When Microsoft first launched the Surface Pro, they decided to tackle a market that was pretty much untested. Sure, tablets had been around for a while already, but no one had packed a full Ultrabook inside of a tablet. True, the initial Surface Pro had some compromises made due to the hardware available at the time, but Microsoft started to build a brand with Surface, a brand that they lifted from another product line altogether. It’s taken a few generations for the hardware to catch up with that original vision, but I think it’s fair to say that the Surface Pro tablet line has solidified itself as the Windows tablet to beat. The build quality, materials, and performance, are really second to none at this time.

I’m talking about branding because it’s one of the most difficult parts of a new product lineup. Microsoft, perhaps more than most companies, has certainly had its struggles with branding over the years. Surface though, has truly been defined, and molded, and evolved, into a strong brand for the company, and it plays right at the high end. And that brings us to Surface Book. Surface Book is an extension of the Surface brand, and Microsoft now wants to try its hands at the laptop market. Their goals for Surface Book are certainly not the same as they were for the original Surface Pro, since the laptop market is already well defined, and there are already many excellent devices available. For Microsoft to throw their hat in the ring in this segment is a much different proposition than before, and to succeed, as well as to continue to evolve the Surface brand, they set out to build what they are calling “The Ultimate Laptop”.

Surface Book certainly keeps the tradition of Surface alive and well. The 13.5-inch laptop has the same 3:2 aspect ratio of the rest of the Surface line, and it is built out of magnesium with the same finish. The fit and finish is very high, and the entire device feels as premium as it should. I think the defining feature of the Surface tablet lineup is the kickstand, and with the Surface Book it is most certainly the hinge. The hinge on the Surface Book is truly unlike anything ever used on a notebook computer before, and while it may not be to everyone’s taste, it certainly draws comments. The hinge, other than a design element, brings a lot of function to the party as well, with it being a key component to keeping this laptop balanced correctly. Balance is generally not an issue with laptops, but the Surface Book has another trick up its sleeve – the display detaches. The Surface Book is hardly the first device to do this, but it is one of the few that has tried to tackle the balance problem with 2-in-1 devices where the screen detaches, and the hinge is a key component to that. Microsoft calls it a Dynamic Fulcrum Hinge, and it extends the base of the laptop slightly to give it more leverage over the display section.

The design is unique, and what is inside is unique as well, at least potentially. There are two models of the Surface Book. The first model is a typical Ultrabook inside, with an Intel Core i5-6300U processor, but the second model is the only detachable laptop which also has a discrete GPU. There are a couple of reasons this has never been done before, with the main reason being it’s very difficult to dissipate the extra heat that a GPU brings to the table. Microsoft has designed the Surface Book with a GPU which lives in the keyboard base, with the rest of the required components behind the display. This gives them two thermal zones, and by moving the GPU to the base like this, it lets the Surface Book cool the CPU and GPU independently. The extra space in the keyboard is then packed with batteries.

Surface Book
	Core i5	Core i5 w/GPU	Core i7 w/GPU
GPU	Intel HD 520	Intel + "NVIDIA GeForce" (Approx. GT 940M) w/1GB GDDR5
CPU	6th Generation Intel Core i5-6300U (15w)		6th Generation Intel Core i7-6600U (15w)
Memory	8-16GB RAM
Display	13.5" IPS 3000x2000 resolution 1800:1 Contrast Ratio 100% sRGB, individually calibrated 10 point touch and Pen support
Storage	PCIe 3.0 SSD 128 GB to 1 TB
I/O	USB 3.0 x 2 (In Base) SD Card reader (In Base) Surface Connector (In Tablet and Base) Headset Jack Mini DisplayPort
Dimensions	Laptop (mm) : 232 x 312 x 13.0-22.8 (inches) : 9.14 x 12.3 x 0.51-0.90 Tablet Only (mm) : 220.2 x 312.3 x 7.7 (inches) : 8.67 x 12.3 x 0.30
Weight	Laptop 1.515 kg / 3.34 lbs Tablet Only 726 g / 1.6 lbs	Laptop 1.579 kg / 3.48 lbs Tablet Only 726 g / 1.6 lbs
Camera	Windows Hello (Front) 8 MP Rear Facing 5 MP Front Facing
Price	$1499+	$1899+	$2099+

Looking at the specifications, one thing to point out is the battery capacity. Most Ultrabooks would average somewhere around 50 Wh of capacity, with a few somewhat higher and a few somewhat lower. By combining the battery in the tablet, which Microsoft calls the Clipboard, with the base, the Surface Book has an amazing 70 Wh of battery capacity. This should help out on battery life, assuming the 3000x2000 display doesn’t drag that down. The rest of the Surface Book is pretty similar to the Surface Pro 4, with PCIe NVMe storage options up to 1 TB, and touch and pen support via the PixelSense display. There are also two USB 3.0 ports in the base, along with a DisplayPort output, and the Surface Connect port which is used for charging, as well as connecting the Surface Dock. There are no ports on the Clipboard at all, with the exception of the Surface Connect port, so if you are using the Clipboard on its own, you will have to dock it to access USB. Like the Surface Pro 4, it would have been nice to see a USB Type-C port included, and the Clipboard would be a perfect spot for that.

Microsoft is calling the Surface Book “The Ultimate Laptop” and that is a pretty lofty goal for a first generation product. In this review, we will examine all aspects of the Surface Book and see how they compare to the best laptops around. Let’s start with the design.

Design and the Dynamic Fulcrum Hinge

When Microsoft set out to design the Surface Book, they took what they knew with the Surface tablet lineup and morphed it into a laptop. Surface is meant to play at the high end, and in order to live there, it needs to be well built and of premium materials. The Surface Book does not disappoint, with the same magnesium body that the Surface is known for, which is now extended to create the keyboard base too. In the middle is likely the defining design characteristic of the Surface Book; the hinge.

The hinge is there for both form and function, and the obvious parallel to make is the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro hinge. The Yoga 3 Pro and Surface Book are both convertible laptops, but the method they use to be convertible is very different. Lenovo has kept a more traditional notebook, with the processor and batteries in the keyboard, and the display can rotate 360 degrees to transform it into a touch device. Microsoft’s Surface Book takes the other approach, which is a detachable display. They both have their pros and cons, but one of the cons of a detachable convertible is that the display section is much heavier, and it can lead to a notebook which wants to tip backwards when the display is open. In order to combat that, Microsoft has created the dynamic fulcrum hinge.

When the hinge unfolds, the sections of the hinge rotate down to actually make the base of the unit longer. This gives the base more leverage over the display, helping to keep everything planted. The obvious easy solution to a detachable device is to just add more weight to the base, but this has obvious drawbacks since weight is the one thing people are not looking for in an Ultrabook. Microsoft stated that the extra length on the base allows them to use a weight ratio of 0.8:1 of keyboard to display, which means that the overall weight of the device has been reduced over what it would need to be with a traditional hinge. It has worked, too, with the Surface Book being the best balanced detachable device out there. But there is no getting around the fact that the 13.5-inch display is packed full of components, and despite moving the fulcrum rearwards, the Surface Book is still dangling 726 grams, or 1.6 lbs, on top of the hinge. This, combined with the taller aspect ratio of the display, definitely makes the Surface Book less balanced than a traditional laptop. Using the Surface Book in my lap can cause it to want to tip backwards, depending on the angle of my legs.

Some may find the odd fact that the hinge does not close the back of the notebook up to be a hindrance. Certainly, when closed, the Surface Book is not as compact as a normal laptop. There is a chance that something could get inside the gap and cause an issue, but I personally don’t think this would ever be an issue for me. Packing it into a bag could be an issue if the bag was very restrictive, but even at its thickest point it is still just 22.8 mm thick when closed.

All of the engineering put into the hinge is there for pretty much one reason: the display detaches, allowing the Surface Book to be used as a tablet too. Detaching the tablet is done by pressing and holding the detach button on the keyboard, or by activating the software button in the task bar. Microsoft is using muscle wire (i.e. shape memory nickel-titanium) to lock the Clipboard to the base, and it can’t be removed unless you want it to, as a current needs to be applied to the wire to get it to move out of the way. They’ve also worked in a great audible indicator when the release is invoked, with the tablet making a pleasing ka-chunk when it’s undocked.

The Clipboard

I suppose you could call the top half of the Surface Book a tablet, but Microsoft calls it a Clipboard. Why the differentiation? The Surface Book is intended to be used as a laptop most of the time. At the launch event, Microsoft figured the Clipboard would only be detached 20% of the time. It’s not a true tablet like the Surface Pro 4, mostly because of the limited battery capacity inside the tablet section, but when it is undocked, it’s a heck of a tablet.

By avoiding the USB port on the side, Microsoft has been able to make the Clipboard even thinner than the Surface Pro 4. The 13.5-inch 3:2 tablet is just 7.7 mm thick, and it is only 726 grams. When you pick up the Clipboard, you really feel like it should weigh more than it does. Other than the weight, it feels and looks a lot like a slightly larger Surface Pro, with the same venting slots around the outside perimeter.

It is somewhat amazing that a 7.7 mm chassis could still house such a powerful computer, but that it does. Battery life is nothing like a true tablet, but you can still get several hours of use out of just the Clipboard. When you are done, you just slide it back onto the keyboard and it will automatically lock back in place.

The Keyboard

One of the other advantages of the Surface Book hinge is that the display does not come in contact with the keys. In fact, the gap allows Microsoft to keep the keyboard flush with the deck, rather than it being slightly sunken like on most notebooks. This has allowed them to fit in a keyboard with 1.6 mm of travel in a base that is barely thicker than the tablet. Key travel is one of the biggest issues with ultra-thin notebooks, and the Surface Book is one of the few to not suffer in this regard.

The layout of the keyboard is great, with no keys in odd places. While it would have been nice to see full sized arrow keys, you can pretty quickly get used to the half-height up and down. Typing on the Surface Book is a pretty good experience, mostly due to the extra key travel and good key layout. I don’t feel that they have nailed the feel of the keys though. I really like a good keyboard, and I would have liked a bit more resistance to the keys. It’s a good keyboard, but not the best I’ve used on a notebook

I was concerned with the backlighting when I first saw the Surface Book, because white lighting on silver keys is rarely a good combination due to the low contrast in a well-lit room. Yes, you can always turn the backlighting off, but I generally just leave it on. Most of my fears were misguided though. The actual finish on the Surface Book is a much darker grey than it first appears, and although the contrast was not as good as black keys would be, it was rarely an issue. The backlighting color is a blue-cast white, and you can adjust the intensity of the backlighting, or turn it right off, using keys on the top row.

Speaking of the function row, one other thing worth mentioning with the keyboard is that Microsoft has used a toggle for the Fn key. It has a light on it, just like Caps Lock, which lets you know if Fn is enabled or disabled. Most notebooks default to the extra actions like volume up and down, and require you to hold Fn plus F5 to refresh a page, but like the Surface Pro line, on the Surface Book this can be toggled. It’s a small feature, but one that is nice if you are someone that prefers to use the F keys.

The other half of the typical notebook interaction is done with the trackpad, and here Microsoft has delivered one of the best trackpads on any Windows PC. Thanks to the 3:2 display, the laptop itself is taller, giving more room for a larger trackpad. The surface is glass, which makes it very smooth and easy to glide your finger over. The trackpad can be fine tuned with the Microsoft Precision Touchpad options in settings, and it gives you access to specify gestures like 3-finger tap and 3-finger swipe, as well as 4-finger tap. Out of the box, 3-finger tap opens Cortana (or search if you are in a locale where Cortana is not yet available), while 3-finger swipe can be used to switch applications. 4-finger tap is defaulted to open the Action Center. At the moment, there are not a lot of options to change these behaviours, although you can either disable them, or swap what 3-finger tap and 4-finger tap do.

I’m not a heavy user of gestures on trackpads, perhaps because I don’t normally use a trackpad. But the main one is 2-finger scroll and it works very well, at least when using the built-in apps. Users of Google Chrome will find that there is a noticeable lag when trying to scroll. This can be removed if you disable pinch-to-zoom on the trackpad, and it’s difficult to determine who is at fault here. The scrolling is very good in Edge, but anyone who uses Chrome is going to want to disable pinch-to-zoom. This seems to be a common issue with the Precision Touchpads. With that one quirk aside, anyone who uses a Surface Book is likely going to be very happy with the trackpad experience.

The Package

Looking at the entire package, with the Clipboard attached to the keyboard, you can see some of the advantages of moving to a notebook form factor with the Surface lineup. There are two USB 3.0 ports on the left side, along with a SD card reader. Unlike the Surface Pro lineup, there is no micro SD storage for expansion, and the card reader does not let the card sit flush inside of it. I’m not sure why there is a distinction, but more often tablets offer some sort of supplemental storage, and notebooks don’t. The Surface Book continues that trend. On the right side of the notebook is a DisplayPort connector, and the Surface Connect port, which is the same port that was first introduces on the Surface Pro 3. It has 20 pins, and can be married to the Surface Dock which further expands the I/O with two DisplayPort connectors, four additional USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and audio.

The Surface Connect port

The base unit is almost completely battery, unless you opt for the model with the GPU. The GPU also sits in the base, and it connects to the Clipboard section over the Surface Connect port on the bottom of the Clipboard as well as two additional half-length Surface Connect ports. This doubles the pin count, and the GPU gives extra bandwidth for PCI-E over the connector.

By separating the GPU and the CPU, Microsoft has, in effect, created two thermal zones, which means that they only need to cool each one individually. The exact TDP on the GPU is not known, but it will be less than 30 Watts. The GPU is cooled through the same style vent slots as the Clipboard section, but these vents are somewhat hidden, facing away from you at the top of the keyboard.

Looking at the entire package, the tablet section is thin and light, making it easy to use for short sessions. When you need a more productive package, set the Clipboard onto the base, and get access to a good keyboard and great trackpad, along with an optional GPU to give you even more compute than a typical Ultrabook. The design is not without its drawbacks though, with the Surface Book noticeably heavier than many Ultrabooks these days, and the extra weight of the display section certainly leads it to being less balanced than a normal laptop. On a table, there are no issues, but on an uneven platform, the Surface Book can be a bit unsteady.

CPU and Storage Performance

The Surface Book comes with just two CPU options. The base model is an Intel Core i5-6300U, and the top end model moves to a Core i7-6600U. The i5 is a dual-core processor, with a base frequency of 2.4 GHz and a turbo frequency of 3 GHz, and it has 3 MB of cache available. The i7 bumps the base frequency to 2.6 GHz, and the turbo to 3.4 GHz, which is a 13% increase in turbo. The i7 also has 4 MB of cache. Both have the same Intel HD Graphics 520, although the i7 has a maximum GPU frequency of 1.05 GHz versus 1.0 GHz on the i5. Both are 15-Watt processors.

The Surface Book can be had with up to 16 GB of memory, which should be plenty for most tasks that are done on an Ultrabook. Memory is dual-channel LPDDR3-1866 that is soldered into the top half of the unit. This should be plenty to handle virtualization of small workloads, and with the Surface Book coming with Windows 10 Pro, Hyper-V is an option.

We’ve already taken a look at what Skylake can bring to the tablet in terms of performance with the Surface Pro 4. Due to the improvements Microsoft made to cooling, as well as enhancements with Skylake, the Surface Pro 4 has throttling in check, and that carries through to the Surface Book as well. The initial Surface Book made available for review was the i5-6300U model, but then at the end of October, Microsoft was able to supply the i7-6600U with dGPU, 16 GB of memory, and 512 GB of storage as well, so we will be able to put the Surface Book through all of its paces across all of the different models.

For comparisons, I’ve sampled several similar devices for the graphs, and if anyone would like to compare the Surface Book against anything we’ve tested, please use the Bench link at the top of the page. At the launch of the Surface Book, Microsoft compared it to the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. On the CPU side, the 13-inch MacBook Pro uses 28-Watt processors, and they include Iris graphics (but no eDRAM – at least yet), so in terms of CPU performance the Surface Book is not going to be able to compete at the same level with only half of the TDP available. We have not had any of the recent MacBook Pro models in for review though, so we won’t be able to compare it directly.

PCMark

PCMark attempts to simulate real world workloads in several tests. Pretty much all factors of the device are tested, including storage, CPU, memory, and graphics. Skylake does pretty well in these tests, and while the Surface Book with Core i7 is not always the fastest, it is the fastest of any high resolution device.

Cinebench

Cinebench performs rendering on the CPU, and more MHz and more cores can make a big difference on this test. Skylake does well here, especially on the multi-threaded workloads, but the i7-6600U shows a nice gain over the outgoing Broadwell Core i7 models.

x264

This test converts some video files, and much like Cinebench, it’s a mostly CPU bound test. Skylake does very well at this, but surprisingly the Core i7 model was slightly slower than the i5 on at the second pass.

Web Benchmarks

Browsing the web is something all of us do, so performance here is important. In the end, we can test JavaScript performance, but this is a test of more than just the CPU, since much of the performance is derived from the browser’s scripting engine. Previous to Windows 10, we had used Google Chrome since IE 11 was not representative in terms of performance, but with Edge now available in Windows 10, we’ve moved to that browser. Some of the tests will show an increase over Chrome with Edge, and some will show a decrease, so I’ve labeled all of the graphs to show which browser was used.

In addition, Intel’s Speed Shift is not yet available in Windows 10, so the scores do not have this enabled except where indicated to show the difference in the upcoming build of Windows 10. Once the patch is confirmed to be out, I’ll update Bench with the new values.

Like with the Surface Pro 4, performance on these tests is very good, with Skylake being able to outclass all of the previous generations of processors from Intel. We’ve already given you a preview of how this well change too when Speed Shift does get enabled on Windows 10, so expect these scores to go up a bit more too.

Storage Performance

With the Surface Pro 4, and Surface Book, Microsoft has moved to the cutting edge of storage technology. All of the flash storage is now based on NVMe, and the use of PCI-E 3.0 gives the system significantly more bandwidth than SATA ever could. While this is not quite the jump a SSD was to a HDD, for SSDs, it’s a big jump in overall performance.

On the Surface Pro 4 we had a 256GB Toshiba XG3 NVMe drive, and it was somewhat hampered by the number of NAND dies available. With the Surface Book that was provided for review, it is the full 512 GB model, and the extra NAND dies make a huge difference, especially on the write speeds. We see a tripling of the sequential write speed, up to 1.5 GB/s, and pretty much all of the other write speeds are doubled. This is some seriously fast storage, and any work with large files is almost comically fast.

There is some bad news though. On notebooks, it is not uncommon to see components dual-sourced from multiple vendors. This can be for a number of reasons, and recently we have seen it in the iPhone 6s which sources it’s SoC from two vendors. Microsoft has gone down this road with the Surface Book, meaning there are going to be two versions of SSD available. The first is the very fast Toshiba that we’ve just seen, but the second is not quite what I would have expected in a high end device.

Microsoft has gone with the Samsung PM951, which is similar to the Samsung SM951 that we’ve reviewed in the past. It is still a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drive, but there is one crucial difference between it and the SM951. The PM951 uses Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND rather than Multi-Level Cell in the SM951. TLC has some drawbacks, which are lower durability and slower write speeds. I’ll recommend reading our TLC primer to get into the technical reasons for this, but I have some concerns with TLC NAND being used in the Surface Book in particular, mostly because of its position in the marketplace.

You can see that read speeds are still quite good, even surpassing the Toshiba some of the time, but write speeds are quite a bit lower. In particular, the sequential writes can be less than half the speed of the XG3 drive. This can be compensated for by using some SLC (Single-Level Cell) as a cache, but it does not appear that the PM951 has any caching available to it.

Also, these speeds are tested with the 512 GB drive, and lower capacity drives are going to have slower performance across the board due to the lack of parallelization of the NAND itself.

Let’s take a look at another test though. PCMark 8 uses traces from real-world applications to create their own storage test.

Here we can see that the Samsung drive actually scores a bit higher than the Toshiba. PCMark 8 tends to lump SSDs together, almost regardless of absolute performance. For many tasks, you just are not going to notice the slower write speeds of the Samsung drive. It would only be in cases where you are writing very large files to the drive, and where you are not already limited by another bottleneck (such as a USB drive so some other external device) where you are going to notice.

Summing the storage up, we have a situation that is not ideal. It’s fine to source from different vendors, but the performance differences between the two devices are quite substantial, let alone the long term durability of the TLC NAND. It was a decision done for the wrong reasons. It’s great that Microsoft has paid enough attention to storage to move to NVMe based drives, but then they have created a headache for themselves by sourcing drives with such different performance levels. If they had used the more expensive Samsung SM951, I don’t think there would be a discussion here. Many customers may not notice the speed differences, but that does not excuse the decision. Some customers will notice. On a premium device like the Surface Book, I would expect only the best, and while the drive may meet their internal performance levels, a cacheless TLC based SSD in a premium device is not necessary.

GPU Gaming Performance

It is pretty interesting that Microsoft decided to offer a discrete GPU in the base of the Surface Book. This is pretty much the thinnest device out there with an NVIDIA GPU available, and although it is not a powerhouse like the GTX 970M, it can still offer a lot more performance than the integrated GPU available in Skylake. This is also helped by the discrete GPU being able to have its own power and cooling envelope, being that it is physically separated from the CPU. With the integrated GPU, it is competing within the same 15 Watt TDP envelope that is available to the CPU, so when gaming you always see the CPU move lower in frequency to accommodate. With a separate GPU, this isn’t necessary, and both can run at their full capabilities.

The actual GPU is described by Microsoft to be a custom Maxwell processor, but looking at GPU-Z on the Surface Book pretty clearly shows it to be about equivalent to the GT 940M. The custom part that Microsoft has gone with is clocked slightly lower than the official GT 940M and comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory rather than the typical 2 GB of DDR3 that comes with that part. The extra bandwidth should help out quite a bit, especially since this GPU is limited by a 64-bit memory bus. The lack of VRAM means you are going to struggle gaming at high resolutions, but then again the lack of compute power in the GPU also means the same thing. When gaming, the extra GPU power along with the CPU not needing to reduce its power output, should lead to much better performance when compared to using an integrated solution.

Microsoft is leveraging NVIDIA’s Optimus technology to determine when the GPU is turned on. This means there is a whitelist of applications which are enabled by default, and you can go into the NVIDIA control panel and set up your own applications to use either the integrated GPU or the NVIDIA GPU. Unlike most gaming laptops with Optimus though, Microsoft has not installed the GeForce Experience software, so in order to access the settings you have to either search for NVIDIA in the start menu, or open the legacy control panel. I think Microsoft is going for the automatic route that is likely good for most situations. The other missing piece though of the GeForce software is that it will automatically configure game settings for optimal frame rates, which is a great feature. Since the GT 940M is a pretty low end part - and as such requires some effort to dial in the most balanced settings - it would have been nice to have this.

In order to judge performance levels, the Surface Book i5 (with no dGPU) and the Surface Book i7 (with dGPU) have been put through our standard notebook workload. Since these are not gaming systems, they have not been tested on all of the games that a more powerful system would, but I’ve run a couple more than a typical Ultrabook would do just to see how the NVIDIA GPU fares. The Dell XPS 15 9530 is a quad-core Haswell notebook wth GT 750M, and is included as a comparison for a device with a lower end discrete GPU.

3DMark

Futuremark’s 3DMark has several testing options for Windows PCs, with Fire Strike being the most demanding. On this test, the Core i7 model scored an impressive 121% higher than the Core i5 with just integrated graphics. But as the tests get easier, the gap between the two models shrinks. With Sky Diver, the Core i7 is still 71% faster, which shrinks again to 32% for Cloud Gate, and 37% for the easiest test, Ice Storm Unlimited. As the tests get easier, the CPU becomes a bigger factor and brings the scores closer together.

GFXBench

Our second and final set of synthetic tests are done with the DirectX version of GFXBench. Once again, the NVIDIA GPU provides a big jump in performance, pretty much doubling the scores of the Core i5 model with Intel HD 520 graphics. This isn’t surprising of course, since the NVIDIA GPU has more TDP available than the entire Skylake CPU has. It would be interesting to see the GT 940M with DDR3 compare to the Surface Book, assuming a similar CPU was available.

Dota 2

I’ve already spoiled these results a bit by including them in the Surface Book first look article, but much like the 3DMark scores, as the settings are turned down, the iGPU and dGPU solutions get much closer. At our maximum settings on this benchmark, which is 1920x1080 with all graphical options enabled, the Core i7 Surface Book is an impressive 91% faster. It is still not ridiculous frame rates, but the game is certainly very playable, stopping just short of 60fps. Our test scene for Dota 2 is also a very demanding part of the game, so I would not expect averages to dip much below this.

Tomb Raider

While I am anxiously awaiting the sequel to this amazing game, we can still use the original Tomb Raider benchmark. At its maximum settings, with TressFX enabled, it can be very demanding on a GPU. None of the integrated GPUs would be able to run this game at that kind of setting, and even the Surface Book Core i7 only gets 15.3 frames per second at our Enthusiast levels, so for this comparison I’ll focus on our value settings. At our lowest settings for this game, the integrated solution would be just playable, at around 40 frames per second. Since this is not a high paced shooter, 40 frames per second would get you by, but the Core i7 model bumps that up almost 100% to just over 80 frames per second. With this much performance available, you could even jump to our medium settings, which gave a result of 44.3 frames per second and would give a much better look to the game.

Bioshock Infinite

Much like Tomb Raider, this game is getting a bit long in the tooth, which actually makes it a good candidate for integrated graphics. But even on our value settings for this game, the Core i5 Surface Book did not quite hit 30 frames per second, where as the dGPU model was almost at 60.

Performance Under Sustained Load

I always like to take a look at temperatures and processor frequencies while the system is under load for an extended amount of time. It’s great that it can finish a benchmark in a couple of minutes, but rarely do people use a system for just a couple of minutes. The NVIDIA GPU in the base is of particular concern, since generally Ultrabooks only deal with about 15 Watts of heat, and the GPU can draw more than that. To test this out, I’ve run the Surface Book through an entire session of our Dota 2 benchmark, while logging data.

There are a couple of interesting things to note here. First, the GPU frequency locks in at 992.7 MHz as soon as the game is launched, and it does not budge at all for the duration of the gaming session. There is absolutely no thermal or power throttling happening. Looking at the temperature graph for the GPU, the temperature is not ramping up at all, so I would be confident saying that it would continue this speed for as long as necessary. The GPU load is also not pegged at 100% all of the time, indicating that the GPU is at least partially held back by the CPU. Since the CPU is in a different thermal zone altogether, it is not throttling either, but it’s struggling to keep up with the demands of the GPU. Looking back at our results, we can actually see that the system is CPU bound by looking at the Dota 2 framerates from Mainstream and Enthusiast settings, which are roughly identical, indicating that we are running into a CPU bottleneck.

There is more CPU performance available than in the non-dGPU version though, since when gaming, it has to share the 15 Watt TDP with the GPU, and any time the integrated GPU is brought up to load, the CPU scales back its frequency. So by separating the two, there is more performance available to both than there would be with a more powerful integrated GPU.

Gaming Conclusion

I suppose I should mention that the Surface Book is not a gaming system. If you want to play the latest games, with high resolution and lots of options enabled, neither the integrated graphics version, nor the discrete graphics option, are really the answer here. But if you are someone who just plays lighter games like League of Legends or Dota 2, the NVIDIA powered Surface Book is easily the most powerful notebook that is this size. With roughly double the performance of the integrated graphics, the Surface Book Core i7 goes from unplayable, to playable, which, for some, is what they want. If you are a gamer though, there are better options for less money, but they will bring their own compromises as well, such as being thicker, heavier, and have less substantial battery life.

Compute with the Surface Book

When discussing Ultrabooks, the word Compute doesn’t get thrown around very often, and for good reason. Even the MacBook Pro 13 only comes with Intel Iris graphics (no GT3e yet) and although Intel’s GPUs have been a priority over the last couple of generations, just like in gaming there is only so much you can do when your TDP is shared with the processor.

With Surface Book, there is more of an opportunity here. If you opt for the model with the NVIDIA GPU, you gain access to CUDA, which is NVIDIA’s parallel computing platform. Quite a few applications that need strong parallel processing have CUDA available as an option. Adobe, for instance, has CUDA support in many of their professional products like Photoshop, After Effects, Premier Pro, and more. NVIDIA lists hundreds of applications on their site which can benefit from GPU compute power, and there are also OpenCL applications as well which would benefit from the more powerful dGPU.

Expectations need to be put in check of course, because the GPU available in the Surface Book is not a workstation class GPU, so we shall see how it compares on these types of tasks. This is not an area where we have an extensive database of other devices, and normally compute is not a heavy focus for Ultrabook reviews, but I feel the Surface Book may find a niche with content creators so it’s worth examining.

Compubench

From the makers of GFXBench is Compubench, and like GFXBench, there are a number of tests which can be completed with either the CPU only, or by choosing a GPU.

The results are a bit mixed. Some of the tests respond very well to having the NVIDIA GPU, but some of the others don’t get as much of a benefit. But where the GPU helps, it can help a lot. Several of the tasks are 50% faster, and the Video Composition sub-test is 212% faster on the discrete GPU.

Agisoft Photscan

This software performs photogrammetric processing of images, and it has an option to use the GPU or just standalone with the CPU. Of the entire benchmark, only one section actually leverages the GPU functions so that test has been highlighted.

Even the one accelerated test still only shows a 5% decrease in time with the GPU being used. This highlights that even though a task may be accelerated with the GPU, the overall impact may not always be what you are expecting, since not all tasks can be done in parallel.

Using the Surface Book NVIDIA GPU for Compute

There is no doubt that if you are performing work that supports CUDA, the NVIDIA option on the Surface Book is going to make an impact. The question of course is how much. Applications such as those from Adobe do leverage CUDA, but it’s not for all tasks. This is kind of the issue with considering the GPU for compute. If you are someone who uses Adobe Premiere on the go, and need something smaller than a typical workstation class notebook, the GPU is going to help out, but since it doesn’t get leveraged for all tasks, it is very dependent on the exact task that you are performing.

The PixelSense Display

I feel like the display is one of the key points with the Surface Book. Microsoft calls it a PixelSense display - named for its capacitive touch and stylus capabilities - and they have added some technology to really move this display forward. As with all of the Surface devices now, it supports touch, and pen input, and it has a 3:2 aspect ratio.

The aspect ratio is really one of the key features. When Microsoft moved to 3:2 with the Surface Pro 3, it instantly transformed that device and made it much better as both a tablet and a notebook. When the Clipboard is detached, the 3:2 13.5-inch display is every bit as good as the Surface Pro 4, only a bit larger. It works much better in portrait than 16:9 ever did. Clip it on the base, and you now have a notebook display with enough vertical pixels to cut down on the amount of scrolling you need to do. For many of us, the constant move to 16:9 on notebooks was a painful process to watch, and with the Surface Book, you jump right past 16:10 to an even taller aspect ratio. When you snap two apps to the side, you effectively have two 3:4 workspaces, making multitasking much better. There is more physical display available on the 13.5-inch Surface Book than a 14-inch 16:9 display. So even though it would be easy to compare the Surface Book to 13.3-inch Ultrabooks, it offers even more screen than the 14-inch models.

Microsoft has created their own touch and pen controller, which they are calling the G5 chipset. This is the same as the Surface Pro 4, and the goal is to reduce latency on both touch and pen. It actually leverages the GPU for some functions since the GPU has a lot more capabilities and power available.

Despite the larger display than the Surface Pro 4, it shares the exact same pixel density at 267 pixels per inch. This is done with a 3000x2000 resolution, and it is incredibly sharp. Text rendering on it is fantastic, and it would be pretty difficult to discern individual pixels at any sort of normal distance. This is what they look like though.

So with all of these similarities with the Surface Pro 4, it would be easy to assume that Microsoft is using the same Samsung IGZO panel, but that is actually not the case. Microsoft has opted to go with a display from Panasonic, and it’s not IGZO which was a bit surprising with the high DPI on tap. Instead, it is a traditional amorphous silicon panel, so it won’t offer the same power savings of IGZO. Instead, Microsoft wanted to focus on contrast on this display. At the launch event, Panos Panay claimed this notebook had 1700:1 contrast ratio, which, if true, would make it one of the highest contrasts on any notebook, if not the actual highest on any notebook for sale today, and this was done, in part, with the help of photo-alignment. Microsoft has also stated that each Surface Book will be individually calibrated for sRGB, which is important since you generally can’t calibrate a notebooks’s colors after the fact.

To test these claims, we use SpectraCal’s CalMAN 5 software suite with an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter for brightness and contrast measurements, and an i1Pro spectrophotometer for testing color accuracy. Since I have two Surface Books, I’ve run the tests on both so we can check how the calibration is done on more than one device.

Brightness and Contrast

Our first test gets right to the heart of the claim from Microsoft, and sure enough, the Panasonic panel is able to deliver over 1700:1 on contrast. The best part is that the panel has achieved this with amazing black levels, and watching movies on the Surface Book really brings out a lot more detail in dark scenes than most devices are capable of. The brightness is also very good. The Core i5 model that I have has 462 nits of brightness and almost 1800:1 contrast, edging out the Core i7 sample.

Grayscale

Core i5 GrayscaleCore i7 Grayscale

Both models do ok in this test, but the Core i5 model, which was a pre-production sample, had some issues with grayscale, especially as the brightness went up. The Core i7 model, which is a retail sample, seems to be much better here, but with just a sample size of two, it’s difficult to say if this is just luck of the draw. Color temperatures are very close to where they should be as well, and both keep gamma in check which is nice to see.

Saturation

 

Core i5 (left) Core i7 (right)

Once again, the Core i7 model outperforms the Core i5 pre-production model here, and by quite a bit, although both are well under the limit where you would be able to detect an issue. Both devices can pretty much cover 100% of the sRGB color space.

Gretag Macbeth

 

Core i5 (left) Core i7 (right)

The most comprehensive test is the Gretag Macbeth, which tests not only the standard sweeps, but also many of the colors in-between, including skin tones. Both models do very well here, with pretty much none of the individual results scoring over 3.0.

Color Comparator

Looking at what all of this means, we can leverage these color comparators, which show the display’s intended color on the bottom, and the actual result on the top. This is a relative comparison, because any inaccuracies in your own display would skew the results.

Core i5 Color Comparator

Core i7 Color Comparator

Both models show very accurate colors, with little differentiation between the top and bottom parts of the images.

Microsoft has promised 100% sRGB coverage as well as individually calibrated panels, and it looks like they have done very well. The Core i7 model in particular, which is a retail sample, has no issues at all with the display accuracy. It’s interesting that they did not go with IGZO technology with the Surface Book like they did with the Surface Pro 4, but the Panasonic panel has amazing contrast, and the backlighting provides great brightness despite the amorphous silicon TFT. The black levels are very good on this display, and accuracy is certainly good enough for almost anyone’s needs. The high accuracy, combined with the high resolution, make the Surface Book one of the nicest displays around, and it’s a pleasure to use.

The days of high DPI being a real issue on Windows is slowly fading away, although there are still plenty of programs that do not play well. It really depends on what exact programs you have, but for most of my workflow high DPI is not a problem at all. Adobe has updated their apps to support higher resolution panels, for example. I’ve been using high DPI Windows PCs for several years now, and although there are still some apps that fall back to DPI virtualization, it’s not been an issue most of the time. If the Universal Windows App platform takes off, this will be well and truly solved, but that has not happened quite yet.

Battery Life

I would say the average Ultrabook has around 50 Wh of battery capacity. Some have a bit more, and some have a bit less, but 50 Wh would be a good ballpark figure. The Surface Book has a 70 Wh battery, split into 18 Wh in the Clipboard, and 52 Wh in the base. Combined, it gives the Surface Book more battery capacity than any other Ultrabook. However, as I’ve just discussed in the display section, Microsoft has a high resolution panel that is also based on a traditional amorphous silicon TFT which may impact the battery life.

Since the Surface Book includes a detachable Clipboard, the battery tests have been done with the Surface Book both as a tablet and a notebook. The tablet portion of our testing is with the device in Tablet Mode with the screen detached, leaving just 18 Wh of battery capacity. The Surface Book is intended to be used as a laptop first and foremost, but it’s still important to see what it can deliver away from it’s keyboard base. As always, all of our battery life tests are done with the display at 200 nits, and using the Microsoft Edge browser.

Since we have received both the Core i5-6300U model, as well as the Core i7-6600U model with the discrete NVIDIA GPU, both devices have been put through these tests.

Clipboard Battery Life

Battery life of the Clipboard is about what you would expect. With just 18 Wh of capacity, and a full Ultrabook inside the display, there is no way it would get the 10 hours that we would expect of an ARM based tablet. The Core i7 model has less battery life, which makes sense since its base frequency is a bit higher and overall power consumption should be a bit higher even with standard chip binning from Intel. Video playback is very close on both though, which would be expected since the video is offloaded to fixed function hardware in Skylake.

Notebook Battery Life

On the notebook side, we have two tests. The light test consists of loading four web pages per minute, and can be heavily impacted by display power draw. The CPU mostly sits idle during this test, expect for the brief bursts of work to load the pages. The heavy test ramps up the number of pages loaded, adds in a 1 MB/s file download, and has a movie playing.

Something amazing happened when I ran the Core i5 Surface Book through our light test. It set a new record for battery life. The amazing part of this is that it did it with a high resolution display, which normally impacts battery life quite a bit. For some contrast, the Dell XPS 13 was our previous battery life leader, but it was the 1920x1080 model. The 3200x1800 version, as seen in the graph above, was quite a bit less. The Core i5 Surface Book got 15.6 hours of battery life in this test. Yes, it was helped by a larger battery, but it was still a very impressive result. The dGPU + Core i7 model took a big hit here, coming in over three hours behind. Without dissecting the device and measuring power draw at each component, it’s tough to lay the blame on any one piece of the puzzle, but it has more RAM, a dGPU with GDDR5 memory (though this should be completely powering down when not in use), and a faster CPU. Any one could be to blame, or a combination of all three. Despite the lower score, at over 12 hours it still did very well on our light test.

The heavy test brings a lot more components into play, making the display power draw a smaller part of the picture. Here we see both the i5 and i7 models doing very well again, but once again the i5 version scores a lot higher. Both models can offer all day battery life, but if outright mobility is a concern, the i5 outperforms the i7 on battery life.

Next, let’s take a look at the platform efficiency, and remove the large 70 Wh of capacity from the equation.

While not the outright leaders in efficiency, the Core i5 Surface Book is the class leader when compared against other high DPI devices. The Core i5 Surface Book has even better efficiency than the Surface Pro 4, despite the Surface Pro 4 using an IGZO panel. On the heavy test, the Core i7 falls back a bit in both tests, but still has a good result.

Connected Standby Support

Surface Book is configured to use Connected Standby, which means that it can pull in app updates and push notifications even when it is sleeping. Out of the box, this is a mixed blessing, since the Surface Book has some issues with Connected Standby at the moment. It is supposed to hibernate after a couple of hours, but that doesn’t always happen, and there seems to be an activity/power drain issue when in sleep, since the Surface Book can get pretty hot when it’s closed. These are serious bugs that mar the experience. You can’t just trust that shutting the lid is going to put the machine to sleep, so if you close the lid and come back the next day, you are going to be welcomed by a dead battery. This is a well known issue, so I would expect a fix soon, but it’s a serious problem with the Surface Book that needs to be pointed out.

Charge Time

With 70 Wh of battery, charge times might be something that will be an issue, so I’ve tested both the Core i5 and the Core i7 models out with their respective adapters that come in the box. Since the Core i7 model includes a GPU, the AC adapter that is supplied is about twice the output of the standard version. The Core i5 comes with a 30 W charger, and GPU models come with a 60 W charger. It’s very difficult to tell which is which, but the 60 W version is slightly thicker, and the charging light on the Surface Connect port has different lighting. The low wattage version has a light that points away from the laptop when connected, and the higher wattage charger has lights that point up and down. You can technically use either charger, or even the Surface Pro 3 or 4 charger, but if you are using the GPU with a 30 W charger, the battery will slowly be depleted since it won’t be able to keep up with demand.

Since there are two batteries, I expected to see the tablet battery charged first and then the base, but that’s not actually what happens. Both are charged simultaneously.

You can see that the 60 W charger on the Core i7 can charge both batteries at the maximum rate simultaneously, but the 30 W charger that comes with the Core i5 charges the smaller tablet battery at maximum first, and when it’s full, sends the rest of the power to the base. It results in a longer charge rate for the non-GPU version.

Thanks to including a large 60W power adapter by default, the Core i7 + dGPU version wins by quite a bit, with the non-dGPU model taking nearly four hours to charge to 100% on both batteries. It kind of makes up for that with great battery life, but if you are someone that travels a lot, it may be worth investing in the higher wattage adapter for the non-dGPU version.

Wireless

Microsoft continues to employ the Marvel AVASTAR network adapters, which have been somewhat of a sore spot over the years. They have made a lot of driver updates though, and I’ve not run into the issues that used to plague these devices. They also have not historically been the fastest network adapters around, usually averaging around 350 Mbps on a SMB file copy.

The Core i5 model hit exactly what I expected, but there was recently a couple of firmware updates for the Surface Book. It seems to have made some big improvements because the Core i7 model is hitting speeds that I’ve never seen out of these cards. By the time I recieved the updated firmware I no longer had the Core i5 model, but I did update the Surface Pro 4’s firmware, and although I didn’t get quite as good of a result, it was still 50 Mbps higher than when it was first tested.

Speakers

The Surface Book continues to make use of two front facing stereo speakers, which are almost invisible in the bezel. I really like the design that Microsoft has gone with. Many Ultrabooks go with downward firing speakers to save space, but because of the Clipboard, Microsoft would not be able to go this route. They have stuck with the same design as the rest of the Surface lineup, and to great effect.

The Surface Book was able to hit about 80 dB(A) playing music, and for a 7.7 mm thick tablet, the sound quality was good, with decent low end response. Any serious listening should still be done through headphones though. I’ve seen a couple of issues raised with the headphone connector on some of the pre-release Surface Books, but the Core i7 model has exhibited no issues at all. Headphones sound great.

Experience - Room For Improvement

I was going to call this section Software, but it’s more than just software. It’s also not all good, but there’s been some news on that front as well.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. The Surface Book has not been a 100% trouble free experience. There have been a lot of issues reported, and many that I’ve experienced as well. Let’s start with the reason this review is delayed in the first place. The first unit that I got had a keyboard failure on the second day. Neither the keyboard nor trackpad would function at all, and it was not even detected in Windows. To be fair, this was a pre-production unit, and Microsoft has not seen any other failures of this type when last I checked with them. But I’ve seen other reports of the keyboard not working after the Clipboard is re-attached, and you either need to restart, or remove the Clipboard and try again. This is likely a software issue similar to the Surface Pro where it sometimes needs the keyboard removed and re-attached to get it to function.

Battery life, which I’ve already mentioned, has been poor when the device is in sleep. I’ve also had issues when it is awake though, causing high levels of draw once in a while. This seems to be more of an issue with the dGPU model, but the non-dGPU model was difficult to use for long periods of time with the non-functioning keyboard so it’s difficult to judge that model. Windows Hello can also cause issues with sleep.

There have also been issues with the screen changing hue, and flickering. Luckily these issues have been sorted out with a recent firmware update which installed a new graphics driver. I haven’t noticed them at all since, and they were very annoying before.

Meanwhile out of the box, the Surface Book is set to not switch to tablet mode automatically, nor is it set to prompt you to do this when you detach it. You have to go into the action center and manually enable tablet mode. I thought this was odd, so I changed it to automatically switch and not prompt me. This was a mistake. Randomly, the device would just switch to tablet mode. It seemed to be detecting that it was detached for brief moments and making the switch.

I’ve also seen reports of people unable to detach the top, but that I have not run in to.

The good news is that the firmware update released on November 2 has done a good job on a few of these bugs. Issues that were major problems are gone. I fully expect this to continue, but at the moment, there are still outstanding issues with the Surface Book. Microsoft is hard at work trying to get the other bugs sorted out, and expect more firmware updates soon, but for the time being the software side feels a bit rushed.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the software that is available. Since this is a device from Microsoft, you get zero bloatware installed. Booting the Surface Book has just three pieces of software listed in the Startup section of the task manager: OneDrive, NVIDIA Update, and Surface DTX. OneDrive is pretty self-explanatory, and the NVIDIA Update is not actually updating the drivers, but rather the whitelist which enables the dGPU. The interesting bit is the Surface DTX.

If I had to guess, DTX would stand for Detach Tablet Experience, but that’s a guess. This is the small piece of software which lives in the system tray that actually performs the Clipboard detach. On the non-dGPU models, this is as easy as triggering the muscle wire to unlock, and then notifying you on-screen with a “Ready to Detach” message. When you clip back in, it shows a message of “Attached” so you know you are good to use it as a notebook again.

When you have a Surface Book with a dGPU though, this all changes. The DTX software monitors if the dGPU is in use. If it is, the icon in the system tray changes to let you know. If you try to detach when the dGPU is in use, it will pop up a box letting you know that you can’t detach, and which program needs to be closed to let the dGPU be released. Software doesn’t normally deal with an instant hardware loss, at least nothing like a GPU, so this is a pretty smart way to get around having applications crash when trying to detach the clipboard.

If you want to change which GPU is used for a program, you have a couple of options. You can set the global setting from Auto-Select to either GPU using the NVIDIA Control Panel. This is easiest to find by searching Start for NVIDIA. You can also customize which program opens with which GPU using the Programs tab, just like with any Optimus machine. The final way to choose is to right click the shortcut to the program, and choose “Run with graphics processor” in the right click menu. Anyone who is familiar with Optimus will find nothing out of the ordinary here.

Generally, devices with NVIDIA graphics have the GeForce Experience software installed as well, but Microsoft has chosen not to install this out of the box. You can install this from the web though, and it will give you the features, such as the ability to have the GeForce Experience select the settings for a game to maximize performance versus quality. If you intend to do a lot of gaming, you may want to install this.

For those looking for more information on the Surface Pen, it's the same model as the Surface Pro 4, so rather than re-write the same text, please check that section out.

Final Words

Microsoft is billing the Surface Book as “The Ultimate Laptop” which is a pretty lofty goal, especially for a first generation device. Unlike the Surface Pro line, which is only just now seeing competition from other vendors, there are plenty of other Ultrabook-style notebooks on the market. In fact, over the last year, there have been some pretty great notebooks released. The Surface Book is coming to market at a time where other Windows OEMs have released some pretty excellent devices.

One thing that Microsoft nailed is the build quality. The magnesium shell has a great feeling to it, and it’s not exactly like aluminum either. The brushed finish feels great in the hand, and just like the rest of the Surface lineup you get a very solid device. It’s not light, especially if you consider 3.34-3.48 lbs (1.51-1.58kg) heavy. Comparing it to the amazingly thin and light machines released in the last year, it does feel a bit heavy. It’s amazing how much this has changed. The extra mass has been put to good use though, with a solid chassis packed with batteries.

The design of the hinge is a feature that is very interesting. By having it unwind it creates a more stable base. When closed, the Surface Book just yells out that it’s something different, and while there is a gap, it’s put to good use by allowing for longer travel on the keyboard. The design of the hinge mimics the look of an actual book, which is a great way to tie into the theme.

Meanwhile performance is fantastic, thanks to the 6^th generation Intel Core processor. The dual-core options of a Core i5-6300U or a Core i7-6600U put these at the top end of the spectrum for the 15 Watt parts. It’s unfortunate that Microsoft did not opt for anything with Intel’s Iris graphics line for the Surface Book like it did for the Surface Pro 4, but the optional NVIDIA GPU more than makes up for it. In pretty much all tasks that are GPU bound, the NVIDIA GPU is roughly twice the performance of the integrated graphics. The custom GT 940M with GDDR5 memory is a pretty nice addition to the notebook. Most Ultrabooks don’t have either the room or the cooling to support a discrete GPU. Microsoft has thought outside of the box here by adding the GPU in the base, while the rest of the components are in the detachable Clipboard.

Microsoft compared the Surface Book to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and I think that while that is a great device to target, the two products are quite a bit different. Apple’s 13-ich Retina MacBook Pro uses 28 Watt processors as well as Iris graphics. On CPU bound tasks, I would expect the MacBook Pro to maintain an edge, although on GPU bound tasks it might not be the same story, assuming you have the NVIDIA dGPU in the Surface Book.

As a tablet, the 13.5-inch display with full Core i7 on tap is a powerful combination. Being Surface, it of course supports the Surface pen, and performance is decent with not a lot of lag. There is still some room here for improvements, but overall the pen experience is very good. Just like the Surface Pro 4, the pen offers an eraser on the top, and can be stored by attaching it to the side of the display with magnets. The magnetic holder is strong enough that it’s not going to just fall off randomly, but it’s not as strong as a physical connection so if you put it in your bag, the pen may not be attached when you pull it back out. That’s a pretty small issue though.

The Clipboard is not going to be as good of a standalone tablet as something like the Surface Pro 4 though, mostly because of the reduced battery and lack of a kickstand. But for short sessions, the very thin and light Clipboard works well. Around the house, there have been several times where it’s been very nice to be able to detach the display to show off a video clip, or look at some maps. If you want to use it as a writing or drawing device, you can also remove the display, and then flip it around and re-attach it to the base, which gives you a nice angled surface to draw on.

As a notebook, there is a lot done well here. First off, the amazing display has accurate color, and the best contrast ratio of any notebook we’ve tested. It’s also a 3:2 aspect ratio, just like all of the other Surface devices now, making it a much taller display. Doing office work on it is very nice, and with the number of people not in love with the move to 16:9 displays in notebooks this alone may be a good reason to consider the Surface Book. The display size is deceiving because it’s a 13.5-inch panel, but due to the aspect ratio, there is more screen real estate than a 14-inch notebook (84.12in^2 vs. 83.75in^2). It also features front facing stereo speakers, which actually sound good considering the thickness of the device.

Meanwhile the keyboard features 1.6 mm of travel in the keys and the layout is pretty standard. I would like to see full sized up and down arrow keys, but it’s really not too bad to get used to the half-height ones which I’ve used on many other notebooks. I quite like the function toggle, because for some tasks, you really need the F keys to just be the default. Most notebooks default to the other functions. Having the button as a toggle with a light, just like caps lock, is a great way to implement it.

The trackpad is also very good. It is nice and large, and very smooth. The Precision touchpad drivers offer quite a bit of customization of multi-touch gestures, even though they don’t go quite as far as some of the other touchpad vendors do. Out of the box, I found it a bit too slow, but that was easily corrected in the control panel.

Battery life of the Surface Book is pretty impressive, especially on the Core i5 model with no dGPU. The overall battery life sets a new record on our light test, and this is despite the high resolution display. Compared to other high resolution notebooks, there really is nothing even close to this right now. The Core i7 model with the NVIDIA dGPU could not reach the lofty results of its Core i5 brethren, but it still did very well, thanks in no small part to the impressive 70 Wh of battery capacity.

All is not perfect with the hardware of course. There is a noticeable lack of ports on the Surface Book, with just two USB 3.0 ports on the left side. The right side just has a DisplayPort output, as well as the Surface Connect port for docking or charging. The tablet itself has no ports at all except for the headset jack. Microsoft did include a SD card reader in the base, but it only accepts the card about half-way in, so you can’t use it to increase storage like you would be able to on the Surface Pro 4 with it’s microSD card slot. If you do need more connectivity you would have to turn to the Surface Dock, which offers two DisplayPort outputs, along with four USB 3.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet.

The other issue with the hardware is one that plagues all 2-in-1 devices which offer a detachable display. Because the display has to house all of the PC components it gets heavy. The Surface Book display/Clipboard is 1.6 lbs (726 grams) and all of this weight is out over the hinge. The Surface Book does better than any other detachable convertible device for balance, but at the end of the day it is still more top heavy than a traditional notebook. On a desk it’s not going to be an issue, but if you do have to type in your lap, depending on the seating arrangement, it may want to tip backwards. This is compounded by the feet on the bottom not having a lot of grip. The Surface Book’s display travel is also limited to prevent it from tipping over, although it does open far enough that it should not be an issue for almost any situation.

The hardware is overall very good. Where the Surface Book is let down though is on software. It’s kind of ironic that the hardware is well done but the software can’t keep up when you consider Microsoft is first and foremost a software company, and one that has only been in the PC market for a couple of years at that. But there have been a lot of issues with software. When the Surface Book first launched, it suffered from display driver crashes along with hue changes and flickering on the screen when doing certain tasks. Luckily these issues seem to have been corrected with a firmware update issues on November 2^nd. But there are still outstanding issues. The fact that you can’t close the lid and expect the laptop to actually go to sleep is a terrible bug. Leaving the Surface Book unplugged but sleeping is going to result in a dead battery. Just yesterday, I closed the lid on the Surface Book, only to notice the fans had kicked in and it was very hot. It seems to get burn more power when it’s supposed to be sleeping then when it’s actually doing a task. There have been reports of other issues as well, but the main ones I suffered from had to do with power. Running the battery rundown tests was not always a great experience, since sometimes it would, for almost no reason, just burn through a bunch of battery.

Some of the software is great too. Windows Hello is enabled with the Surface Book’s front facing camera, and once you’ve used facial recognition to login you just never want to go back. The login is very fast, and I’ve had no issues with it recognizing me in almost any condition. Bright sunlight can be an issue, since it does use an IR camera and that would be overloaded in direct sunlight, but other than that situation it’s been great.

Windows 10 fits this device very well with it’s desktop mode and tablet mode, although for bugs that I’ve already listed earlier in the review, the automatic switching is disabled out of the box. At the moment, manually switching modes appears to be the best way to handle that.

At the end of the day, the Surface Book feels like a device that was kept secret. The secrecy was great for the unveiling, since there were only vague rumors of such a device to be announced at the Microsoft devices event in New York, but that same secrecy has, I believe, led to superb hardware being let down by immature software.

And then there is price. The Surface Book is not an inexpensive device. Microsoft is playing at the very top of the market with this offering. Prices range from $1500 for the base model with Core i5/8GB/128GB, all the way up to a staggering $3200 for a Core i7/16GB/1TB/GPU model. That’s a lot of money for an Ultrabook. The NVIDIA dGPU alone is a $200 upgrade on the Core i5 model. You can easily get a more powerful system for less money, but when you look at the high end it’s never a linear relationship of cost versus performance. The Surface Book offers some of the nicest hardware in any detachable convertible. I think despite the price Microsoft is going to have customers for this. The question is will they get the bugs sorted out. The first firmware update fixed a lot, but there are still too many outstanding issues to recommend the Surface Book at this time.