So this is the Surface Book 2, the 13 inch version

Now, when the original Surface Book launched in 2015

I thought it was some of the coolest pieces of tech available at the time

It's just really impressive because

No one else was making something quite like it. Two years later, we're still there

No one else is making something quite like this

The CPU is built into the screen

It's removable and it's a fully functional tablet by itself

And then the GPU is in the keyboard so when they connect, it becomes a full-fledged

graphically powered laptop, so...

I mean a lot of people want something like this

It's something quite unique

But it comes at a pretty steep price tag

This thing, this unit here, starts at $2000 US

Now, there is a cheaper version

But the cheaper version does not have the dedicated graphics card

in the keyboard so that makes it not as cool

Or just not as unique to be honest

So I'm going to focus just the experience on this one, the $2000 version

Now, there's a 15 inch version that's significantly more expensive

I may do video in the future on that but, 13-inch for this video

I want to talk about the hinge first. This is a hinge that, when it first was announced

I had mixed feelings about it because I felt like there's so many moving parts

There's places that dust can get into, there's just a lot of things that could go wrong,

I thought

That's not the case. Two years later

People still don't have any major issues with the hinge

Now the design isn't for everyone. It can look a little bit weird

But functionally and mechanically, it's really well made. When you open it up

You'll notice that very little has changed aesthetically

The screen is still the 3 by 2 aspect ratio with good color accuracy. It's bright

It's high-res. There's no complaints here. There's no pen in the box this year

It's an extra 100 bucks if you want to buy one, which I thought was a little bit weird

But I guess not everyone uses a pen so it's understandable

The one I'm using is actually from the Eve and it works perfectly fine

The keyboard and trackpad are nice

It's a noticeably better typing experience than the original Surface Book

It's a little bit quieter, and it just feels more responsive

than the original Surface Book keyboard, not that that one was bad

It was already good. This is just a little bit better. The trackpad has also improved

It's obviously still running Windows Precision drivers

The button mechanism feels a little more deliberate when you press it

And it's a little bit louder than I remember the Surface Book 1 to be

but it feels awesome, so keyboard, trackpad, both excellent

Performance is good. It's the quad core Kaby Lake-R

It's a 15 watt CPU, but it's fast in short bursts. Multi-core performance is really strong now

But the question is whether this extra speed really makes a big difference for what you do

And it really depends on your workflow

The truth is for the majority of people that are using a device like this it won't make their workflow

Or just work experience that much faster

You need specific apps that can handle multi-core processing

Some computational stuff will really benefit from it and same with video editing

But at the end of the day, it is a 15 watt U processor

So it's not gonna be the fastest laptop in the world. One thing to keep in mind, the 13 inch version

does not have a fan in the tablet component.

The 15 inch version of this device like the Surface Book 2, 15 inch screen

does have the same processor as this, but there is a fan in there

So it's able to run at a higher clock speed for longer periods of time. It also pulls

I think 20 watts instead of the 15 watt at max

There is some CPU throttling when you push it hard enough

But most people won't notice it because this is not the device that people would choose

for really heavy CPU activity. In terms of gaming performance,

It's actually pretty good. The GTX 1050 pushes out some decent performance

You have to run it at a lower-than-native resolution

But light-to-moderately demanding titles are very playable on this device

There are reports that the 15 inch version with the GTX 1060

is actually pulling more power than the AC adapter can supply

So it's actually draining batteries while you're using it

That doesn't happen on the 13 inch version because this is running a 1050

Slightly less power drain, so yeah. If you want to play games on this device

I mean, neither of them are a good choice

But the issue doesn't happen on the 13 inch version

The speakers. Surprisingly, these have been improved this year

They're not as good as the 13 inch MacBook Pro speakers, but they sound pretty good

And they're positioned well, you get really nice stereo separation

- The webcam is really good. It's actually one of the best webcams

I've seen on a laptop. The mic quality sounds pretty good as well

Battery life on this thing is very good

I'm getting around 10 hours of use with the screen at 250 nits

Now, this is with it in laptop mode. With the screen removed and just using it as a clipboard,

I'm only getting around three hours

This has a 23 watt hour battery inside the screen, and I think 67 watt hour battery inside the base

But overall, good battery life

It'll easily last you the full day, and for people that aren't familiar with how the charging works

You can charge the tablet by itself or you can connect the tablet to the keyboard

and just charge the base and everything will charge up altogether

The drive speeds are a mixed bag

The read speeds are fast but the write speeds are a little bit slow

The thermals are good

The temperatures are comfortable both in tablet and laptop mode

The fan noise under max load is a little bit loud

But it's kind of expected considering the size of the chassis, so there's a lot of stuff

I like about the Surface Book 2, but the big things are not so much the CPU and the GPU upgrades

It's the little things, like the things like the speakers, the keyboard, the trackpad

Things that they didn't have to change but they tweaked it anyways

because they're just trying to make a better product overall and I really like that

That being said, there are things that I dislike about this thing

And the first one, the big one, is the price. Now the price

When you first look at this thing seems very expensive

It's $2,000 for a 13-inch laptop with a U processor and a GTX 1050

If you spent that money on something like an XPS 15

You'd get something that's more powerful, but the reason why it costs this much is because

Microsoft is the only company making something like this

No one else makes something like this and

The reason why is because it's super hard to engineer this hinge

And it's super hard to engineer this device to have a CPU up top

and the GPU on the bottom because if it wasn't hard, you bet that Huawei or

Xiaomi would make something like this for a lot less money

But they aren't because they can't, and that is why they can charge

whatever they want to. I don't like the price

I still feel like it's like 10, 15 percent more than it should be

Because this is such a good product if it was more

appropriately priced, more reasonably priced

I think a lot of people could make great use of this

But we can't because it's just a little bit another price range for a lot of people

which is unfortunate. The other thing I don't like about this thing,

is the lack of a Thunderbolt 3 port. So it has a decent port selection,

two USB 3.0's, an SD card slot and a USB-C

But it doesn't support Thunderbolt 3 and that really bugs me

because, this is a device that costs as much as it does and

It's their flagship products, right? Every single other manufacturer out there

who's making flagship laptops has Thunderbolt 3 support in 2017

and it just lets you connect to faster storage, external GPUs,

4K displays or at least multiple 4K displays

There's just a lot of good features that come with Thunderbolt 3

And it seems so weird that they didn't include it

Now, the omission of Thunderbolt 3 feels almost

purposeful like they did it with intent and that's what bugs me

Like, are they waiting for the Surface Book 3 to come out so they can sell that or

Was it something like cost-saving measure?

I have no idea, but it doesn't make sense to me as to why they didn't include such a

ubiquitously useful port in late 2017, and I guess that leads to my last thing

I don't love about it. The AC adapter they include is a proprietary connector,

and it would have been nice if they included a USB-C adapter

You can charge it through that port, you just need to supply your own adapter

So overall, great device

You just got to make sure that you're using it to its full

purpose because, if you're buying this and you're not making use of the tablet

And you're not making use of the detach ability and all that,

then there are probably cheaper devices

that would have been a better fit, but if you can make use of it

and you can afford its relatively high price tag, you're gonna enjoy it.

Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video!

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