my Surface Pro 3 video was not one of my
most liked videos ever I bought a Surface Pro 3 with the intention of
using it as a daily driver machine but over the course of creating this review
determined that contrary to Microsoft's assertion it was not for me anyway a
suitable replacement for a laptop as a primary portable computer and that
having a stylus included with a product without having considered that not
everyone on the planet has a front shirt pocket in which to hold it is absolutely
ridiculous so I eventually gave that machine away in a sweep Stakes a couple
of months later but let's see if the Surface Book Microsoft's clear
acknowledgement that I was right can put a surface product in my hands
permanently this review is super late thanks Microsoft store so we'll just do
a lightning fast tour of the device and get into the usability right away the
charger is Compact and includes a 1 aamp USB charging port awesome for travel the
included pen or pencil depending on who you ask now has a flattened Edge to snap
onto the magnetic left side of the screen and it triggers Cortana when you
press the Eraser along with some other changes I'll discuss later and finally
the Surface Book itself comes pre-assembled in its laptop
configuration which means that on the top part of the Magnesium clam shell
you'll get the following a power button and volume controls on the top left
there a headphone jack on the right that I'd really have preferred closer to this
bottom corner and a kind of finicky but thankfully magnetic power input on the
bottom then on the detachable keyboard SL battery SLO unit thing you get an
alternate power input mini DisplayPort
thank you for this bye-bye HDMI it's been nice knowing you two USB 3 ports
and a full-size SD card reader just right for a mouse a display a USB
drive and a way to transfer to and from a portable device even in the wilderness
Microsoft nailed the io on the surface book which brings us to how these things
go together well from early complaints
not very well but Microsoft has been
surprisingly on the ball about fixing common complaints like the display
glitching out when they're detached and reattached and at this point with the
click of a button in the system tray the device prompts you if there are any
applications that need to be saved or closed then disengages with a satisfying
click that makes it feel kind of like you know opening the air loock or
something like that which I guess leads us into the piece of voodoo magic that
is the keyboard attachment much like is's famous TF101 transformer the
surface books base includes a keyboard a touchpad and an additional battery pack
but unlike anything I've had my hands on before unless you count this thing it's
got a PCI Express 3.0 link to a discret
level GPU a slightly customized GTX 940m
with one Gigabyte of gddr5 memory by the look of things that gives the Surface
Book much more Graphics horsepower than onboard Graphics would allow when it's
attached to the base it's more for GPU
accelerated productivity tasks though you won't be playing Modern AAA games on
it at the full 3000x 2000 resolution of
that 267 pixel per in 13.5 in IPS pixel
sense display that Microsoft has been bragging about which doesn't mean they
shouldn't be bragging about it first of all we can finally add a PC maker to the
list of companies that understand that 16x9 is not where it's at for
productivity and Microsoft goes even further than we used to enjoy 16 by1 all
the way to 15 by10 the effect is subtle
but it's just more comfortable if you're
trying to read or edit documents and second man I was floored by the way the
black taskbar gets lost in the black glass bezel and if you'd have told me
the screen was OLED I'd have probably believed you for a minute or two
Microsoft says that they're individually calibrating every one of these displays
and that it's got an incredible 1,700 to1 contrast ratio and I believe them a
few more housekeeping items the workmanship of my sample is what I can
only describe as excellent the onboard speakers are forward-facing and loud
enough for individual use in a quiet environment but not like some laptops
where you can kind of leave them near you on the dining room table while you
make dinner in the kitchen and the hinge it's neat it shows really well in
marketing videos but frankly I think lenovo's yoga series 270° hinge is a
more elegant way to make a twoin one but let's talk about the twoin oness then
I'm not a huge tablet user in both senses I own a few tablets because of
work but I almost never use one larger than 7 in because I find them kind of
heavy and redundant if I'm doing something important enough to need a big
screen I'm probably doing something important enough to need a keyboard and
the Surface Book didn't cause me to have any kind of epiphany about how wrong I
was about large tablets for it's shockingly light for its size yet strong
and Microsoft has probably nailed the use case where like Mom and Dad are
sitting on the couch watching something on the TV and you know Junior wants to
be nearby but watch something else on a nice big screen but that's not a
situation that comes up for me very often as a laptop the surface book is
pretty good my usual cinebench thermal throttling score showed perfect scaling
from run to run and even a PR longed idida 64 stress test at room temperature
yielded acceptable Acoustics and no thermal throttling this is the i7 6600u
3 GHz dual core 16 gig model guys well
done Microsoft on that point the trackpad is responsive with perfectly
tuned sensitivity out of the box something we don't see enough of the
keyboard is a little bit mushy feeling for my tastes but the travel distances
are good and the mushiness is not in a
way that affected my typing speeds and it compensated by being very very quiet
something a lot of people care about and finally I think Apple's nonsense about
touch screens not being suitable for laptops is just an excuse to make their
devices a hair thinner because I used the touchcreen on the surface book in
laptop mode all the time it's just natural to do it sometimes to be clear
the surface book is not perfect the onboard Wi-Fi is terrible there is no
excuse for anything but Intel in a device this expensive it weighs almost
as much as my blade 14 with much less powerful hardware and this is something
I noticed especially when using the pen to make little diagrams while writing
scripts and putting together shot lists for videos there's more screen wobble
than I'd have liked but it is a huge
leap forward from my last surface device the Pro 3 well hold on a second lonus
let's just back up you griped about the pen in the Surface Pro 3 review what a
joke why are you talking about how you used it this time great question because
this time it's better there's little changes like really you know low latency
more granular pressure detection it's got one button versus two on the bottom
now and it's powered only by a single quadruple a battery instead of needing
those other cells but the big change for me is that it's actually carriable the
magnetic clip on the side is great I mean it's not as good as if you could
really put it inside it but it it sticks to It Like Glue it's freaking awesome it
makes it something that I can take with me places instead of worrying about
losing it and being out 60 bucks every time which leads us to the conclusion
the Surface Book stands out as a beacon
of beautiful elegant design among PC makers who somehow manag to use you know
high quality aluminum materials in the construction of their products but just
can't make feel premium in the hand
unlike a product like the iPad Pro the 128 gig model of which is closer in
price to an entry-level Surface Book than people probably realize since that
one doesn't include the keyboard or the pencil in the Box the Surface Book
actually delivers on its promise of true laptop productivity in addition to being
a ginormous tablet I guess for me though
I just don't have much use for the tablet part of it so whether it's worth
it to you is going to be a matter of personal choice because what it amounts
to for someone like me is a really
expensive laptop but at least that's more than I can say about most first
generation devices and Imo Microsoft
nailed what they were going after here and are going to have a lot of really
happy customers and speaking of brands that
hope to have a lot of happy customers watchable whoa what's watchable that's a
new sponsor line guess I'll stay tuned and listen to what you're going to say
about it watchable is a new free on
demand video platform that just launched in the US that features daily curated
playlists from creators and Brands like Vice tastemade GoPro and actually even
some of our content what's interesting about that well great question remember
when YouTube used to have you know staff picks and stuff like that well it's kind
of a return to that instead of relying on just an algorithm you can view
watchable content on your computer through their I app and even on your TV
through some set top boxes they want you to be able to watch more and search less
with their curated playlists so if all that sounds interesting to you head on
over to the link in the video description and check them out today but
just please note I said us a couple times for a reason as the content on
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out Loop's review of the Radeon R9 380x
a new graphics card from AMD that performs about between the ones that are
priced higher and lower