Microsoft Surface Book 2: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, Badder, Better

Hands On You have £ 3,000 burning a hole in your pocket. You are also an engineer, developer or manipulate visual images. You should also have a portable workstation with touch screen, preferably with a screen that separates to go home and watch Netflix.

If you are at the thinnest intersection of the Venn diagram, then lucky, lucky! The new Microsoft Surface Book 2 is more oriented between your eyes. The 13.5-inch model we borrowed and illustrated below will cost you £ 2,999 and shortly you will be accompanied by an even larger 15-inch beast. The Pen is not included.

The proposition is the same.

When you arrive after the usual six-month delay that is needed to reach state 51, the proposition does not change. It is a surface with steroids. If the Surface is a tablet with excess engineering, then the book is an over-designed laptop, and something else. In fact, he has been taken to a special over-engineering clinic, fed truffles on engineering and then hit by an over-designed monster truck. Get the image?

AGREE. If Taniguchi from Tetsuo II: Body Hammer had a job on Saturday to design laptops, I could design something like the Microsoft Surface Book 2.

The proposal is a tablet that attaches to a keyboard, the keyboard packed with an Nvidia GTX 1050 graphics card and a battery pack (except for one model, the cheapest SKU, which avoids the dedicated GPU and uses the built-in Intel graphics ). The portion of the tablet screen is larger than the regular Surface Pro, so the keyboard is not compatible. You can not buy it separately in any case.

The tablet is attached in one of two ways, giving Surface Book four modes, according to Microsoft. This is stretching it a bit.

With the part of the tablet coupled in the traditional way, with the screen facing the user, it is a regular laptop, but robust (and we said that about engineering?). Mount it with the screen facing out and you can use it in "Study Mode". Or as a simple old tablet (but robust, and some say about engineering), with the keyboard bent backwards.

 My experience with the original Surface Book was marred by coupling and decoupling errors. In the end, he just got tired of this and refused to allow me to undock at all, making a mocking click, but refusing to disconnect the tablet's keyboard.

Fortunately, this worked perfectly in Book 2. The connection is so robust that you are not afraid to pick up the laptop from the top of the screen. It is very impressive

I also encountered problems with power management (I was not going to sleep) and graphics. But, again, the execution of the Second Generation Book is much better than the first. I could not blame him.

Maybe he heard me calling him names. But when Consumer Reports magazine released its recommendations for the Surface book, I can not say that it surprised me.

All this could explain the fact that, while Surface is a success, it is not a profitable hit.

This time, Microsoft has added a USB-C port and retains the SD card reader. The keyboard itself was fantastic to write in Gen 1, and it's even better now, if you can get any difference (Microsoft says the trip is even deeper). It has a firm and elastic response.

The screen is 3000x2000 (3: 2, duh), but if you are a professional who works with color images, check that the range is sufficient. This model adds support for Microsoft's Surface Dial, very useful if it works heavily within a single Dial-compatible application.

The sound has been improved, it was not bad before, with a new speaker design.

The price of three large for this Book 2 in particular is because it carries a 1TB flash SSD. The 256GB storage / 8GB RAM model is a "simple" £ 1,999, and the basic i5 model, the only i5 model, has an initial price of £ 1,499 including VAT. However, in the stratospheric segment of the market called "performance workstation", this is not completely outrageous.

Lenovo has a Yoga on its P-series workstation and the prices are pretty similar, but it's an older model that uses the sixth-generation Intel Core i5 / i7 processors, while Microsoft's monster uses the latest generation. A better comparison is Lenovo's more robust Thinkpad, the P71, which is also aimed at engineers and other heavy-duty users, and goes up to a model powered by Xeon at £ 4,050.79.

Nobody will mistake the Surface Book 2 or the P71 with "thin and light".

But how many engineers and developers need a touch screen and a heavyweight tablet to take home and watch Netflix, I wonder? You tell me.

I will reserve my judgment on battery life and performance in the real world after spending more time with the Book.