Tag: Surface Book 2

Microsoft Edge Chromium Browser Release Version Impressions

On January 15th Microsoft released a stable version of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser, you can read more about that announcement here.

Before I go into my impressions on the Microsoft Edge Chromium stable release version I just want to state that I used (not as my daily browser) the beta and dev channel versions of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser and even the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. To check out those impressions then you can go here and here, enjoy. If you are interested in trying out the beta, dev or even canary channels of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser then head on over using this link.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s go into my impressions on the released version of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser. I tested this on both my Surface Book 2 (my main personal laptop) and my Surface Pro 3 (primarily used to watch videos online). I’m not going to break down this impressions into each device but sort of summarize what I experienced.

Nothing is breaking

As with my original two posts about using Microsoft Edge Chromium and Microsoft Edge Legacy respectively, the Chromium version (in beta and dev) had absolutely no issue in loading up web pages whereas the same pages would take longer to load, not render content correctly or not render at all. I can say that nothing has broken after leaving beta and being released as a stable version. This I believe comes down to using Chromium under the hood. Generally any site that Google Chrome can load, Microsoft Edge Chromium can load too. So off to a good start.

That seemed fast

Microsoft Edge Legacy I found generally (but not always or consistently) tended to load web pages quicker (if it could load the page). Is the page loading noticeably faster than Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge Chromium? Not really, but if you launched both browsers and navigated to a web page for the first time Microsoft Edge Legacy would load ever so slightly faster. Microsoft Edge Chromium loads web pages about as fast as Google Chrome. So again, between beta and release nothing has broken or regressed there. Again, so far so good from the team from Redmond.

Slightly ore RAM available and more battery life

We all know how much of a RAM hog Google Chrome can be. We have all seen the memes and we have all experienced our RAM slowly be eaten away by Google Chrome.

Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1501180-google-chrome-ram-hog

So much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge Chromium uses more RAM than Microsoft Edge Legacy. However what I did find on both my Surface Book 2 and my Surface Pro 3 it used about 10%-15% less RAM than Google Chrome consistently. So I guess that is a good thing 😀

Now to battery life. Much like my beta impressions post, the battery life is about what I was expecting with something running the Chromium engine under the hood. It is slightly better than Google Chrome (I was seeing about 1 hour more battery life on my Surface Book 2), but Microsoft Edge Chromium is nowhere near as battery efficient as Microsoft Edge Legacy. This is especially noticeable on my Surface Pro 3 and less so on my Surface Book 2. You will not get the same level of battery performance on the Surface Pro 3 when running Microsoft Edge Chromium compared to Microsoft Edge Legacy. It mirrors Google Chrome nearly identically in regards to battery performance on my Surface Pro 3.

One point to note is that on my Surface Book 2 is there are no fans, so I do not hear anything when my CPU starts to pick up speed and my machine starts to get a little warm. This is in extreme contrast to my Surface Pro 3 where when I use Microsoft Edge Chromium and watch YouTube videos in anything greater than 720p the fans kick in and it starts to get hot. The Microsoft Edge Legacy browser did not have this issue at all even at higher resolutions as I noted in my original post, so this is something to consider.

Everything else

Much like the beta and dev channel, the appearance of Microsoft Edge Chromium is nearly identical. It looks much like Google Chrome, so if you like how that looks and are comfortable with that, then you will feel right at home.

One area where Microsoft has done a fantastic job is in regard to your privacy settings. You get a very solid choice of options and I feel it gives the user more control of what you share and with whom. Google really needs to update their browser to be a little more restrictive and enforce some stronger privacy policies. But then again it is not in their best interest as they make most of their money from advertising. So I am giving Microsoft a big kudos here in ensuring the right things can be blocked and letting the user decide who has access to what information while they browse the net.

Feature parity with the Microsoft Edge Legacy browser is coming and new and exciting features are also coming down the road; currently you are missing some sync functionality for example. Google Chrome extensions now work on Microsoft Edge Chromium which is fantastic because the Microsoft Store is lacking some extensions that you may use daily.

Overall I feel that Microsoft has made a very good browser that can keep up with the best of them (thanks to running Chromium). And by contributing to the Chromium community not only will the browser get better but so will other browser that run on Chromium like Google Chrome. If you are “trapped” in the Google ecosystem, then it may not be enough to change browsers, but if you use a Microsoft account instead and the current legacy version of Microsoft Edge then this browser can easily replace Google Chrome. Now it is really up to the web developers and Microsoft to ensure that this browser is made compatible with what is out there and ensure that it does not break over time. Would I recommend this browser to someone who does not want to use Google Chrome? Yes, yes I do with no hesitation.

Where to download

You can get the released version of Microsoft Edge Chromium using this link.

Revisiting Google Chrome VS Microsoft Edge on my Microsoft Surface Book 2

Just under a year ago I wrote about the my experience using Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (it can be found here). Several months later once I purchased my Microsoft Surface Book 2 I did a very similar comparison between the two browsers (it can be found here). Now I am revisiting my experience using Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on the same Microsoft Surface Book 2. The good news I can tell you is that Google has caught back up to Microsoft in my books.

With my original Microsoft Surface Book 2 (and Microsoft Surface Pro 3) experiences blog posts there were two areas that I was fairly critical of Google’s Chrome browser when comparing it to Microsoft’s Edge browser and why I chose to use Microsoft Edge over Google Chrome. Those were (and I am not the only one to notice these pain points when using Google Chrome):

  1. Negative impact on the device’s battery
  2. Resource usage and management

The current version of Google Chrome that I am using on my Microsoft Surface Book 2 is version 68.0.3440.106 (Official Build) (64-bit). With this build I can say for 100% certainty that Google has made some improvements in regard to battery life (well I notice better battery performance). Using Microsoft Edge I could easily get 8 hours (1 full work day) of battery life no problem (this includes browsing the web, consuming different media, etc). With the version of Google Chrome I am using now (and the ones in between), I can get roughly the same amount of hours, performing the same tasks. I tested this over a couple of weeks and made sure that I was having my device fully charged before use and browsing roughly the same sites and watching similar content. So kudos to Google in fixing this. If you have a mobile device like a laptop then battery life is very important. The difference between using an application that drains the battery faster than another application that does the same tasks could be whether or not you need to bring your charging cable. I can safely say for me, I don’t need to bring my charging cable with me when I am now using Google Chrome.

Google Chrome is known to be a resource hog as well, and I make note of this in my original experience blog post (there are plenty of memes out there that make fun of Google Chrome and how it handles RAM and CPU usage; this one here is one of my favourites). Has it gotten better with the later releases? Yes, sort of. When I see what processes and services are taking up what resources, I can see that Google Chrome is sitting high on this list compared to Microsoft Edge (even now with the build that I am looking at). However comparing it to the last time I was monitoring my resources, Google Chrome is no where near consuming as much RAM (even with the same extensions, websites, etc running) and the load on the CPU is smaller. Microsoft Edge still uses less resources so in the long term you will get slightly more battery life than if you used Google Chrome (but not by much), and you get slightly more heat generated on the device but nothing that makes it difficult or uncomfortable to use on your lap.

Google Chrome now performing very similar to Microsoft Edge in regards to battery life and resource management, there is very little reason to stay on Microsoft Edge. Google Chrome is leaps and bounds ahead of Microsoft in regard to:

  1. Extensions – so, much more options. You just get a large number of options. The popular ones are appearing on Microsoft Edge but even the ones that are there, the Google Chrome ones are updated more frequently and seem to be treated like first class citizens compared to the Microsoft Edge counterparts. The situation here is just like any app on the Windows Store in general.
  2. Rendering web pages – Google Chrome has no issue rendering if not all but most web pages (probably 99.99% of them) whereas Microsoft Edge I find sometimes does not correctly render web pages correctly and I either have to refresh or switch browsers for it to load. I am not the only one to experience this with Microsoft Edge, I have found some friends say the same thing to me when using Microsft Edge.

So in the end, Google Chrome is being used as my primary web browser on my Microsoft Surface Book 2 again, until something breaks the Google Chrome build that returns it to the battery draining and RAM usage hog of the old days. I’m sorry Microsoft, but Microsoft Edge is just not worth using anymore even with all the improvements and changes made (which I really like too). There is nothing wrong with changing what products you use, what products you like, etc. as they are always changing and your situations also change. I constantly switch what Android apps I use and on my Windows PC this is no different. I will continue to use products that help me be more productive, and for longer periods. In this case Google Chrome is that browser. Let me know what you think. Have you seen improvements in the same areas with the later Google Chrome builds? Let me know in the comments.

Google Chrome VS Microsoft Edge On My Surface Book 2

Now that I have moved on from my Surface Pro 3 and have been using the new Surface Book 2 since it was released on a daily basis, I thought it would be a good time to do another comparison between the two browsers. If you want to check out my previous comparison of the two browsers on my Surface Pro 3, it can be found here. This time around I put Google Chrome up against Microsoft Edge on my Surface Book 2, and the results surprised me a little. If you want to read about my Surface Book 2 experience then click here.

Normally it is standard practice to install another web browser as soon as you install a version of Windows. Nearly everyone I know uses either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox (no kidding, I maybe know a handful of people who use Microsoft Edge and they all live in my house). No one even bothers to give Microsoft Edge a go and see if it does the job, which is a real shame. Whatever Microsoft has done with the Fall Creators Update and subsequent updates to the Microsoft Edge browser has made it extremely more stable, responsive and well, usable.

Here is just a short list of gripes I had with the Microsoft Edge browser that resulted me in having to install Google Chrome when I was using my Surface Pro 3:

  1. Lack of first, and third party extension support.
  2. Web pages failing to load and render.
  3. Tabs would become unresponsive too often.
  4. Constant crashes after not being able to recover web pages and tabs.

Now as you can see some of these issues are problems that make the browser not usable in one’s day to day browsing, I mean who would really want to properly render and load a web page without it crashing?

Once I setup my Surface Book 2 I did not install Google Chrome, I wanted to give Microsoft Edge a fair go. On paper Microsoft Edge has all the features a user would want and more. Since using Microsoft Edge I have noticed little to no issue with web pages failing to load and render, tabs are very rarely becoming unresponsive if ever and when they do become unresponsive they recover quickly and do not cause the browser to lock up and crash. Come to think of it I have not had Microsoft Edge crash on me once during my time using it on my Surface Book 2, and I have not had to force close it either.

Microsoft Edge has had no negative effects such as causing my Surface Book 2 to generate a large amount of heat or spin up a fan (my Surface Book 2 does not have a fan because I have the 13.5” i5 version), and the battery life has been extremely good. The only thing I wished was better with Microsoft Edge was the support for extensions, and from the extensions that are available most are buggy or do not function as well as their Google Chrome counterpart. With all this positivity I still wanted to see how Google Chrome performs on my Surface Book 2. After installing Chrome and using it for a couple of days, it showed me how far Microsoft has gone in catching up and passing Google when it comes to web browser optimization.

Google Chrome is known to be a resource hog and to Google’s credit it has been improving the resource management of the web browser with each subsequent release. Google Chrome chews up a large amount of your available RAM, unlike Microsoft Edge. But chewing up your available RAM is not the major problem here; I mean really using up available resources is not an issue (it is there to be used for a reason). The absolute worst part about Google Chrome on the Surface Book 2 is the drain on the battery. With Microsoft Edge I can get solid day’s worth of use on my Surface Book 2; Google Chrome on the other hand cannot give the same amount of battery life doing the same browsing. A solid day to me is 8 hours and using Microsoft Edge with other tools running easily passes this. Google Chrome and the same tools running can only last me around 6 hours. To some people 2 hours is not much, but that 2 hours can determine whether you leave your charger at home or now.

The issue where watching YouTube on Google Chrome would spin up my CPU fan of my Surface Pro 3 did not happen on my Surface Book 2. The primary reason for this is because my Surface Book 2 does not have a fan. What did happen though was that my device was a little warmer when watching YouTube on Google Chrome than on Microsoft Edge, it was not too hot to use on my lap but there was a noticeable difference.

Overall I think I’ll be sticking with Microsoft Edge completely now on my devices (on my Android device I have switch to Microsoft Edge and will most likely change my default browser back to Microsoft Edge from Google Chrome on my gaming PC), especially on my Surface Book 2. With the fixes that Microsoft have done to the Edge browser, if you have not given it a chance then try it out; it will surprise you I think at how well it performs compared to Google Chrome, and if you have a device you take on the go with you then it will probably drain less of your battery.

Well done Microsoft in really taking the time in optimizing your default browser, now if people only could shake the bad taste of Internet Explorer out of their mouths, they may give Edge a go.

Surface Book 2 Impressions Part 3 of 3

If you haven’t already please check out my two previous posts about my impressions and experience with the Surface Book 2. The first post can be found here, and the second post can be found here. Enjoy 🙂

This is my third and final part of my Surface Book 2 impressions. The first post was an introduction to how and why I chose the Surface Book 2 as my primary laptop device over everything else on the market. The second post was about how I felt about the design and aesthetics. Now it comes down to one of the most important aspects when choosing a new device, what is the performance like and does it live up to expectations.

I have been using my Surface Book 2 while at home whenever I can. It has essentially become my daily driver when it comes to a PC; I have been avoiding using my gaming PC for most things like programming and word processing to ensure that I test the Surface Book 2 completely.

Display Detached

I have only detached the display a couple of times and it has been an okay experience. The detach process is fairly quick and there are no issues attaching the display back to the base. What I found was that using the display by itself (like a clipboard or a tablet) I would get 4 hours worth of battery easy (which I think is acceptable for its size and what you can really do without a keyboard). I didn’t really do too much with just the display; I watched videos and did some note taking with the Surface Pen and OneNote. In my day to day use I will most likely be keeping the Surface Book 2 as it came out of the box and like a traditional laptop.

Windows Hello 😉

The Surface Book 2 is equipped with Windows Hello, and is also the first Windows device I have ever had with this feature. Logging in to your Surface Book 2 is super easy and quick with Windows Hello and I highly recommend it; just look at your camera on the log in screen and it logs you in if it authenticates you. The entire Windows Hello experience is less than 3 seconds.

One thing I noticed was that when I first launched and configured my Surface Book 2 with Windows Hello, I had a beard so Windows Hello was recognising my face with a beard fine. Recently I shaved my beard off and it didn’t recognise me so I had to improve the recognition, not a major issue but something to consider if you change your facial hair frequently. To its credit though it recognised me with and without glasses with no issue.

Top Shelf Battery Life

The 13.5” i5 Surface Book 2 has an absolutely amazing battery. It has lasted me easily 10 hours before going to around 15% (shown by the battery indicator), and it could go for a little longer. The maximum amount of batter life I have gotten from the Surface Book 2 is around 11 hours (but closer to 12 hours really). Is it the 17 hours that Microsoft claims? Well no, but in saying that I have not been using the top of the line model and have not been watching videos only while offline with the display on a low brightness settings. The 10 hours that I have experienced is an average over several battery charge cycles with the lowest being 8 hours (closer to 9 but rounding down, this was when I was doing some taxing tasks) and the highest being 11 hours (close to 12 but I rounded down and this was with normal tasks).

Surface Book 2 Battery IndicatorA nice feature is the battery display which shows two batteries. From what I can tell “Battery 0” is the battery in the display and “Battery 1” is the battery in the base of the Surface Book 2. Microsoft didn’t need to do this and could have easily only shown a single battery level. What this allows you to do is before you detach the display from the base you can easily check to see if you will have enough battery to use the Surface Book 2 as a tablet. Kudos for Microsoft for adding this feature for the Surface Book 2 through Windows 10. The complete harmony of the hardware and software is present here, very Apple like.

Initially I used the Surface Book 2 fairly lightly and did not do any programming or perform any heavy duty tasks; I mainly did some web browsing, video consumption and document editing. I let the battery completely drain (well around 5%) and then let it completely charge. Once I knew that the battery was charged all the way back up to 100% I started to push the Surface Book 2. To get a good average I did this battery drain cycle and charge a number of times.

Even when taxing the Surface Book 2 with Visual Studio and the Windows Mobile emulator plus a number of other apps running in the background the battery still impressed me. My Surface Pro 3 could get close to maybe 6 hours battery if I was lucky, here with the heavy duty use I was getting close to 9 hours. Can this device be your “leave your charger at home” type of laptop? It sure can, no problem. Personally I would have no issue leaving my Surface Book 2 charger at home and it would last me the entire normal work day. Rating the battery life for the time that I have been using the Surface Book 2 I would give it a 10/10.

Cool to Touch

One thing that is really good about the Surface Pro devices is that all the components are in the display, the keyboard that is attached is essentially just the keyboard and cover. Your lap then would never get hot if you were using the device on the go and not on a surface. This is a major problem with most traditional laptops in the market, but it is not a problem with the Surface Book 2.

I found that compared to other traditional laptops the Surface Book 2 runs extremely cool, I barely even noticed any heat on my lap while doing taxing tasks. I have used some laptops that are incredibly hot after a short period of time making them near impossible to place on your lap. Where you palms rest while you type and where your thighs are positioned under the base of the Surface Book 2 there is no heat generated at all. The only place where there is any heat felt at all is at the center back of the base, and that really isn’t too hot or uncomfortable at all. The heat distribution and management is fantastic.

San Fan (No Fan)

The Surface Book 2 that I have has no fan (i5 version). So unlike the insanely loud fan that would spin up on my Surface Pro 3 whenever I was doing anything taxing (or watching videos in Google Chrome for that matter), there is no noise being generated from my Surface Book 2. This is a welcome change and something that once you realise how quiet your device can be, you may miss it when you go to another device that has a loud fan. If you have an i7 version of the Surface Book 2, you unfortunately do have a fan and I imagine that when you do something that really pushes the device you will end up hearing the fan fairly easily.

No Lag or Compromise

With the combination of some pretty decent hardware and Windows 10, the Surface Book 2 has never lagged or slowed down on me, even when I was on less than 15% battery while doing programming tasks. I imagine that Microsoft has done some optimisations to the OS so that it runs well on the Surface Book 2 (like the battery indicator for example).

Other laptops and even to a lesser extent my Surface Pro 3 when the battery was getting close to being completely depleted the mouse would start to slightly lag and then some apps would take a little longer to respond. To date I have not experienced this with the Surface Book 2. Visual Studio is known to at times freeze/lag and then pick up again (even on my beefy gaming PC), but I have not had any issues with Visual Studio on my Surface Book 2, even when running the Windows Mobile emulator on around 20% battery.

My Final Thoughts

Microsoft has crafted and extremely durable, elegant and pleasant to use device in the Surface Book 2. From the premium unboxing experience to the outstanding battery life and no compromise performance even under heavy use, the Surface Book 2 can pretty much do whatever you need. For me, the Surface Book 2 met all the criteria for me to purchase and use as my primary laptop device, and it has exceeded my expectations from the unboxing to using it.

There really isn’t too much that I can fault the Surface Book 2 on. The keyboard is one of the best keyboards that I have ever used. The trackpad is the best trackpad that I have used. The display is one of the sharpest and crystal clear displays I have seen on a laptop and that is even after using the Surface Pro 3. The battery life has amazed me and can easily go a single work day with one charge and there is still battery life to spare. Windows 10 and every application that I have used on the Surface Book 2 has not lagged, frozen or crashed on me. If I had to fault the Surface Book 2 at all I would say that having the 3.5mm headphone port at the top right of the display when docked is a little annoying.

I would recommend the Surface Book 2 with no hesitation.

Surface Book 2 Impressions Part 2 of 3

If you haven’t already please check out the first part of my Surface Book 2 impressions here. It outlines how I chose the Surface Book 2 and what I was after in a laptop.

This post is going to be about the look and feel of the new Surface Book 2 13.5” version. I will be doing a performance and usability break down in the coming week as I want to have as much time putting the Surface Book 2 through its paces first.

The Surface Book 2 unboxing experience (actually any Surface product I would say) is very close to how I would imagine an Apple MacBook unboxing would be. I’ve never had an Apple product so I wouldn’t know exactly, but from what I hear Apple tries to make the unboxing experience as premium as their device. The box is extremely durable, minimalistic and has each component placed ever so thoughtfully to make the experience as pleasant to the consumer as possible. From the get go Microsoft has made the experience feel premium, kudos.

Once you take the Surface Book 2 out of the box you immediately feel you are holding a premium product. I will probably end up using the word “premium” or the phrase “top of its class” a number of times in this post because that is probably the best word and phrase to describe the Surface Book 2. The Surface Book 2 is not too heavy and not too large, so carrying it and using it on the go or on your lap is not going to be an issue. Note that I am using the 13.5” version and not the 15” one, so perhaps the 15” might be a little different; the 13.5” is the perfect size and weight for me your experience may vary.

Covering the ports and buttons quickly, the Surface Book 2 has on the left of the base two USB A ports and an SD card slot. On the right side of the base it has a USB C port and a proprietary charging port. Something most phones in 2017 don’t have is a 3.5mm headphone port; however the Surface Book 2 has a 3.5mm headphone port. It can be found on the top right of the display/lid which is great when you are using the device as a tablet but not so great when you are using it as a traditional laptop. The top left of the display also has the power button and the volume buttons which is nice to have, especially if you are going to use the device as a tablet.

Every part of the device is made from what appears to be a premium metal, it has a matte finish so there are no finger prints and makes the entire device look and feel luxurious. There are really only two colours on the device (not including the chrome inlayed Microsoft logo on the display). The colours are the light gray and black. I don’t think I can find any plastic on the Surface Book 2. Microsoft seems to have gone the route of “if you are going to be spending big bucks on a new device, then you are going to get premium parts” and I commend them on that. I have bought gaming laptops in the past which come close to the price of the new Surface Book 2 and have significantly more plastic in the build. They could have skimped on some parts but they didn’t.

If you look at the device from the side with the display/lid is closed there is a gap (it does not completely close) and that is a result of the hinge that Microsoft uses. I personally have no concern that my device does not completely close and actually am a fan of the hinge design; it is unique and does the job well in giving the consumer a good display tilt. Lifting the display/lid is extremely easy and takes minimal effort. Closing the display/lid is also just as satisfying as when the display/lid touches the base there is a satisfying magnetic click; most likely they added this to highlight to the consumer that you have closed the display/lid and it will not open up by accident. It is the little things like this that make the device feel premium and well thought out. Microsoft didn’t need to add these little touches, but it shows they really care. This is something that Apple does well and many other manufacturers miss.

One of the top two most important features of any laptop is the trackpad. Many manufacturers like HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. generally have extremely poor to barely adequate trackpads. They are sized poorly, or placed in an odd location, or feel cheap. The Surface Book 2 trackpad however is top of its class. It is positioned perfectly on the base, is large enough, and feels smooth which to me allows for extreme pointer precision. Apple makes some of the best trackpads in the business, but Microsoft has caught up and its trackpad on the Surface Book 2 is on bar with the best that Apple offer. Kudos to Microsoft for not skimping out on the trackpad, they could have easily given us something smaller and made from plastic but they have gone again with the premium materials used throughout the device.

Something that a laptop needs to truly be useful is a solid keyboard, especially if you are to be typing on your lap or are not docked anywhere. Along with a premium trackpad there is a premium feeling keyboard. I have used many different keyboards, both on laptops and on desktop PCs. Personally I am a major fan of mechanical keyboards. There is something about that key click and key travel on them that makes typing on it such a pleasant experience. The Surface Book 2 has the keys perfectly spaced and the key travel is also near perfect. I don’t know if it is a mechanical keyboard but it sure performs like one. Every time you hit a key you get a satisfying click, and with the optimal spacing and travel you can easily type with little slow down. The keyboard is backlit which is pretty common now and is a handy feature to have. Out of all the laptops I have used this has one of the best if not the best keyboards. A close second would have to be my old Lenovo ThinkPad which also has that satisfying click and mechanical feel. It also worthwhile to note that the device feels perfectly weighted so there is little to no wobble when you are typing on your lap.

With the keyboard and trackpad covered I should probably move on to the display. You get a beautiful 3000 x 2000 resolution display. Some people are really picky about the colours on their displays, me personally I am not overly too concerned. As long as my blue is blue and my red is red I’m happy. The colours on this display are perfectly acceptable and I would not think many people would have any issues with them. The display also can go extremely dim and also extremely bright, so you have both ends of the spectrum covered. Images, video, everything that is presented on the display is crystal clear and extremely sharp. On a laptop, it has to be one of the best displays I have used. I cannot fault Microsoft here on the display. If there is one thing that I would have liked is a slightly smaller bezel, but I can understand why they had to have a bezel of this size. Coming from the Surface Pro 3 which itself had a large bezel and brilliant display, the Surface Book 2 is miles ahead in display quality.

Overall I feel that Microsoft has crafted a premium and top of its class product. I know there really isn’t much different when you first glance at the Surface Book 2 over the original Surface Book but this device really has been refined. From the precise trackpad to the near pixel perfect display, everything has been thought of. Microsoft have designed and engineered a marvelous device that can act as a laptop and a tablet. Nothing feels cheap or tacky, you are getting a premium product with premium looking and feeling parts.

As noted at the start stay tuned for my final post which will cover the Surface Book 2’s performance, and let me know if there is anything specific you want me to test. I’ll be pushing the device to its limit while I use the development tools I have installed and work on my side projects.

Surface Book 2 Impressions Part 1 of 3

My History with the Surface Line

I have been a big fan of the Microsoft Surface line since it first launched. Hell I even purchased a Surface RT, and to the device’s credit it lasted all the way up until mid 2017 before the battery was no longer any good and trying to load a web page was near impossible. Windows RT might not have been the future but Microsoft had something with the original Surface products and I am happy that they continued to refine and rework them. They could have easily thrown the line out like the did with the Zune, RIP Zune I will miss you.

My primary mobile computing device was a Surface Pro 3 and one of the main reasons why I purchased that product was that it was a laptop and tablet in one with decent performance and a good battery. Plus the Surface Pen and OneNote made taking notes in my Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics classes while doing my post graduate Computer Science degree far easier. I also credit that device to my higher average marks overall. With the combination of better note taking and easier material management I recommend that any student who wishes to take notes in class and have everything digital then a Surface product with OneNote and the Surface Pen is the way to go.

While my Surface Pro 3 had done the job while I was studying, some of my side projects were not running as well on that device compared to my gaming PC. Over time the more I started looking at AI and emulation programming the more I realised that purchasing a device with only 128GB of total hard drive space and 4GB worth of RAM might have been a mistake. I should have saved up a little more cash and purchased the 8GB and 256GB model, but we all make mistakes and we all learn from them (I know I have).

With the announcement of the new Surface Pro 2017 edition, and the new Surface Laptop I knew that I had options. Before pulling the trigger I waited a little longer to see if Microsoft will be doing a refresh of the Surface Book line. There was the Surface Book with the Performance Base, but I didn’t want a first generation Surface Book and the discrete GPU did not interest me. Thankfully my patience paid off as Microsoft announced the new Surface Book 2. I started to read and follow any news about the new Surface Book 2, making note of the little details that were mentioned in the videos and blog posts I read. One week before the release date I decided to pre-order the device from the Microsoft Store. It had everything that I needed.

My Laptop Needs

I used my Surface Pro 3 originally as my primary mobile study device while at university, but I also used it as a development laptop while and after I graduated. I used Android Studio, Visual Studio and IntelliJ on it. So any new device needs to be a workhorse, but it also needs to be built like a tank with all the ports that I need. I really appreciate the details that Microsoft put into their Surface line so I decided to stick with them as the build quality of my Surface Pro 3 was top notch.

I have used other manufacturers laptops in the past and they have been hit and miss. I had a Lenovo but the device is very “plasticy” and the trackpad is horrible, but the keyboard is amazing; I had a HP which has a more solid feel than the Lenovo but the keyboard is one of the worst I have used (poor spacing and key travel). I also had an ASUS gaming laptop which has all the necessary power I need but is not very portable.

The Surface Book 2 appeared to check all my boxes (according to the initial impressions from the media and the individuals who had used the device at preview events). It has:

  • A fundamentally solid build, no obvious plastic here.
  • A keyboard that is spaced well and the keys have a near perfect travel, plus there is backlighting to the keys (I sometimes code deep into the night so this is now a necessary feature).
  • A trackpad that is Apple like.
  • More than one USB port (this is something that I needed, as having a single USB port on my Surface Pro 3 was quite annoying and even the new Surface Pro 2017 edition and Surface Laptop only have one USB port).
  • The ability to function as a tablet and has touch/pen support (I still use OneNote to draw up wireframes for apps and take notes, plus at time I just want to watch Netflix in bed).
  • Enough horsepower to run Visual Studio and any emulation software I need when developing my apps and working on side projects.
  • A battery that can last a near full day’s worth of work (so around 6 hours worth of development and Internet browsing at a minimum).

How Big and How Much Horsepower?

I have used laptops from both ends of the spectrum with regard to size and performance. What I have found is that the optimal size for me is a device that does not have a screen much larger than 13”. Any larger and the device becomes too large to lug around and is too heavy. So right out of the gate the Surface Book 2 that I was getting was the 13.5” and not the 15”.

Do I need a laptop with a discrete graphics card? No. I don’t play any video games on laptops, all my gaming is done on my Xbox One X or my gaming PC which has a GTX 980. Maybe a GPU would be useful in regard to AI programming but I doubt a single card would matter too much. The new Surface Book that I would end up purchasing would not have a discrete GPU.

Something unfortunate is that all the i7 laptops have a discrete GPU. This means that the Surface Book 2 that I would be purchasing would have an older generation i5. I had spoken about this with the other software engineers at work and they all felt that having an i7 option with no discrete GPU would have been great. I most likely would have purchased that build. Maybe in the future Microsoft will offer an i7 with no discrete GPU, but I highly doubt it. One nice feature with the i5 version is that it is completely san fan 🙂 Not a major loss here, but having a new generation CPU which has better performance would have been nice.

With the i5 version I don’t really get much choice in regard to RAM and HDD size (in Australia anyway, not sure about the rest of the world). It comes with 256GB worth of storage space, which is going to be a big relief after living with only 128GB worth of space on my Surface Pro 3. Having 8GB worth of RAM is also going to be a nice bump from the 4GB that I had with my Surface Pro 3 (2x worth the bump I might add).

I plan on releasing two more blog posts, one about the build quality of the Surface Book 2 and one about the performance. The build quality post will be released very shortly, but the performance post will take a little longer. I want to spend some more time running the Surface Book 2 through it’s paces while I am doing some development work. So stay tuned in the coming days for part two and in the coming weeks for my final (part three) Surface Book 2 impressions.

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