Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 puts desktop power in a laptop body

Is the Microsoft Surface Book 2 really that much faster?

Microsoft said the laptop offers “powerhouse performance” in either a 15-inch or 13.5-inch form factor.

Microsoft unveiled the Surface Book 2, a $1,499 laptop aimed at stealing away Apple customers. Surface Precision Mouse supports your most detailed projects with carefully calculated weight, stability, and control for easy manipulation.

Surface Book 2 doesn’t include a Surface Pen.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has yet to reveal full pricing for the Surface Book 2 range.

Like its earlier version, the laptop features a removable screen so it can be used as a tablet. The 13.5-inch screen on the smaller model has the same dense resolution of 3,000 x 2,000 pixels while the new 15-inch comes in at 3,240 x 2,160. On the left side, there are two USB 3.0 ports and an SD card slot.

Then again, maybe I could overlook that for the wave of extra power.

While the 15-inch Surface Pro Book 2 has not been slated for a United Kingdom release on the Microsoft Store, in the U.S. is will cost buyers back $2,499 for the starting unit with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage, with $3,299 getting customers the model with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. Under the hood, both devices are powered by the Intel 8th generation processors.

The maximum amount of memory has doubled, up to 16GB, while the largest amount of storage remains a 1TB SSD.

But the 15-inch Surface Book 2 is the real beast of the pair, coming with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. We spent some time with the 15-inch model before its release and have some initial impressions. For more demanding applications, a GeForce GTX 1050 discrete GPU with 2GB of graphics is an option. The Surface Book 2 is rated to offer 17 hours of battery life with the 15-inch variant and the processing is taken care by choice of 8th Gen Intel dual and quad-core processors.

The Surface Mouse isn’t as customizable as Logitech’s MX Master but if you have been waiting for a truly ergonomic mouse that goes with your Surface, the Surface Mouse looks like the ideal option. We spent some time with both, even unearthing what could be the first performance numbers on Microsoft’s new beast. As you would expect from the Surface family, the screen looks great but it is glossy too and not everyone may like that.

Of course, it still has the Surface Connect port, which is also USB 3.1 Gen 1, and you can use that or the Type-C port for charging. Both come with a PixelSense display and an improved backlit keyboard.

The first-generation Surface Book with dGPU was no such thing: Its lackluster and unnamed NVIDIA graphics chip was a big step up from integrated graphics, but it was barely able to play modern games effectively. Both predictably support 10-finger touch gestures.