Microsoft Surface Book review: Surface Book 2 is here, but what’s new?

Update: Microsoft launches Surface Book 2

Best to wait a bit before you pick up a Surface Book. Yep, Microsoft has just announced the brand new Surface Book 2, and it brings with it some much-needed 2017 improvements.

A fresh-faced upgrade, this new and improved Surface Book is equipped with up-to-date Kably Lake processors, with a handful of different RAM and storage configurations. What’s more, the excellent hinged design of the original remains unchanged.

READ NEXT: Microsoft Surface Book 2 details

But, Microsoft’s latest doesn’t come cheap. You see, the Surface Book 2 starts at £1,499 for the 13.5in model, and a wallet-wilting £2,500 for the 15in variant. That’s no small sum, but if you’re still happy with what the original offers, 2015’s Surface Book can currently be picked up for as low as £1,200. Bargain.

My original Microsoft Surface Book 2 review continues below.

Microsoft Surface Book review

Microsoft’s Surface Book has spawned an abundance of imitations. Since its release, most of those big hitters from Dell to HP have been vying for that ultraportable crown. While some, like Dell’s latest XPS 13 2-in-1 have come close, that original 2016 Surface Book is still cemented as top dog.

Now, Microsoft has long affirmed the notion that its Surface line of laptop/tablet hybrids are “the tablet that could replace your laptop”. And while its impressive Surface Pro 4 hit very close to the mark, I’m yet to be convinced. There’s no such thing as a laptop replacement in this day and age, even if it does come with some stand-out bells and whistles like Lenovo’s recent Yoga Book.

Sure, some people are in the market for a laptop-replacing tablet, and that’s fair enough but 2-in-1’s are hardly a viable alternative as a work device. Microsoft’s Surface Book however, books this trend, with the firm’s first ever laptop rightly earning the top spot as one of the best Windows 10 devices ever released.

Microsoft Surface Book review: Design and Dynamic Fulcrum Hinge

Much has been said of the Surface Book’s ‘dynamic fulcrum hinge’. It’s one of the first things you notice about the device. In some ways, it’s similar to Lenovo’s watch-hinge from the Yoga 900, but its inner-workings are very different to almost every other laptop hinge that’s come before it.

For instance, rather than just bending at a pivot point like a standard hinge, the internal mechanism actually unfurls and uncoils. The hinge has multiple grooves that allow it to bend and contort when the lid is shut, but when it’s open the numerous ridges press together to provide support.

The clever design of the fulcrum hinge means that when you open the lid, the depth of the Surface Book actually extends back by nearly 20mm, giving the Surface Book a greater contact footprint on your desk’s surface to help stabilise and balance the system as a whole. This is important, as most of the Surface Book’s components are housed within the display so it can be used as a tablet, which could have made it very top-heavy. Thankfully, this isn’t the case, as the whole system feels very weighty and sturdy when it’s fully open. Of course, the fulcrum hinge does mean that the screen can’t be tilted back as far as some laptops, but I rarely felt the need to tilt it back any further than its default viewing angle.

With the lid closed, the unusual hinge also means that there’s an exposed gap at the rear of the laptop between the screen and the base. This might prove problematic if you transport the Surface Book in a particularly grubby bag, but in testing I never encountered any issues with dirt accumulating in the grooves of the hinge. Viewed in profile, the hinge and gap do give the Surface Book an unmistakable charm, and its uninterrupted magnesium body looks superb both inside and out.

The other piece of clever engineering is Microsoft’s ‘muscle wire’ attachment mechanism. This is what keeps the screen connected to the keyboard base. To release it, you need to hold down the dedicated button in the top right corner of the keyboard, or select the relevant option in the taskbar. The mechanism’s nitinol alloy then tightens when an electrical charge is delivered, and these are used as springs that disengage the locks. Those clamps are incredibly strong, too. I could grab the system by its display and confidently let the weight of the keyboard base dangle without any worries of it falling off.

It’s not instant, though, as you’ll hear a distinct clicking sound when the screen is ready to be removed. Bizarrely, the sound is actually artificial, as the mechanism itself is completely silent. However, it’s still a very satisfying sound and it provides a useful piece of aural feedback to let you know when you can safely remove it from the keyboard. Since this is also Microsoft’s flagship Windows 10 device, you can configure it to switch into tablet mode automatically when you pull it apart.

The display can also be mounted back to its base reversed, so that you can fold it down flat or use it in a pitched up tent mode. The Surface Book knows when it’s been reverse-mounted, too, so it will stay in tablet mode.

This software-based release method is crucial, as certain Surface Book configurations have a dedicated GPU in the keyboard base. If the dedicated GPU is in use, attempting to separate the display from its base will prompt you to save any work before continuing.

Aside from its special hinge, the rest of the Surface Book’s design is rather utilitarian. Its simplicity lends it a rather industrial appearance, and from a distance you could almost mistake its plain, magnesium chassis for something more akin to plastic. Up close, though, it looks stunning. It feels robust and pleasant to the touch and it has a delightfully uncluttered design without any garish embellishments – much unlike the carbon fibre used on Dell’s XPS 13. Instead, the only decoration is Microsoft’s mirrored logo on the back of the lid, which contrasts beautifully against the metallic grey.

As far as 13in laptops go, it’s quite heavy. With a dedicated GPU, it weighs 1.58kg, or 1.52kg without. Next to the Dell XPS 13, which weighs 1.29kg, the difference is palpable. The fulcrum hinge also adds to its thickness, as it tapers from 22.8mm down to 13mm at the front.

Microsoft Surface Book review: Display and Speakers

Aside from the unique hinge, the Surface Book deviates from the norm with its 3:2 aspect ratio display. Just like the Google Chromebook Pixel, this means the display is taller and more box-like than normal. The aspect ratio lends itself particularly well to working or browsing the web, but less so for watching films, as you end up with black bars.

Compared to the Chromebook Pixel, the Surface Book packs in more pixels-per-inch, with a 3,000×2,000 resolution 13.5in PixelSense multitouch panel. This equates to a pixel density of 267ppi, allowing text and images to appear crisp and sharp. Windows 10’s scaling options also make dealing with its high-resolution display far more palatable than previous versions of Windows, and setting it to around 200% is a happy medium.

Microsoft claims that the panel covers 100% sRGB, has 1,700:1 contrast ratio and 400cd/m2 of brightness. Our calibrator showed that it exceeded these measurements in all but sRGB coverage, where it was just shy of full coverage at a still excellent 99%. Its contrast ratio was in fact measured at 1,736:1 and white levels of 435.1cd/m2, which is insanely bright for a laptop.

You’ll probably find yourself using 75% maximum brightness indoors to save your eyesight, but having the extra overhead for when you want to use the Surface Book outdoors is a boon. The only slight annoyance is that there aren’t any screen brightness shortcuts on the keyboard, so you’ll have to jump into the settings or Windows Action Centre to make any adjustments. With such bright whites, you could be understandably concerned how black levels would fare, but, as the high contrast ratio implied, the black levels were suitably deep at 0.25cd/m2. Microsoft certainly hasn’t skimped on a high-quality panel, but it’s a shame it doesn’t also come with any window management software to help you drag and snap your windows around the screen with ease.

The speakers, meanwhile, are discretely located on the outer edges of the display and put out a very respectable amount of volume. They’re a bit bright and harsh around the treble without much support from the low-end, but they do a serviceable job for YouTube videos and the odd bit of music.

Microsoft Surface Book review: Keyboard and Touchpad

The backlit keyboard is very comfortable to type on. It has a sensible layout and each generously-sized key has an excellent amount of travel. The keys were perhaps a little too densely packed for my liking, as I often found myself striking adjacent keys accidentally due to the small amount of space between them, but having used it to type this review, it wasn’t too frustrating overall.

The white backlighting is particularly gorgeous. There are three brightness options available, but you can turn it off completely if you prefer. The backlight will also turn off automatically when the keys haven’t been used for a certain period of time. Striking a key turns them back on and the light fades in gradually, which is a nice touch. I also liked that you could toggle the Fn key on and off, much like the like Caps Lock button.

The glass laminated precision touchpad, however, deserves special mention, as it’s by far the best touchpad I’ve ever used on a Windows laptop. It feels incredibly smooth under your fingertips, with swipes and gestures all gliding across the surface with next to no resistance. Your swipes feel like they interact with your cursor directly, rather than with any lag, and it really makes using multi-touch gestures an absolute joy in Windows 10, as it becomes a far more seamless experience to swipe between windows.

Microsoft Surface Book review: Clipboard Mode and Surface Pen

Unlike the Surface 3 and Surface Pro 4, the Surface Book is a laptop first, tablet second. In fact, Microsoft doesn’t even describe it as a tablet when it’s been undocked from its keyboard base, instead referring to as a ‘Clipboard’. However, that’s not to say it’s not an excellent device in its secondary Clipboard form.

As the name implies, it’s an ideal partner for the included Surface Pen, as its 3:2 aspect ratio is much more akin to a sheet of A4 paper than a traditional 16:9 display, which makes it easy to jot down notes and annotate web pages. The stylus has 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, just like the one we loved from the Surface Pro 4.

Again, it has a clickable button on the top that automatically opens Microsoft OneNote for instant note-taking, or a double-click brings up a clipping of what’s currently onscreen so you can start annotating. It means the Surface Book truly does become a clipboard-esque tablet, and using it as a digital notepad quickly becomes second nature.

You’ll need to make sure the Surface Pen is correctly paired with the Surface Book through Bluetooth, as my review sample wasn’t out of the box. Without being paired, it’ll still work happily as a stylus to scribble away on the screen, but the eraser button won’t work.

The tips are user-replaceable, so you can swap it out for something thinner or thicker if you prefer to emulate different pens. Flip the pen over and you can use the flat end as a handy eraser for removing some of your scribbles. It uses slightly awkward AAAA (yes, quadruple A) batteries, but these aren’t too difficult to get hold of. You should get about a year’s worth of battery life out of a single AAAA battery.

When not in use, the Surface Pen attaches to the left side of the Clipboard display magnetically. It’s shocking how many devices that come with a stylus have nowhere to safely stow it away, but luckily the Surface Book’s magnet is so secure that you don’t need to be too concerned about it going missing

Surface Bookreview: Configurations

Like the Surface Pro 4, the Surface Book is available in different configurations. The entry-level model is equipped with a dual-core 2.4GHz Intel i5-6300U processor that can Turbo boost to 3GHz, has 8GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD storage and no dedicated GPU for £1,299. The next model up doubles the storage capacity and adds in a custom dedicated Nvidia GeForce GPU for £1,599.

The next model up swaps the processor for a dual-core 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6600U that can Turbo boost to 3.4GHz and has an RRP of £1,799. The top model, and the one I reviewed here, has the same i7 processor but doubles the storage and RAM to 512GB of 16GB respectively, and costs an eye-watering £2,249. All but the entry-level model include the dedicated graphics card.

Surface Book review: Performance and Windows 10

In our application benchmarks that emulate real-world use, the top-end model managed an overall score of 43. This was a little disappointing considering the slightly slower rated 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6500U used in Dell’s XPS 13 managed a score of 46.

The slower performance can likely be attributed to having all of the components crammed into the display, meaning thermal constraints play a role. It’s an admirable feat that Microsoft has managed to pack everything save for the GPU into the screen, but it’s a shame it comes at the cost of performance.

The Surface Book is also reasonably loud when running under load. I even noticed the fans whirring away during lighter tasks, too, and its high-pitched whine is noticeable in a quiet room. That said, there’s no denying that Windows 10 feels right at home on the Surface Book, as transitioning between desktop and tablet modes is very smart and navigating feels swift and responsive.

This is helped in no small part by its 512GB Samsung NVMe PCIe SSD, which has sequential read speeds 1,238,2MB/s and write speeds of 555.9MB/s, which are both suitably quick. However, as with the Dell XPS 15, you need to turn off Windows 10’s write-cache buffer flushing to uncap the write speed, however, as write speeds are less than half when it’s turned on. 

Microsoft and Nvidia are remaining schtum about exactly what the dedicated graphics card is, aside from that it’s a custom GPU, but many reports claim that it’s based around an Nvidia GeForce 940M, albeit with a faster 1GB of GDDR5 memory rather than GDDR3. In testing, the card outperforms other laptops we’ve seen with  the 940M as we’ve seen in other laptops such as the Acer Aspire V3-574G, and that model had 2GB of GDDR3.

However, while it’s an impressive feat of engineering to stick a discrete graphics card into the keyboard base, you’ll still need to temper your expectations. I only managed to eke out acceptable gaming performance by toning down our usual gaming benchmarks. With a resolution of 1,920×1,080 resolution, 4x anti-aliasing and Ultra graphics, the Surface Book only managed 21fps in Dirt Showdown, and I had to drop the graphics quality to Medium and turn off anti-aliasing completely to get a playable 61fps. That’s still a significant improvement over the 940M’s 47fps we’ve seen before, though.

Unsurprisingly, Metro Last Light: Redux was an insurmountable challenge at our usual settings, but dropping it to 1,920×1,080, Medium quality, 4x AF, no tessellation and no super-sample aliasing produced a just-playable 33.1fps. With this in mind, gaming is possible on the Surface Book, but just keep in mind you’ll need to sacrifice graphics quality in order to do so.

Really, the discrete graphics is better suited to tasks such as video and photo editing applications that can take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration. Media professionals then will love the additional power. Attach the Clipboard in reverse and fold it down and you have a powerful stylus-supported tablet that can take advantage of the GPU.

Surface Book review: Battery Life

The keyboard base not only contains an optional discrete graphics card, but it also contains a second battery across all configurations. Microsoft rates the battery life as around 12 hours in laptop mode and 3 hours in Clipboard. However, our video playback test with the screen set to 170cd/m2 saw just 9 hours 38 minutes in laptop mode and 2 hours 39 minutes in Clipboard.

As a laptop, you’ll still get through a working day away from the mains, eking out more stamina from more general light use, but you won’t want to use it as a standard tablet, even if you do manage to eke out something closer to three hours under light use. This isn’t that surprising when nearly all of the components into the screen, though.

Surface Book review: Connections and Cameras

The Clipboard component of the Surface Book is barren when it comes to connections. There’s just a 3.5mm headphone jack, power and volume buttons and a magnetic point for the Surface Pen. The rest of its connections are on the keyboard base.

Here you’ll find two USB3 ports and an SD card reader on one side, and a mini DisplayPort on the other. Charging is handled through its proprietary magnetic SurfaceConnect charging port, just like on the Surface Pro 4, and the magnetic port is also reversible, which is handy depending on how your desk is laid out.

The charger’s power brick isn’t obscenely large, either, but isn’t as svelte and easily transportable as other 13in laptops. There is, at least, a useful extra USB port built into the brick that can be used for charging your other devices, saving you from carrying a separate charger for your smartphone, for example, or using up one of the few USB ports on the Surface Book.

It feels strange that an Intel Thunderbolt 3 or, at least, standard USB Type-C port isn’t included. The former would have allowed you to take advantage of faster external storage and both would have allowed docking and power options. Instead, Microsoft has its own dedicated Surface Dock, which connects to the Surface Book via the magnetic charging port. This adds two more mini DisplayPorts, four USB3 ports and Gigabit Ethernet. 

The front of the Surface Book’s Clipboard has a 5 megapixel Windows Hello-compatible webcam. This means you can use facial recognition for signing into Windows without a password. Too few laptops have supported this in my experience, even though we’re now months after Windows 10 launched. It works well on the Surface Book, adding in a layer of convenience. On the back is a 8 megapixel autofocusing camera. Both cameras are surprisingly good performers. Video conferencing from the front works great even under low light, and the rear camera can still produce sharp images under dim lighting with respectable colours.

Surface Book review: Conclusion

There’s no doubt that the Microsoft Surface Book is a stunning piece of engineering. As Microsoft’s inaugural laptop that doubles as a tablet, it’s a device the company can be proud of. In terms of design, it’s by far my favourite Windows laptop, and it marries a lot of the Surface Pro 4’s best features with more practical design choices taken from Apple’s MacBooks and Google’s Chromebook Pixel. The touchpad in particular is the best I’ve used on a Windows laptop.

The only sticking point is that eye-watering price, as you’re essentially paying a very high premium for its tablet capability and fancy design. Buy a similarly-specced, but admittedly more traditional laptop like the Dell XPS 13, and you’ll save a significant amount of money.

If you are considering a Surface Book, though, then it’s certainly worth stretching to at least the minimum specification with a dedicated GPU, as this is something the XPS 13 is decidedly lacking, so you’ll get a lot more for your money if you opt for one of the slightly higher specifications. That said, it’s arguably a device that’s better suited to digital creatives than your average user, as its high-end specs are a bit of a waste if all you’re going to use it for is day-to-day computing tasks.

In my eyes, either the Dell XPS 13 or XPS 15 are better buys at this kind of price range, but if you have the budget and the wanton need for such a lavishly luxurious device, the Surface Book certainly won’t disappoint.