14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has turned competing against Apple products into some kind of hobby, so the latest two models that are part of the Surface lineup were specifically developed to bring better performance than devices coming from the fruity-named company’s yard offered.
When Microsoft introduced the Surface Pro 3 in May 2014, Panos Panay, the man responsible for the Surface range at that time, described the device as the perfect replacement for MacBooks, while many called the original Surface, also known as RT and introduced in 2012, an iPad rival.
More recently, the Redmond-based software has giant introduced the Surface Book, the ultimate laptop, as the company itself calls it, finally bringing forward one of the most powerful rivals to the MacBook Pro. What’s more, Panay, who was since promoted to chief of the devices unit, has explained that the Surface Book is twice as powerful as the Surface Book.
“Internal benchmarks”
But just as ITProPortal writes, where’s the proof that the Surface Book is indeed more powerful than the MacBook Pro? This is a great marketing weapon, given the fact that the device isn’t yet available and benchmarks cannot be performed to determine which is the faster laptop, and for the moment, the company prefers to remain completely tight-lipped on the benchmarks it says it performed.
In a statement for the aforementioned source, the software giant says the following:
“Our validated performance claims are for the Microsoft Surface Book with an Intel Core i7 with 16GB RAM and custom discrete Nvidia GeForce GPU against the MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display with an Intel Core i7 with 16GB RAM. We used third-party benchmarks to test the best available Surface Book against the best available 13-inch MacBook Pro.”
On paper, the Surface Book indeed seems to be the more powerful device. The top-of-the-range model comes with an Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage space, NVIDIA graphics, and a 13.-inch screen with a resolution of 3000x2000 px. At the same time, there are several connectivity options, such as two full-size USB 3.0 ports, one Mini DisplayPort, an SD card reader, and a headset jack.
Apple’s MacBook Pro, on the other hand, features a 2.8 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 1TB of flash storage, a 15.4-inch screen, and 16 GB of memory. It comes with Intel Iris Pro Graphics and AMD Radeon R9 M370X with 2GB of GDDR5 memory for the top model.