Log in member
The latest Surface device is meant to double as a stylish tablet and a powerful laptop, offering unfound productivity options.
"Hello everyone and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
We are incredibly late on this one.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 came out, well, this has a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 inside alongside an NVIDIA RTX 4050, meaning that we are two generations behind on the CPU and one generation behind on the GPU."
"That means that it's still going to be plenty performant for a bunch of different tasks, but when you are out there spending thousands and thousands of dollars on something which is very premium and very sort of almost built for the creative enterprise, you're probably not going to buy something which is already lacking two generations behind, particularly when you cannot upgrade the CPU."
"So why are we showing you the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2?
Well, a couple of things.
This was what Microsoft was willing to send us and we are very grateful for that, but also I took it on because it reminds me again how important the Surface lineup of laptops can be."
"Because there's been plenty of misfires in the Surface line.
The Surface Duo and the Surface Duo 2 failed to resonate with a broad enough audience globally.
The Surface Neo, the folding tablet, never came to be, and the Surface Laptop line, that has been sort of on and off for a bunch of years."
"People love the Surface Book, seems like people are being made on the Surface Studio, but if there's one thing that I think is very, very apparent when you pick this up is that the production, the manufacturing tolerance on display here is very MacBook-esque.
And if there's one thing I think that the PC space needs, it is laptops that do have that tolerance."
"Some of them get close, but you make big sacrifices in productivity, in battery life, in material usage, but the Surface is so lovely to hold that you get the feeling that the tolerances here are as tight as they are in the Cupertino brand.
So that is very much apparent here."
"I know that a lot of people think that the base, the double base, is a little bit controversial because they've installed this sort of subframe below which houses all of the exhausts from the cooling, it would seem, or it's an intake, we actually don't know.
Point is that they are housed beneath the actual chassis, which makes it a lot thicker."
"But it is actually something that you don't notice when it is closed.
And obviously when you open it up, it's just such a lovely machine to actually look at.
Everything is pillowy curves.
It looks like it's going to be like, look at this, it looks like it's going to be comfortable to use for you."
"And because it is a Surface Studio laptop, well, it's also meant to be performant, which it most certainly is.
The keyboard is among the best I think there is.
It is soft, it is again pillowy, it is incredibly tactile and just lovely to use."
"The trackpad is big without being too big.
The display, before we get to the actual sort of party piece here, is obviously Microsoft's own PixelSense.
This is a 14.4 inch display, which I think is a lovely little balance to strike between MacBook Pro 14 and MacBook Pro 16 territory."
"It is 2400 by 1600, once at 120 hertz.
But most importantly, maybe you can tell if you have a trained eye, but this is 3 by 2.
That means that it is a tall display, much taller than your 16 by 10s, which also eliminates that chin below."
"That means that there's more room for scrolling, for vertical content, which is a lot these days.
Even if you're prompting an AI or you're just creating more in Photoshop and you want more space there, 3 by 2 is a really good way to go and Microsoft championed that for years."
"Now it's obviously also a touchscreen because of what I'm about to show you, but we've done this before, so there's no real sort of big extra thing here, but this screen pops out.
That is what makes it a Surface Studio.
Now it pops in with these magnets."
"There's nothing holding it in place right now.
They say it's dynamic, but that's really not the case because that would mean that it is positionable.
It is not."
"There are certain modes that you can use.
So this is just standard.
Again, as you can see, the actual lid isn't much thicker as a result, but because you can do this, it becomes a drafting table."
"A drafting table is a very particular term because it has very specific demands in terms of creative professionals that want this.
They don't want things that are flat.
They want things at an angle, meaning that this creates a perfect drawing tablet experience."
"If you transition between handwritten work, maybe drawing for some professional need, there are a bunch of other reasons why you might want this and you can use any Wacom ink style supported pencil on the surface if you want, including the 10 that the good Lord gave you."
"But there's also something which seems to be quite of a hit with creative professionals as well, which is what Microsoft calls easel mode.
Now easel mode is simply placing it here.
There are an extra array of magnets docking the screen in place."
"That is also where you have access to some mousepad functions while you hide the keyboard away if you don't need it.
Again, it is as easy as transitioning back and then close.
This I think is a genuinely good idea and while I cannot, cannot, we're not even going to benchmark this thing because why would we?
It's going to come up short next to almost all laptops from our last two years and will be more expensive than all of them because of the way surfaces are priced."
"But I wanted to bring this on air to just simply state for the record that I think this is an idea that Microsoft should pursue.
Surfaces are cool.
We need Windows laptops that are cool."
"And with that extra utility for creative professionals, which is a unique sort of three-pronged style, that makes sense too.
See you on the next one."
