Having run Trusted Reviews’ standard video benchmark – which involves synthetically looping five minutes of video and 10 minutes of web browsing with the screen at 150 nits brightness in Powermark – the Surface Book 2 actually outdid Microsoft’s quoted life. Normally, I’d take this claim with a pinch of salt. Microsoft quotes the Surface Book 2 as offering an impressive 16 hours of video playback from a single charge when docked. You can see how the Surface Book 2 compares to the top-specced i7 Surface Pro in the table below.

All in all, unless you’re doing serious enterprise-level tasks, or ridiculously big CAD design work, the Surface Book’s hardware should suffice. The Surface Book 2’s benchmark scores mirrored my real-world experience. As an added perk, the Surface Book also comes with an Xbox One receiver, which lets you pair Xbox Controllers to it without using regular, less-stable Bluetooth. The device also remained surprisingly quiet, even when enacting these demanding processes.ĭocked in laptop mode, the Surface Book 2 was able to play some big-name games, including Overwatch, DOTA 2, Player Unknown Battlegrounds and Call of Duty WW2 at over 60fps with their graphics in medium to high settings. Docked, the Surface Book 2 easily dealt with multi-layer digital painting projects, 3D modelling and basic video editing with zero hassle. The top-spec i7 version I tested offered stonkingly good performance, both docked and undocked. The tech is pretty impressive and means the Surface Book should easily match the performance of a top-end Ultrabook, as well as some cheaper gaming laptops. Sadly, the unit is yet to make its way to the UK. Microsoft is selling a larger 15-inch version with a GTX 1060 GPU in some markets. Intel Core i7, 1TB SSD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, 16GB RAM – £2999 (tested) Intel Core i7, 512GB SSD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, 16GB RAM – £2499 Intel Core i7, 256GB SSD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, 8GB RAM – £1999

Intel Core i5, 256GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 620, 8GB RAM – £1499 Below is a list of all the configurations Microsoft’s currently selling. The Surface Book is available in four configurations, offering for levels of performance. Performance, battery and conclusion Review.

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