microsoft has been really chasing the creative market in recent years in many
ways tackling apple head-on with their surface line of products one of their
most impressive and most disappointing devices was the
surface studio it's incredible touch
screen was leaps and bounds ahead of other desktops
but it was already rocking dated hardware when it was released almost two
years ago and hasn't been refreshed since then
that is until now so has a refresh of the internals of the
surface studio 2 then taken it from really cool to something
you should actually buy that
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sounding like a broken record the build quality and design of the surface studio
2 are among the finest on the market you'll find the thin
well-constructed screen here above an astonishingly small computer right down
here like this thing is incredible
all the processing graphics storage even the power supply are crammed in there
and then moving back up the hinge well
it's incredible too it swings all the way from fully vertical down to 20
degrees exactly the same angle as a drafting table and it does it basically
effortlessly it feels awesome to move up and down and has basically no wobble
while you're drawing on it because yes as before it's a massive touch screen
and it's just incredible
even as a normal display it's very good with excellent colors and multiple
pre-calibrated display modes including dci p3 and srgb along with a vivid
profile for the best buy tv enthusiasts there are a couple of uniformity issues
that we noticed on the left and right sides there's a noticeable decrease in
brightness at around 50 backlight but this mostly goes away when the screen is
at full or low brightness it just merits mentioning because 50
is right where we found the display brightness most comfortable this is
something that could perhaps be improved by a reader or a little blue light mode
so things like microsoft word would be slightly less eyeball searing so there's
a pro tip free of charge microsoft as for using the touch well basically
all that i could say about it was that it was freaking huge and pretty darn
cool but i felt like we should probably go a step further than that and consult our
resident graphic designer before passing that along to you so he did say that the
screen was too glossy but he also said that he found the pen very accurate and
thought the pressure sensitivity was very good and the slight grippiness of
the pen made writing that extra little bit better
the eraser functionality does have accuracy issues but really the biggest
endorsement was that when he finished using the surface studio 2 the first
thing out of his mouth was so are we keeping it because i want it
and remember this is coming from a mac guy a notable omission though this time
around is the much hyped surface dial
which i guess didn't gain as much traction
in the last model as microsoft was hoping
but Windows hello facial recognition has and remains a very nice touch alongside
the above average webcam moving around the back is a fairly basic
assortment of i o with a much appreciated edition usb type c and
although a couple more ports would have been nice my biggest problem is actually
access two usb ports and a headphone jack on
the front would make a huge difference when i want to plug in a usb drive or
whatever without performing the reach around on this thing and i'm
disappointed that there is no Thunderbolt 3 or at least an option for
10 gigabit even the mac mini has a 10 gigabit option
the included keyboard and mouse though are well they're a mixed bag i wasn't a
huge fan of the mouse the way it slopes makes it hard to grip and the maximum
tracking speed is abysmally low so i swapped it out almost immediately but
the keyboard is surprisingly good like sure it's not quite at the same level as
a full mechanical keyboard but for anyone that's only used rubber domes
they're gonna think this is pure sex for their fingers yeah i mean really
when it comes to packed in peripherals anything that isn't immediately aimed
for the bin i consider success and i could even see professional writers not
bothering to swap out this keyboard so then everything has been mostly positive
so far but that doesn't mean that this is a
perfect machine far from it below 60
volume the speakers sound great but above that sound quality suffers a lot
and that's before we get into the congratulations Linus you've been
selected to play the new game show cash or castration where a million dollars
and your balls are on the line
uh what do i do there's a skill testing question Linus are you ready i guess
today's question is if you are building a desktop computer
in 2018 do you choose option a a 9th gen
Intel i9 9900k desktop processor with
eight cores option b an 8th gen Intel i7 8750h mobile
processor with 6 cores or option c
a 7th gen Intel i7 7820 hq mobile
processor with four cores
wait i know is it c is it c no it's it's c it's c
right is it c you are correct
congratulations you've done it or at least that's the way microsoft
wishes it was unfortunately the quad
core core i7 7820 hq in the surface
studio 2 isn't going to be able to deliver the
kind of performance that we expect in 2018
now i am pleased to report that we saw no throttling and clocks above base even
when we hit it with a full synthetic load but in a desktop aimed at
professionals a cinebench score of under
700 just isn't acceptable when thin laptops like
the razer blade or macbook pro are breaking through the four digit mark and
adding insult to injury don't expect to be able to upgrade anything with a
soldered CPU GPU and RAM
only the storage can be replaced and only after a rather tricky disassembly
like sure our model is still very quick in single threaded tasks and
the gtx 1070 makes it a shockingly competent gaming machine if you don't
mind bumping the resolution down from default a little bit for aaa titles
but using hardware that is already last gen
at best makes this a hard sell
especially when there is no way at all to connect another computer to
this display once what's in here becomes
too slow while i'm complaining i also wish that
there were more pro oriented build outs for it like it's almost impossible to
recommend for engineers and other professionals without the inclusion of a
quadro option and a higher core xeon option would also take this machine to a
whole other level this is made worse by the fact that the imac pro
is available with pretty similar specs except an 8 core xeon and ecc RAM
at a similar price which reminds me our
model would cost you 4 200 us dollars
and that isn't even the most expensive config like you do get 32 gigs of RAM and a one
terabyte NVMe SSD for your money but still do you know what 4 200 can buy you
in a regular desktop we weren't quite sure off the top of our
heads either so we did the math keeping similar specs but swapping to a
ryzen processor with double the course and two 4k HDR displays from lg make
this machine much better for video or 3d graphics
editors especially because of the additional screen real estate not to
mention of course the power and the upgradeability and you can build tons of
other configs with quadros even more CPU
power more RAM a lot more storage i mean it's kind of up to you when you have
that kind of money to throw around but there's one thing you will be giving
up and that's touch fun fact it turns out touch screens are
really freaking expensive a 24 inch 4k
touch display and pen from wacom is 2
500 now this display does have slightly better
tilt and pressure sensitivity than the surface studio but it also puts the 4
200 asking price of the surface studio 2
into context while almost annoying me more i mean
here's the thing microsoft is making people choose if they want what is
possibly the best touch display on the
market or a computer that's powerful enough to
back it up like come on guys
can i just get the display with its excellent colors touch capabilities and
hinge without a computer inside like given the cost of wacom screens
1500 or even 2 thousand dollars would be a killer price making either the surface
studio 2 or the hypothetical surface monitor the absolute go-to for creative
professionals who draw as it is we can only recommend it for creative
professionals who only draw
the elgato stream deck mini allows you to concentrate on your game stream
instead of trying to memorize keyboard shortcuts you can create one-touch
operations that allow you to start your stream announce that you're live play
animations and more without having to take your eyes off the action it allows
you to graphically change the icons on each button it's got a total of six lcd
screens that can be customized for any action and the crazy thing about it is
that it's not just for streamers so our editor taran actually has two stream
decks at his desk since he loves his macros for adobe premiere the stream
deck is available for mac or Windows and is less than a hundred us dollars for
the mini version check it out on amazon and newegg at the links in the video
description so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you know what
to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check
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