Who would buy this?? – Surface Book 2 Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,416 words · ~7 min read
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the original surface book from microsoft was pretty awesome but arguably a little
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thick and a little underpowered so
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we were thrilled when we found out that the surface book 2 would pair its
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quad-core processor with a beefy gtx
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1060 graphics card but
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how could it do that given its detachable design
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and is some extra power worth the price
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and some of its questionable design choices
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well you'll know the answer very soon after i thank glasswire for sponsoring
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this video glasswire is a firewall that displays your pc's incoming and outgoing
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network connections in real time use offer code Linus to get 25 off at the
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link below
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the build quality of the surface book 2 meets expectations which is to say that
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like the rest of its family it is spectacular the magnesium body has this
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soft texture to it and no matter where you touch it it feels solid and well
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crafted it's even got a decent helping of io with
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finally a type c port this is a first for a
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surface product but it's also not all
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good while you can use it to charge the device if you forget your magnetic
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charger and if you have a powerful enough wall wart it's regular usb 3
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not Thunderbolt 3 which means no external graphics or premium docks
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unless microsoft were to start selling an upgraded keyboard bottom with like a
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better GPU inside it
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and the surface book 2 is pretty heavy
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and unwieldy by 2018 standards
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as a Windows tablet it's big and it's
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pretty but it sacrifices nearly all of its i o
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and as a laptop it's not very lapable
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because so much of the weight is up top in the tablet portion
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overall we feel like this detachable approach
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offers questionable utility compared to folding devices like dell's upcoming xps
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15 two in one and the hinge also adds
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considerable thickness something that porsche design was able to overcome
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however you might be able to forgive the extra bulk because of its raw power
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rocking an Intel core i7 8650u 16 gigs
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of RAM and a gtx 1050 in the 13 inch
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model or gtx 1060 in the 15 inch the
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surface book 2 is going to be great for productivity but also even for proper
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photo or even video editing plus real aaa games at full details that is
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assuming everything stays nice and cool which is mostly the case so after an
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hour of stress testing both laptop cpus were nice and cool
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unless the battery was charging at the same time
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and it should be noted they sacrificed some performance in any case leveling
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off under their 1.9 gigahertz base clock
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so this will affect the export time of a video project for example
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but it makes sense since a large consideration was the touch temperature
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of the device and i still prefer this proactive approach to apples where they
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just let the processor run as fast as it can and thermal throttle
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a quick side note here our review ended up delayed because our first unit was
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part of a small batch with terrible thermals this isn't normal so if your
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results are different from what we're showing contact microsoft and get it
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sorted out moving on the surface book 2 15 inches
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as we mentioned before surprisingly well equipped compared to other notebooks
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that aren't explicitly designed for gaming so if you want to run older
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titles you can do it at native res or if you drop down to 1080p it can handle
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just about anything with the 13 and a half inch model also performing
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respectively with all of that said if you're just gaming you could get the
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same power in an acer helios 300 for a
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third of the price you get a surface book 2 for the
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productivity that is where it excels
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pardon the pun the surface book 2 absolutely nails the
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keyboard feel compared to any other laptop we've tried it's as good or
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better with a nice travel distance soft yet tactile keystrokes and a nice soft
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comfortable surface coating since people will ask yes it's a lot better than the
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macbook pro well at least as far as the keyboard is
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concerned the touchpad is a different story apple's large gesture friendly
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touch surface still stands above anything available in the pc space
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though that's not to say that the one here is bad
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and i guess if you're really focused on comparing size the 15 inch display
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offers plenty of real estate to get your touch on
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as you'd expect the surface book 2 is right up there with the best touch
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experiences on the market so if you'll be using the stylus for notes or drawing
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oh my god you can't really do better while maintaining a full fat x86
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operating system and the screen isn't just good for touching it's also
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fantastic to look at with microsoft's individual factory calibration making
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sure that every color hits your eyeballs just right
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furthermore as we've said about every surface product the three by two aspect
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ratio coupled with the higher resolution is noticeably better for productivity
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than 16x9 1080p and you'll be able to be
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productive for a really long time thanks to the book 2's over nine and a half
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hour score in our work battery test this is among the best results that we've
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seen to date its webcam is better than
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other laptops which is to say that it's still probably not as good as cameras
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should be in 2018 but progress is progress
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but it makes up for some of that with Windows hello facial recognition and
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some pretty good speakers given its size
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so overall good maybe even great
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but as always there's a catch it got a
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one out of 10 for repairability from ifixit so you've got to shell out up
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front for the specs you think you'll need even storage
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and our top of the line model here will
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run you a cool 3 300 us dollars
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ouch now if you compare that to another
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premium product like the macbook pro well i'd say as long as you can live
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without macOS the surface book 2 comes away the clear winner thanks to its
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superior versatility but if you don't need one device that does
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everything the price is a little tough to swallow i
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mean yes technically it starts at fifteen hundred dollars but that one has
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no dedicated graphics card and only two CPU cores making a surface pro or a
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surface laptop easier on both your wallet and your back
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