Microsoft is Infuriating. - Surface Studio 2
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,839 words · ~9 min read
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microsoft has been really chasing the creative market in recent years in many
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ways tackling apple head-on with their surface line of products one of their
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most impressive and most disappointing devices was the
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surface studio it's incredible touch
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screen was leaps and bounds ahead of other desktops
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but it was already rocking dated hardware when it was released almost two
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years ago and hasn't been refreshed since then
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that is until now so has a refresh of the internals of the
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surface studio 2 then taken it from really cool to something
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you should actually buy that
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depends on who you are
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with glasswire you can instantly see your current and past network activity
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you can detect malware and you can block badly behaving apps on your pc or
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Android device use offer code Linus to get 25 off at the link below at risk of
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sounding like a broken record the build quality and design of the surface studio
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2 are among the finest on the market you'll find the thin
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well-constructed screen here above an astonishingly small computer right down
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here like this thing is incredible
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all the processing graphics storage even the power supply are crammed in there
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and then moving back up the hinge well
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it's incredible too it swings all the way from fully vertical down to 20
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degrees exactly the same angle as a drafting table and it does it basically
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effortlessly it feels awesome to move up and down and has basically no wobble
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while you're drawing on it because yes as before it's a massive touch screen
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and it's just incredible
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even as a normal display it's very good with excellent colors and multiple
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pre-calibrated display modes including dci p3 and srgb along with a vivid
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profile for the best buy tv enthusiasts there are a couple of uniformity issues
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that we noticed on the left and right sides there's a noticeable decrease in
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brightness at around 50 backlight but this mostly goes away when the screen is
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at full or low brightness it just merits mentioning because 50
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is right where we found the display brightness most comfortable this is
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something that could perhaps be improved by a reader or a little blue light mode
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so things like microsoft word would be slightly less eyeball searing so there's
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a pro tip free of charge microsoft as for using the touch well basically
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all that i could say about it was that it was freaking huge and pretty darn
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cool but i felt like we should probably go a step further than that and consult our
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resident graphic designer before passing that along to you so he did say that the
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screen was too glossy but he also said that he found the pen very accurate and
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thought the pressure sensitivity was very good and the slight grippiness of
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the pen made writing that extra little bit better
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the eraser functionality does have accuracy issues but really the biggest
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endorsement was that when he finished using the surface studio 2 the first
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thing out of his mouth was so are we keeping it because i want it
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and remember this is coming from a mac guy a notable omission though this time
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around is the much hyped surface dial
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which i guess didn't gain as much traction
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in the last model as microsoft was hoping
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but Windows hello facial recognition has and remains a very nice touch alongside
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the above average webcam moving around the back is a fairly basic
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assortment of i o with a much appreciated edition usb type c and
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although a couple more ports would have been nice my biggest problem is actually
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access two usb ports and a headphone jack on
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the front would make a huge difference when i want to plug in a usb drive or
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whatever without performing the reach around on this thing and i'm
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disappointed that there is no Thunderbolt 3 or at least an option for
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10 gigabit even the mac mini has a 10 gigabit option
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the included keyboard and mouse though are well they're a mixed bag i wasn't a
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huge fan of the mouse the way it slopes makes it hard to grip and the maximum
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tracking speed is abysmally low so i swapped it out almost immediately but
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the keyboard is surprisingly good like sure it's not quite at the same level as
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a full mechanical keyboard but for anyone that's only used rubber domes
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they're gonna think this is pure sex for their fingers yeah i mean really
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when it comes to packed in peripherals anything that isn't immediately aimed
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for the bin i consider success and i could even see professional writers not
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bothering to swap out this keyboard so then everything has been mostly positive
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so far but that doesn't mean that this is a
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perfect machine far from it below 60
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volume the speakers sound great but above that sound quality suffers a lot
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and that's before we get into the congratulations Linus you've been
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selected to play the new game show cash or castration where a million dollars
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and your balls are on the line
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uh what do i do there's a skill testing question Linus are you ready i guess
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today's question is if you are building a desktop computer
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in 2018 do you choose option a a 9th gen
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Intel i9 9900k desktop processor with
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eight cores option b an 8th gen Intel i7 8750h mobile
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processor with 6 cores or option c
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a 7th gen Intel i7 7820 hq mobile
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processor with four cores
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wait i know is it c is it c no it's it's c it's c
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right is it c you are correct
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congratulations you've done it or at least that's the way microsoft
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wishes it was unfortunately the quad
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core core i7 7820 hq in the surface
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studio 2 isn't going to be able to deliver the
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kind of performance that we expect in 2018
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now i am pleased to report that we saw no throttling and clocks above base even
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when we hit it with a full synthetic load but in a desktop aimed at
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professionals a cinebench score of under
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700 just isn't acceptable when thin laptops like
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the razer blade or macbook pro are breaking through the four digit mark and
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adding insult to injury don't expect to be able to upgrade anything with a
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soldered CPU GPU and RAM
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only the storage can be replaced and only after a rather tricky disassembly
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like sure our model is still very quick in single threaded tasks and
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the gtx 1070 makes it a shockingly competent gaming machine if you don't
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mind bumping the resolution down from default a little bit for aaa titles
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but using hardware that is already last gen
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at best makes this a hard sell
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especially when there is no way at all to connect another computer to
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this display once what's in here becomes
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too slow while i'm complaining i also wish that
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there were more pro oriented build outs for it like it's almost impossible to
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recommend for engineers and other professionals without the inclusion of a
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quadro option and a higher core xeon option would also take this machine to a
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whole other level this is made worse by the fact that the imac pro
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is available with pretty similar specs except an 8 core xeon and ecc RAM
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at a similar price which reminds me our
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model would cost you 4 200 us dollars
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and that isn't even the most expensive config like you do get 32 gigs of RAM and a one
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terabyte NVMe SSD for your money but still do you know what 4 200 can buy you
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in a regular desktop we weren't quite sure off the top of our
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heads either so we did the math keeping similar specs but swapping to a
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ryzen processor with double the course and two 4k HDR displays from lg make
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this machine much better for video or 3d graphics
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editors especially because of the additional screen real estate not to
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mention of course the power and the upgradeability and you can build tons of
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other configs with quadros even more CPU
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power more RAM a lot more storage i mean it's kind of up to you when you have
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that kind of money to throw around but there's one thing you will be giving
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up and that's touch fun fact it turns out touch screens are
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really freaking expensive a 24 inch 4k
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touch display and pen from wacom is 2
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500 now this display does have slightly better
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tilt and pressure sensitivity than the surface studio but it also puts the 4
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200 asking price of the surface studio 2
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into context while almost annoying me more i mean
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here's the thing microsoft is making people choose if they want what is
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possibly the best touch display on the
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market or a computer that's powerful enough to
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back it up like come on guys
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can i just get the display with its excellent colors touch capabilities and
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hinge without a computer inside like given the cost of wacom screens
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1500 or even 2 thousand dollars would be a killer price making either the surface
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studio 2 or the hypothetical surface monitor the absolute go-to for creative
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professionals who draw as it is we can only recommend it for creative
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professionals who only draw
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the elgato stream deck mini allows you to concentrate on your game stream
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instead of trying to memorize keyboard shortcuts you can create one-touch
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operations that allow you to start your stream announce that you're live play
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animations and more without having to take your eyes off the action it allows
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you to graphically change the icons on each button it's got a total of six lcd
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screens that can be customized for any action and the crazy thing about it is
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that it's not just for streamers so our editor taran actually has two stream
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decks at his desk since he loves his macros for adobe premiere the stream
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deck is available for mac or Windows and is less than a hundred us dollars for
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the mini version check it out on amazon and newegg at the links in the video
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description so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you know what
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to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check
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out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is our merch store which
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has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally
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join