Shocking the world with the most powerful 13-inch laptop; the Microsoft Surface Book

We thought Microsoft was done after the HoloLens, Band 2 and Surface Pro 4 but nope, they kept the best (well-kept secret) for last; their first laptop, the Surface Book. If you’ve ever wanted a Surface but preferred it to be bigger and a non-flex like typing experience, Microsoft has just machined it for you.

At 13.5-inches, the Gorilla Glass PixelSense screen will still give you a touchscreen experience at 3000 x 2000 resolution delivering 267 ppi. The display gives you the ability to tote it around if you just want a “clipboard” or attach it to the keyboard for (Microsoft’s promised) the best typing experience on a laptop.

Microsoft bundles the Surface Pen together giving you the tool to create content, be it drawing or writing. The Pen, which has 1,024 levels of touch sensitivity – that’s 4 times more compared to the old Pen, and they added an eraser too on the tail.

Yet another way to interact with the screen in one of the most precise methods in a tool that supposedly gives you all-year battery life.. If the Pen doesn’t suit your needs, the keyboard and trackpad should – giving you 1.6mm of key travel and a huge precision touch glass pad for those cursor movements.

Intel’s latest 6^th Gen Intel (Skylake) processor sits inside this wonderful package. If you need more graphics? Just add on the dedicated graphics card (at a pretty price), which is somewhere under the keyboard. RAM options start from 8GB and go up to 16GB and you’ll have PCIE storage that range from 128GB to 512GB – odd, if you noticed that the Surface Pro 4 went up to 1TB. Being a Windows 10 devices event, its a given that the it runs Windows 10 out of the box.

Productivity and exceptional performance, Microsoft’s new toy is expected to handle your designing, video editing and gaming; all in one seamless (not gap-less, eh) package. So much power in a small footprint but how does the battery fare? Microsoft swears by a 12-hour battery life but we’ll wait for the real-world testing first before jumping on the bandwagon.

But wait, a laptop? Who could care less, then the video showed that you can detach it from the keyboard. Sharing information now is easier, just detach and pass it down; literally, they passed it around during the presentation. Run programs like Adobe Creative Cloud, AutoCAD, Citrix and anything else on the Book + Keyboard combo, since the discrete card lives in the latter.

Their dynamic fulcrum hinge and cable wire lock technology looks promising but we noticed some unnecessary screen wobbling towards the end after angling the screen, hopefully it holds up well over time.

Fashioned out of magnesium in a 3.48 pounds (approx. 1.5 kg) package, the dimensions of the device are below:

Laptop: 9.14 x 12.03 x 0.51 – 0.90 inch (232.1 x 312.3 x 13 – 22.8mm) – 3.48 pounds
Clipboard: 8.67 x 12.30 x 0.30 in (220.2 x 312.3 x 7.7 mm) – 1.6 pounds

The ports of this detach-able laptop are two USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized SD card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack and a mini DisplayPort. On connectivity you’ll get 802.11ac for Wi-Fi while also supporting a/b/g/n. Being a tablet of-sorts, it has an 8-megapixel rear camera with autofocus, capable of 1080p recording while for audio it has a dual microphone setup (front and rear) and Dolby front-facing stereo speakers.

Here are the configuration options that you’ll be able to personalise your Surface Book and how well it stacks up against the Surface Pro 4:

Surface Pro 4
Intel Core M / 4GB RAM / 128GB Storage – US$ 899 (RM 3,786)
Intel Core i5 / 4GB RAM / 128GB Storage – US$ 999 (RM 4,218)
Intel Core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB Storage – US$ 1,299 (RM 5,484)
Intel Core i5 / 8GB RAM / 512GB Storage – US$ 1,699 (RM 7,173)
Intel Core i7 / 8GB RAM / 256GB Storage – US$ 1,599 (RM 6,750)
Intel Core i7 / 16GB RAM / 256GB Storage – US$ 1,799 (RM 7,595)
Intel Core i7 / 16GB RAM / 512GB Storage – US$ 2,199 (RM 9,284)
Intel Core i7 / 16GB RAM / 1TB Storage – US$ 2,699 (RM 11,395)
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Type Cover – US$ 129.99 (RM 549)

Surface Book
Intel Core i5 / 8GB RAM / 128GB Storage – US$ 1,499 (RM 6,329)
Intel Core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB Storage – US$ 1,699 (RM 7,173)
Intel Core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB Storage / dGPU – US$ 1,899 (RM 8,017)
Intel Core i7 / 8GB RAM / 256GB Storage / dGPU – US$ 2,099 (RM 8,862)
Intel Core i7 / 16GB RAM / 512GB Storage / dGPU – US$ 2,699 (RM 11,395)

There’s no word when the Surface Book will arrive in Malaysia as of yet. A sadder notion is that the exchange rate isn’t favouring the Ringgit at all currently, though we’d like to know if you’d consider Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 4 or the Surface Book. Do let us know in the comments below.

Check out the product site here.