 FULL#
#SURFACE BOBOK 2 PRO#
#SURFACE BOBOK 2 SOFTWARE#

Oh – and if you’re worried about having to use dongles for this laptop, don’t worry. We’ll run some benchmarks in the next few days.

#SURFACE BOBOK 2 FULL#

The power of the dedicated GPU should make for a pretty good gaming experience (though not at full resolution and the highest settings - it’s not a 1080, after all. I’d be quite happy with the Surface Book 2 if the screen didn’t detach, too (though at a lower price). Some of these feel like niche use cases and I can’t quite see myself doing any of this on a regular basis but that’s probably a personal thing. But is it more than just a novelty? Microsoft argues that you can detach it and use it as a tablet, fold it around to go into “studio mode” for comfortable sketching, or detach the screen, turn it around, re-attach it for mobile presentation. It’s surprisingly light, especially when you consider that it’s a 15-inch tablet with a promised five-hour battery life. Let’s talk about the key feature of the Surface Book 2 for a moment: the detachable screen. The screen may just be a bit too glossy for some (too many laptop screens these days are), but it’s winter in Oregon and we won’t see the sun until next year, so I haven’t been able to test that.

#SURFACE BOBOK 2 SOFTWARE#

Thankfully, Microsoft and the software developers in its ecosystem have fixed most of Windows 10’s issues with high-density displays, so you can actually now enjoy the experience. The touch-sensitive screen is bright and at a resolution of 3240×2160, you’re getting a higher pixel density than on the MacBook Pro. The large chiclet keyboard has enough travel and gives you a good indication that you’ve pressed a button, making it quite comfortable to type on. The tablet/screen is securely attached to it (and the keyboard has a key that releases it from its base). What you can’t argue about, though, is the overall quality of the build. But it sure makes it stand out in this crowded laptop market. We can argue about its design - that rounded hinge that leaves quite a gap even when the laptop is closed wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea when the first version launched and while Microsoft has tweaked the hinge, the gap is still as prominent as ever. We’ll do that in a week or so, after I’ve had some more real-world experience with it.Įven after a short time with the new Surface Book, I’ve come away impressed (anything else at this price would be quite a disappointment, of course). I’ve only had the Surface Book 2 on my desk for just over 24 hours, so this isn’t a definitive review (I have barely been able to run the battery down once in that time, after all).

#SURFACE BOBOK 2 PRO#

It’s Microsoft’s challenger to the MacBook Pro and it’s not shying away from the comparison. But Microsoft’s message here is pretty clear: the Surface Book 2 is basically a mobile workstation for those who want to edit videos and photos, play games on the road or just need a really powerful mobile machine to crunch numbers or compile a Linux kernel or two. There surely a world of difference between the performance of these low-end and high-end machines, so you get what you pay for.

In between, there are a number of other 15-inch models with Nvidia 1050 GPUs and varying numbers for RAM and disk space. That’s $3,299 worth of Surface Book, though at the low-end, you can also get a 13-inch machine for $1,499 with an i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and an integrated Intel GPU. Microsoft shipped me a top-of-the-line 15-inch Surface Book 2 review unit with the latest Intel Core i7-8650U CPU clocked at 1.9 GHz, a discrete Nvidia 1060 GPU with 6GB of RAM, 16GB of memory and a terabyte SSD. It’s a relatively heavy base with a powerful processor and graphics card and a big battery - and it has a surprisingly light removable screen that turns it into a tablet and that features a less powerful processor and graphics chip. It’s not just a Surface Pro with a rigid keyboard. It’s also one of the odder devices in the lineup, though. It easily blows away the Surface Pro, Surface Laptop and, of course, the old Surface Book. Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 is the most powerful mobile Surface device yet.

Surface bobok 2