There was no special hardware event held by Microsoft this week, but the company made a surprise announcement of the Surface Book 2. It was finally confirmed that the follow-up to 2015's 2-in-1 premium laptop is arriving this year, boasting improvements on the design and internal specs. The Redmond-based tech giant claims that the Surface Book 2 is even more powerful than the 2017 model of Apple's MacBook Pro.
Rumors about the Microsoft Surface Book 2 had been going around for several months, but there were no hints that Microsoft was indeed planning to launch the hybrid laptop's next iteration soon. As reported by Trusted Reviews, the 13-inch Surface Book has finally undergone a complete upgrade, but the bigger surprise is that the latest Surface Book will also feature a 15-inch variant. Microsoft's executive officer Panos Panay made the announcement through a Windows blog post.
The thing that makes the Microsoft Surface Book 2 more powerful than the MacBook Pro 2017 is its new generation Intel 8th-gen Coffee Lake Core chipset. The latest processor is said to be faster and more efficient than the previous Skylake and Kaby Lake chips, making the Surface Book 2 five times more powerful than the first one. When compared to Mac Pro 2017, the Surface Book 2 is said to be twice as capable.
Perhaps, the one thing that makes the MacBook Pro 2017 stand out is its incredibly light weight. The Surface Book 2 is designed to be less heavy than the first, but its 4.2-pound weight still pales in comparison with the MacBook Pro's 4.02-pound weight.
However, Engadget stated that the heavier build of the Surface Book 2 can be useful for an impressive graphics setup. This might be true after all, as the 13-inch and 15-inch Surface Book 2 laptops use the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 and 1060 GPUs, respectively. To compare the 15-inch Surface Book 2 with the larger Mac Pro in terms of graphics, the latter is inferior with its AMD Radeon 555 and 560 graphics cards.
Microsoft also boasts the Surface Book 2's long-lasting battery life, as users can view video playbacks for up to 17 hours. The battery capacity of the Surface Book 2 is around 70 percent larger than the first.
Panay revealed in the blog that the 13-inch Microsoft Surface Book 2 can be pre-ordered starting on Nov. 9 in the US and "additional markets," suggesting that the pre-ordering period will be opened in other parts of the world, including the UK. Meanwhile, it is uncertain if the 15-inch Surface Book 2 will be available for pre-order in cities outside the US. The shipment of the products are expected to begin on Nov. 16.
