Surface Book review

Microsoft's Surface Book is a clever piece of kit but does that make it worthy of the "ultimate laptop" crown?

The Surface Book is Microsoft's first attempt at a laptop proper.

It has been painted as a device that will blur the lines between laptop and tablet. But is it more first-generation Surface, or has Microsoft struck gold and delivered a truly ingenious solution to the 2-in-1 transforming laptop? Here are Computing's thoughts after spending a week in its company.

Design
The Surface Book is premium through and through. It's forged from magnesium but (and we must be in the minority) the grey/silver and somewhat utilitarian design left us cold. There's a faint whiff of the workmanlike Dell or Toshiba here: built for function and efficiency.

As a tablet it feels too big and unwieldy, yet the dimensions and weight say otherwise: 0.73kg in tablet mode, 1.51kg/1.57kg (with discrete GPU) when docked.

Let's talk about the fulcrum hinge as it's this that gives the Surface Book its unusual shape when closed.

The undocking mechanism is initiated by pressing a dedicated key that sends an electrical current to the muscle wire locks causing them to contract. It's very clever stuff but as a consequence makes the Surface Book a little top-heavy.

There's a definite imbalance between the two separate parts, but this is hardly surprising when you consider what Microsoft has crammed into the tablet. The base (keyboard) contains the internal gubbins and houses a second battery and our discrete GeForce GPU.

A small amount of wobble is present when balanced anywhere but your desk. But the hinge maintains a strong connection and you can dangle the Surface Book by its tablet end, not that you necessarily should.

We should also mention the noticeable gap between the screen and the keyboard, leading to dirt, dust and debris getting into places you really don't want them to go.

Next, the backlit keyboard. The keys on our grey review model were imbued with a subtle blue glow, almost too subtle from some angles and providing limited benefit.

Two USB 3.0 ports and an SDXC card reader live on the left side of the device. On the right you'll find a Mini DisplayPort alongside a Surface Connect port which serves the dual purpose of connecting to the power brick and the optional dock.

The power button and volume rocker sit along the top edge of the tablet, while the 3.5mm headphone port lies in limbo a little below. It's certainly not the ideal position.

Next page: Display and performance

Surface Book review

Microsoft's Surface Book is a clever piece of kit but does that make it worthy of the "ultimate laptop" crown?

Display
The Surface Book's standout asset is the gorgeous screen. At 3000x2000 pixels (267dpi) the LCD is lively and colourful with excellent levels of brightness. However it's so shiny that when it comes to viewing angles we did notice some minor reflection, but overall it didn't sully our enjoyment or affect daily use.

On opening the Surface Book we were struck by the somewhat irregular 3:2 aspect ratio, this won't come as much of a surprise to existing Surface or Chromebook Pixel users, but it might make everyone else blink.

As standard the Surface Book has Intel HD 520 graphics, but a discrete Nvidia GeForce 940M (1GB) option is available for a £300 premium and this is the configuration we tested for the purpose of this review.

The Surface Book is not without its software quirks, all of which are disappointingly display-centric for a device where such a fanfare has been made over the removable screen. For instance, we struggled sometimes to make the screen rotate in tablet mode. Occasionally it would get stuck and refuse to revert to the (now) traditional Windows 10 desktop view. To rectify this we had to do the whole undocking dance again.

We also noticed that the notification telling you to undock didn't always appear and on some occasions made us wait longer than we'd like.

Performance
The Surface Book is a fully-fledged laptop, meaning it's capable of running software designed for the desktop. It coped ably with anything we threw at it, including processor-intensive tasks like video processing and gaming.

Our review model had an Intel i7 processor running at 2.8MHz (3.39MHz with turbo), a Samsung 512GB SSD and 16GB of memory. The Nvidia GeForce 940M reported a core clock of 993MHz and a memory bus clock of 1,253MHz.

The device scored 3,372 (single-core) and 7,080 (multi-core) on Geekbench, 78.1ms on SunSpider and 1042.2ms on Kraken.

The graphically-intensive 3DMark Fire Strike 1.1 score was 1,875 (better than 16 percent of all results) and the 3DMark Sky Diver score was 6,144 (better than 15 percent of all results).

PCMark returned a score of 2,833 (better than 34 percent of all results), but placing it just behind the Notebook and Gaming laptop (2013) categories.

The gentle whooshing of the fan was audible during all the tests, but wasn't a problem under normal use.

Next page: Sound, battery, software and security

Surface Book review

Microsoft's Surface Book is a clever piece of kit but does that make it worthy of the "ultimate laptop" crown?

Sound and Surface Pen
The Surface Book's speakers, small as they are, can be cranked up to a good volume, but there's a distinct lack of bass. The speakers are located in the frame around the clipboard so you get a different soundstage depending on the orientation of the device.

The Surface Pen attaches magnetically. It offers a high degree of precision with 1,024 levels of sensitivity and even performs shortcut functions at the click of a button.

It takes one click to fire up OneNote, while holding it down invokes Cortana, which uses the built-in microphone to pick up voice commands.

The Pen also has a useful eraser on the top. Drawing and writing felt convincingly realistic thanks to just the right amount of resistance.

After lengthy use we found that the touchpad was responsive for the most part. There were one or two occasions when we noticed some sticking, but this might have been down to our heavily distributed review model.

Battery
Microsoft quotes 12 hours' battery life (using the Surface Book in laptop mode) but in reality we managed to rack up around eight hours in normal use. We expect this is down to fully enjoying the display and not constraining it to dimmed levels.

This was based on a variety of web-browsing, document editing, 4K video streaming and drawing with the pen. So it'll comfortably see you through a whole day in the office (short break for lunch withstanding). In tablet mode the battery was exhausted after around three hours.

One thing to note: if the Surface Book is running low on power you won't be able to detach or reattach the tablet part. This could prove irksome if you are travelling and not in the vicinity of a socket.

It took four to five hours to achieve a full charge, but two hours if you just want to use the tablet.

Software and security
A number of apps have been added to Windows 10 Pro that take advantage of the Surface Book's stylus Pen. So it's up to you whether you want to drive Freshpaint, OneNote and Drawboard PDF with the pen or a more traditional input method.

The Surface Book runs Windows 10 Pro so you can take advantage of the Pin and picture password security measures as standard. New to the Surface family, however, is support for Windows Hello, the ingenious face-recognition system that Microsoft hopes will replace passwords one face at a time.

Windows Hello uses a front-facing 5MP infrared camera to send biometric data (e.g. your face or iris) to your local machine (and/or any connected services) to authenticate your identity. It's an extension of the technology we first observed with Microsoft's Xbox Kinect.

In terms of enterprise security there's a TPM 2.0 chip onboard, and Windows 10 Pro offers a 'Work access' menu in Accounts that allows you to connect to your organisation easily using Azure AD/Office 365, and enrol in mobile device management.

Next page: Price and summary

Surface Book review

Microsoft's Surface Book is a clever piece of kit but does that make it worthy of the "ultimate laptop" crown?

Price
Unfortunately there's no ignoring the hefty price. The base 128GB, Intel Core i5 8GB model starts off at £1,299. Doubling the memory and adding discrete graphics bumps up that to £1,599.

If you want top specs - 512GB of storage, an Intel Core i7, 16GB of memory and that Nvidia GPU - you'll need deep pockets as the damage is £2,249.

But remember that you're paying for the discrete Nvidia graphics, and that's definitely something the Surface Book has over the Apple MacBook Pro, for instance.

Summary
Of course, it's always going to come down to personal preference, but we just don't like the Surface Book's rectangular, boxy design. It's functional rather than beautiful.

Remember that this is Microsoft's first laptop. In some ways you're paying a premium for an experiment, albeit a fairly successful one, but we can't shake the feeling that some refinements would make for an even better product.

Saddled with unavoidable bulk, the industrial design means it's no Asus ZenBook in the looks department, and we prefer the finish afforded to the Surface Pro 4.

Detachable hybrids or hinged, we have to wonder whether Microsoft et al are striving to solve a problem that even exists. And with all the evidence so far, whether it's the Lenovo Yoga 900 with its 'watchband' hinge or Asus with its earth magnets on the Transformer Book T300 Chi, Microsoft's 'fulcrum' hinge is clever but not without some niggles.

So while our gripes may be largely cosmetic, we applaud Microsoft for breaking new ground with a device that bridges the gap between tablet and full-fat laptop.

We're going to gamble. Much like the first-generation Surface device that went before it, maybe the next iteration will truly deliver on the promise tantalisingly teased by the Surface Book.