Does the Surface Book remain the ultimate laptop two years after launch? Read on to find out the answer

Jun 10, 2017 13:01 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft launched the Surface Book in October 2015 alongside a group of other devices that it announced with much fanfare, including the Surface Pro 4, the Lumia 950 and 950 XL smartphones, as well as the Band 2 activity tracker.

In the meantime, the flagship phones and the wearable were abandoned, though without an official announcement in this regard, and the Surface lineup is the only 2015 product that’s still being supported by Microsoft.

The Surface Pro 4 itself received a refresh in May this year, with the device now being called just “Surface Pro” and coming with several improvements and new hardware.

As far as the Surface Book is concerned, there are a lot of rumors concerning the second generation. After the launch of the original Surface RT in October 2012, Microsoft used to refresh Surface hardware in the fall of each year, so naturally, the second-generation Surface Book was projected to launch in late 2016, 12 months after the debut of the first model.

According to sources, the company decided to hold back the release for a little longer because some features weren’t ready, so the next target was the spring of this year. Spring is over, and there’s no Surface Book 2 in sight, with people familiar with the matter now claiming that the next target date is the fall of this year, once again because some features needed additional refinements.

This leaves us with just a single generation of the Surface Book, a device that Microsoft described as the “ultimate laptop” and which received a new version last year. But as far as the original model is concerned, could it still be called “the ultimate laptop”? Does it have the hardware to compete against the new laptops that launched in 2016 and 2017?

We’re going to answer all these questions in our review today, though it’s important to mention that we won’t be focusing too much on the hardware side, since this is a one-year-old device, but on the user experience.

Design

Even though it launched more than 19 months ago, the Surface Book continues to be one of the most beautiful laptops on the market. This shows that Microsoft is well ahead of the majority of rivals in the hardware market, and its devices hardly get outdated - this is one of the reasons Microsoft isn’t quite in a hurry to roll out a refresh to the Surface Book and the same thing is valid for the Surface Pro as well.

The original Surface Book measures 12.30” x 9.14” x 0.51 - 0.90” (312.3mm x 232.1mm x 13.0 – 22.8mm) and weighs just 3.34 lbs (1,516 g) with the keyboard included. This isn’t the lightest laptop currently on the market, but given the hardware, it’s very clear that Microsoft managed to achieve a mix that makes the Surface Book a beautiful piece of technology even a year and a half after launch.

For comparison, the 2016 MacBook Pro with a 13-inch screen, which was launched nearly a year after the Surface Book, tips the scales at 3.02 pounds (1.37 kg) and measures 11.97” x 8.36” x 0.56 (304.1 mm x 212.4 mm x 14.9 mm) and it doesn’t feature a detachable keyboard or touch support.

But what sets the Surface Book apart, even so many months after its launch, is the hinge, which Microsoft calls the “dynamic fulcrum hinge.”

At first glance, it looks kind of weird, though history has proved that it’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of feature. Some people like it, others would do better without it, but in the end, we’d rather say that it’s all just a matter of time until you get used to it.

The hinge is not just about the design, but about functionality as well. It houses part of the device's internals and connects the screen to the keyboard, with the important mission of letting the display to be removed at the press of a button.

The hinge still feels fresh.

Microsoft put a lot of effort into this hinge, so it comes with features that prevent anything from going wrong, such as detaching the keyboard before the right time. Since top models come with the GPU built into the keyboard, you won’t be able to detach the screen until Windows ends the processes that run on GPU power.

If there’s something that can be criticized about the hinge, it’s the gap that remains between the screen and the display. Critics claimed this gap allows dust to slip in, in the end damaging the keyboard or even the connection between the screen and the keyboard.

All in all, it’s impossible to consider the Surface Book an outdated laptop when it comes to the design. What’s more, the device is still ahead of many of its rivals, and the combination of a touch screen with a slim keyboard and a truly innovative hinge makes it a product that’s hard to beat even one year and a half after launch.

Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Book
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Hardware

As mentioned, we’re not going to be focusing a lot on hardware, but on the user experience with the laptop, though we need to review the specs as well to see how the Surface Book competes against its top rivals that have already received hardware upgrades.

Display

As far as the display goes, the Surface Book comes with a 13.5-inch PixelSense Display featuring a resolution of 3000x2000 pixels with 267 PPI and 3:2 aspect ratio. The screen has 1700:1 contrast ratio and features 10-point multi-touch support.

The display can be used as a laptop screen when connected to the keyboard, but also separately as a tablet, with a pen or not, as it has its own battery. Detaching the screen involves pressing a dedicated key on the keyboard (or clicking an icon in the System Tray) and can only be done when the operating system completes all tasks that would require the two to work together.

Back in late 2015 and in early 2016, detaching the keyboard often caused BSODs, mostly because certain critical tasks were interrupted, but Microsoft appears to have managed to address this with firmware updates released last year.

CPU, GPU, RAM, storage

We’re testing the i5 chip at this point, but the Surface Book is also available with the more powerful i7 as well, paired with either 8GB or 16GB RAM.

What’s very important to know is that this is the 6th generation Intel processors, and as compared to Kaby Lake (7th generation), the Surface Book could feel a little bit slower, though there’s absolutely no doubt it can cope with the majority of tasks that you do every day.

By default, the Surface Book with an Intel Core i5 chip ships with Intel HD Graphics 520, but those who buy the device for gaming must get the i5 or i7 versions with the dedicated NVIDIA GeForce dGPU with 1GB GDDR5 memory. This provides advanced hardware capabilities, and coupled with 16GB RAM, it can run the majority of games out there, though it struggles a little bit with newer titles.

What old hardware?

The default Intel HD Graphics 520 GPU chip is good enough for most people, and we could even play CS:GO with all settings to the lowest levels, but there’s no doubt this configuration is more suitable for office use, rather than for gaming.

In terms of storage, you get to choose between 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB SSD, with an SD card reader also available, but not necessarily for extra storage.

Other hardware

The Surface Book comes with pretty much everything you’d expect a modern laptop to have, plus a few extras, including ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, a Windows Hello face sign-in camera, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with 1080p HD and an 8-megapixel autofocus camera with 1080p HD video on the back, dual microphones, stereo speakers with Dolby Audio Premium, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

And speaking of the headphone jack, the placement of the port is awkward, to say the least. It’s placed at the top right corner of the display, and while it makes sense when using it as a tablet, not the same thing can be said about the laptop mode.

Headphones that are plugged in not only look ridiculous, but there’s also a good chance that the cable ends up on the keyboard or somewhere near your mouse, so you must be super-careful when listening to music.

What we missed here was a fingerprint sensor, though the Windows Hello camera is fantastic and works at an amazing speed. Microsoft has improved it substantially since the release of Windows 10 and logging in takes less than a second whenever you open the laptop.

The Surface Book also lacks USB Type-C, but this isn’t necessarily happening because it was launched in 2015. Microsoft still doesn’t think that USB-C is ready for prime time, so even if the Surface Book launched in 2017, it didn’t have such a connector. The Surface Laptop is living proof in this regard, that is.

The Surface Pen

Oh my God. If you’re like the 2012 Tim Cook and don’t think that styluses have a place on laptops, you need to try the Surface Pen.

Although it might not make much sense when using the Surface Book in laptop mode, and sometime you even have to support the display with the other hand when touching the screen with the Surface Pen, the experience is absolutely fantastic in tablet mode.

The Surface Pen is super-responsive, so you barely notice any lag, and it feels extremely natural in your hand, just like you’re holding a regular pen.

Writing or drawing on the screen is also just as natural as on a piece of paper thanks to the palm detection technology, so you’ll never be interrupted because you accidentally touched a different part of the display. In fact, you can even touch it with your palm to support the hand when drawing because Microsoft aimed to deliver an experience that’s as natural as possible. And it truly achieves it.

Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Book
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User experience

In terms of user experience, the Surface Book is a marvelous device, despite of the old hardware, and if you intend to get it only for office use, there’s no doubt you’ll be pleased with it.

First and foremost, it’s worth noting that for battery use, the device comes with two different batteries, one in the keyboard and another one for the tablet. When used together, you get the full power of both batteries, and when you detach the screen, you obviously get to use just the one in the tablet.

If you’re the 9-to-5 type of office worker, you need the charger with you every day because the best we could get from the Surface Book was 9 hours per a single charge with battery saver turned on and without performing any demanding tasks. Our test involved writing in Microsoft Word, listening to music for nearly 3 hours with headphones connected, a wired mouse and a 50 percent brightness level.

Just get the charger if you work 9 to 5.

If you go anywhere beyond that, the battery life drops, not in a substantial manner, but it’s still enough to make the charger a must-have wherever you go. For playing games, the best we could get was 4 hours per charge, again with headphones connected and with graphics settings set to the lowest level in CS:GO.

The keyboard on the Surface Book is super-comfortable, and this is also thanks to the excellently crafted chassis, which makes the typing position feel relaxing. The hinge is also playing an important role here because you can adjust the display in pretty much every angle, but all keys are soft enough and provide good feedback when pressed.

The keyboard has built-in lightning, with three different levels that you can toggle between using the F1 and F2 + Fn combo. The drawback here is that the lights turn off automatically after 5 seconds in idle mode, so you need to either press a random key or move the mouse to have it turned back on. This is less convenient especially at night when working in full darkness, and we’ve heard lots of people complaining, but no fix has been provided until now. There are no apps, no tweaks, and basically no solution to deal with this thing.

Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface Book
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One of the most annoying “features” is the position of the headphone jack. Placed at the top right corner of the laptop, the audio port makes any headphone look ridiculous, especially at the office where the cable is the first thing you notice when looking at the device. An L-shaped input port on the headphone or speakers solves this a little bit, but it would’ve been a lot more convenient to place the audio port at the bottom of the screen.

There are 2 USB ports on the device and what we’ve discovered is that they’re too close to each other, so connecting 2 USB rubber flash drives at the same time is nearly impossible because there’s simply not enough space for both.

The touchpad, on the other hand, is just as responsive as it should be, and it has the right dimensions to be used with either hand. This is clearly a better choice than the new MacBook Pro, where the touchpad is gigantic, and accidental taps occur every once in a while.

As for performance, there’s no chance you won’t be pleased with the Surface Book, especially if you get it for typical office stuff. The i5 chip still feels very fast despite that a new generation is already available, and everything works nearly instantly, unless you launch very demanding apps and games that require extra CPU power and RAM.

All in all, the Surface Book was and still is one of the best Windows 10 laptops on the market, and even though its hardware might seem a little outdated at first, it’s the hands-on time that proves this isn’t happening. Microsoft has clearly created a laptop that can last for a few more years, so new-generation hardware barely has an impact for the typical office worker.

Versus the Apple MacBook

If you’re trying to choose between a Microsoft and an Apple laptop, the decision might be harder than you think and, in the end, it could all come to the software side, rather than hardware.

As you can see in the table below, where we’re comparing the original Surface Book with the new-generation 13-inch MacBook (not the Pro!), there are some differences between the two, but they’re rather subtle, and in terms of CPU, RAM, and storage, you get nearly the same options.

The Surface Book comes with a 13.5-inch display with a resolution of 3000x2000 px, while the MacBook features a 13.-3inch display with 2560x1600 px resolution. The winner here, however, is the Surface Book because you also get touch support, though if you ask Apple, you’re not going to need such a feature on a laptop.

On paper, the Surface Book seems to last longer per charge, but in real life, it’s the MacBook the one that provides better autonomy. In our separate test, the MacBook can go up to 10 hours per charge with the typical office use, so once again performance figures are very similar.

And so are storage options and connectivity, with the Surface Book coming instead with a Windows Hello camera for easy authentication.

In terms of pricing, the Microsoft laptop is a lot more expensive, as the top-of-the-range configuration costs $3,199, whereas the top Apple MacBook costs $1,999 (keep in mind that this isn’t the Pro version, though).

Apple MacBook
Apple MacBook
Apple MacBook
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Surface Book Apple MacBook
Display Screen: 13.5” PixelSense Display Resolution: 3000 x 2000 (267 PPI) Aspect ratio: 3:2 Contrast ratio: 1700:1 Surface Pen enabled Touch: 10 point multi-touch 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology;
2560-by-1600 native resolution at 227 pixels per inch
500 nits brightness
 
CPU 6th Generation Intel Core i5 or i7 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz, with 4MB shared L3 cache
Configurable to 3.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, with 4MB shared L3 cache; or 3.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz, with 4MB shared L3 cache
RAM Up to 16GB Up to 16GB
Graphics Surface Book: i5: Intel HD Graphics 520 i5/i7: NVIDIA GeForce dGPU with 1GB GDDR5 memory Intel Iris Graphics 540
Intel Iris Graphics 550
Battery Up to 12 hours of video playback Up to 10 hours iTunes movie playback
Storage Up to 1TB SSD Up to 1TB SSD
Ports Two full-size USB 3.0 Full-size SD card reader (SDXC compatible) Two Surface Connect ports Headset jack Mini DisplayPort Compatible with Surface Dial Off-Screen Interaction Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports 
with support for:
Charging
DisplayPort
Thunderbolt (up to 40 Gbps)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps
Connectivity 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networkingIEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatibleBluetooth 4.0 LE wireless technology 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networking; IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatible
Bluetooth 4.2 wireless technology
Cameras Windows Hello face sign-in camera (front-facing) 5.0MP camera with 1080p HD video (front-facing) 8.0MP autofocus camera with 1080p HD video (rear-facing) Dual microphones Stereo speakers with Dolby Audio Premium 3.5mm headphone jack 720p FaceTime HD camera
Stereo speakers with high
dynamic range
Three microphones
3.5 mm headphone jack
 
Dimensions 12.30” x 9.14” x 0.51 - 0.90” (312.3mm x 232.1mm x 13.0 - 22.8mm) 3.34 lbs (1,516 g) 11.97 x 8.36 x 0. 59 inches
(304 x 149 x 212 mm)
3.02 pounds (1,370 g)
Price Up to $3,199 Up to $1,999

Versus the Surface Laptop

If we compare Microsoft’s “ultimate laptop” with the new Surface Laptop, which doesn’t feature a detachable keyboard and focuses on the traditional laptop form factor, there are mixed results indicating that they offer a similar feature package.

The display has the same dimensions, but offers better resolution on the Surface Book, while the Surface Laptop has the 7th Generation Intel Core processor lineup with a maximum of 16GB RAM. The Surface Book offers more built-in storage - up to 1TB, while the Laptop can offer up to 14.5 hours battery life per charge.

On the other hand, you get a detachable keyboard on the Surface Book, letting you use the device as a tablet, but the Surface Laptop is lighter and is easier to carry around.

Microsoft Surface Laptop
Microsoft Surface Laptop
Microsoft Surface Laptop
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Surface Book Surface Laptop
Display Screen: 13.5” PixelSense Display Resolution: 3000 x 2000 (267 PPI) Aspect ratio: 3:2 Contrast ratio: 1700:1 Surface Pen enabled Touch: 10 point multi-touch Screen: 13.5” PixelSense Display  Resolution: 2256 x 1504 (201 PPI) Aspect ratio: 3:2 3.4 million pixels Surface Pen enabled Touch: 10 point multi-touch Corning Gorilla Glass 3
CPU 6th Generation Intel Core i5 or i7 7th Generation Intel Core i5 or i7
RAM Up to 16GB Up to 16GB
Graphics Surface Book: i5: Intel HD Graphics 520 i5/i7: NVIDIA GeForce dGPU with 1GB GDDR5 memory Intel HD 620 (i5) Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 (i7)
Battery Up to 12 hours of video playback Up to 14.5 hours of video playback
Storage Up to 1TB SSD Up to 512GB SSD
Ports Two full-size USB 3.0 Full-size SD card reader (SDXC compatible) Two Surface Connect ports Headset jack Mini DisplayPort Compatible with Surface Dial Off-Screen Interaction USB 3.0 Headset jack Mini DisplayPort Surface Connect  Compatible with Surface Dial off-screen interaction
Connectivity 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networkingIEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatibleBluetooth 4.0 LE wireless technology Wi-Fi: 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless networking; IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n compatibleBluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0 LE
Cameras Windows Hello face sign-in camera (front-facing) 5.0MP camera with 1080p HD video (front-facing) 8.0MP autofocus camera with 1080p HD video (rear-facing) Dual microphones Stereo speakers with Dolby Audio Premium 3.5mm headphone jack Windows Hello face sign-in camera 720p HD camera (front-facing) Stereo microphones Omnisonic speakers with Dolby Audio Premium 3.5mm headphone jack
Dimensions 12.30” x 9.14” x 0.51 - 0.90” (312.3mm x 232.1mm x 13.0 - 22.8mm) 3.34 lbs (1,516 g) 12.13” x 8.79” x .57” (308.1 mm x 223.27 mm x 14.48 mm) i5 2.76lbs (1,252 grams) i7 2.83lbs (1,283 grams)

The Good

The best way to judge the “good” part of the Surface Book is to look into the whole package, and not by taking each feature individually.

The Surface Book offers an excellent mix of powerful hardware, innovative features, and productivity, which has more or less become Microsoft’s obsession since Satya Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer at the helm of the company.

The Surface Book is an excellent device for the office worker, and can truly replace the MacBook in an office environment. It’s the power of Windows 10 that it’s based on, and in many cases, having a fully-featured operating system like Microsoft’s proves a lot more useful than Apple’s lock-down platform.

As far as innovative features go, we’d say the detachable screen and the Surface Pen are what make the Surface Book special. We’ve discovered during our test that using the Surface Pen for notes and then removing the display to show a colleague a specific drawing or project we’re working on is very convenient and is much easier to do than by grabbing the whole laptop and carrying it around.

This is something that you can’t do right now on the MacBook, and judging by Tim Cook’s statements, you won’t be able to do anytime soon, as Apple doesn’t see a future for touchscreens on laptops, not to mention removable displays.

In the end, the Surface Book offers premium quality, innovative features, and still-powerful hardware, and at this point, it’s hard to find a device that can beat this mix. Not even if the new-generation Intel processor is being thrown into the battle.

The Bad

There are two things we’d improve about the Surface Book, and neither has anything to do with the hardware.

The first of them is the battery life. The battery on the Surface Book, even though it’s made from two different units - one in the display and another one in the keyboard - barely lasts 8 to 9 hours per charge, and this is a thing that most users are expecting when getting a premium laptop.

The newly-launched Surface Laptop, for example, promises more than 14 hours of autonomy per charge, and although that could hardly be reached, 11 to 12 hours are still possible. In the case of the Surface Book, an average of 5 to 6 hours is what you get with mixed activities.

And the second is the position of the headphone jack. As an office worker that uses headphones 99 percent of the time, I found the top right placement of the audio connector extremely inconvenient, especially because I have lots of other cables lying around on the desk. There are lots of people complaining about it online, and this proves it’s a common issue, and there’s no way to deal with it until the second generation.

Other than that, the setbacks are mostly minor, as is the case of the keyboard lights that turn off automatically after 5 seconds and there’s no way to stop that or at least to adjust the time.

Microsoft can always improve the software side with new features or tweaks, and firmware updates are released every month for the full Surface lineup.

The truth

The most important question that needs to be answered when talking about buying a 2015 laptop in 2017 is the following: “Does it have what it takes to still run most of the software flawlessly?”

And in the case of the Surface Book, it surely does. Even though it was launched in 2015, the Surface Book was developed from the very beginning to be a high-end laptop coming with the best of the best in terms of hardware, so it features powerful processors, enough storage, and features that are still positioning it as one of the best laptops on the market.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s high level of innovation with the Surface Book makes this laptop a truly unique hardware product. It’s the only one featuring this love-it-or-hate-it hinge, it features a detachable display, a very responsive keyboard, and comes with a super-advanced Surface Pen that receives new features and tweaks with every generation.

So yes, the Surface Book is still a laptop that’s worth the money, despite the slightly older hardware.

On the good side, Microsoft is offering discounts on the Surface Book every once in a while, so if you’re not in a rush to get one, you'd better wait a few days or weeks, and you could get the ultimate laptop at a really special price.

Microsoft Surface Book (45 Images)

Microsoft Surface Book
Microsoft Surface BookMicrosoft Surface Book
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