
Microsoft Surface Book 2 15-inch Review - bhauer
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12167/the-microsoft-surface-book-2-15-inch-review
======
pizza234
Very interesting bit about power draw:

> The 100-Watt AC adapter included with the Surface Book 2 is not quite
> powerful enough to keep the system fully charged under a high load such as
> this, so you can see there is some power draw from the battery (the green
> line in the chart) which is leveraged to make up the difference. Over time,
> the battery drops to about 95% charge, at which time the system drops the
> GPU clock a bit to prevent draining the battery any further. Not all games
> are going to run into this issue, but certain games will require more power
> from the GPU and CPU than the power input can handle. However, the battery
> will never completely be drained, as the system doesn’t let it get out of
> control.

Dishonest designs like this should be punished by consumers, in particular,
considering that the Surface Book tablet battery is already a critical part of
the laptop (it's comparatively small, and it's hard to replace).

~~~
barrkel
Many, if not most, desktop-replacement laptops with 4+ cores are thermally
limited on compute, and will throttle back under extended high load. I see it
as a compromise of the form factor rather than dishonesty per se.

~~~
nneonneo
This isn't a case of thermal limiting - this is a case of the power supply
being literally unable to supply enough power to run the system at its full
capacity. If I can't use that 1060 at full power for more than 5% of the
battery capacity, _even while plugged into the wall_ , isn't that misleading?

~~~
barrkel
The limiting factor might be different but the effect is the same. A rose by
any other name would leave you just as disappointed.

(I'm not certain that the limiting factor is actually different, FWIW.
Dissipating 100W from a laptop isn't easy. Macbook Pros limit at 80W AFAIK. If
the power supply could keep up, I'd expect it to get too hot anyway.)

~~~
brudgers
Dissipating lots of heat from a laptop isn't that hard, it's just that the
tradeoffs take the form of gaming laptops because the laws of thermodynamics
are not shaped by consumer preferences.

------
delhanty
Each time anything Microsoft Surface I link #nailer's comment from 7 months
ago [0]:

>One import thing with all Surface laptops that most people don't know:

>> Support is limited to the country you purchased the device in.

>Eg:

>\- If you buy an Apple laptop, and need a repair, they'll fix it if it's in
warranty, regardless of where you are.

>\- If you buy a Microsoft laptop, and need a warranty repair done in a
different country, Microsoft won't help you.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400873)

~~~
rusk
_If you buy an Apple laptop, and need a repair, they 'll fix it if it's in
warranty, regardless of where you are._

In my own experience this isn’t the case, unless you mean AppleCare.

Anecdote: bought mbp in Shanghai Apple store and was informed that it was only
covered in China unless I bought applecare, so I bought AppleCare.

Similar experience picking up some gear in Hong Kong one time ...

Not that my mbp ever gave me an ounce of trouble tho!

~~~
ArmandGrillet
China might be an exception: I bought an iPhone in SF 1 year ago and had it
repaired in a German Apple Store after calling the French customer support 1
month ago.

~~~
rusk
Maybe this is one of those things where they’ll do it for you but don’t make a
contractual commitment to it ...

Maybe a way to boost AppleCare sales too :-J

~~~
samastur
They did it for me (Slovenia, UK) and I've never bought AppleCare in my life.
In my case they even once made an exception to cover my defect when I was two
weeks late after deadline to report it.

Edit: I think I misunderstood your comment. Yes, good service like this would
make me more likely to buy AppleCare to extend it (even though I haven't yet).

------
johnyzee
I have a Surface Book from last year (performance base, i.e. dedicated GTX970
GPU). It is a wonderful machine from design to the incredible amount of
hardware they manage to pack into it.

A big issue everyone should be aware of though is that it is limited in its
ability to drive external displays. I bought it (and use it) as a desktop
replacement, but I was quite disappointed to find that to drive even two
external displays at 4K it is necessary to drop the refresh rate to 30hz on
both. It would be interesting to know if this has been resolved with the new
iteration.

I ended up buying two DisplayLink devices, and am now running three external
displays at 4K (and 60hz), with only the main monitor being run by the Surface
Book GPU.

I am overall really happy with the machine, as a portable development machine
it is a monster that looks and feels fantastic.

------
jimmcslim
Can’t help they missed a trick by not including Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports on
this (plus a few regular USB 3 ports). Seems like a strange omission, and
would have smashed the MBP... as long as you can get past not having MacOS.

~~~
nkkollaw
I used to own the really annoying MacBook Pro mid-2016, and after 11 months
I've still had to find something to connect via USB-C.

Do a lot of people use it?

~~~
EwanToo
In this case, the USB-C port is where you connect an external display

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/CHOETECH-Thunderbolt-Compatible-
Mac...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/CHOETECH-Thunderbolt-Compatible-MacBook-
ChromeBook/dp/B01M02FLYO)

edit - random USB-C to HDMI cable :)

~~~
lmm
Sure, but mini-displayport can do that just as well. The promise of USB-C is
the ability to have a generic docking station, but I've not seen a lot of
Macbooks using docking stations, and the Surface Dock is really nice.

------
gaius
Microsoft's Surface kit is the stuff Apple should be making. The Surface
Studio is a better iMac than the iMac.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-
stud...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-
studio/overview)

~~~
StreamBright
Implying that the operating system does not mean anything to users, that is
obviously false.

~~~
jodrellblank
Implying that Windows 10 is worse, that is obviously false.

~~~
StreamBright
Actually it is if you like non interrupted UX on a OS.

------
flyinglizard
As a Surface Pro 4 owner, the design is great but the drivers are awful and
the entire thing feels hacked together software wise. I need more convincing.
A colleague with a Surface Book suffers the same fate. Sadly I won't be buying
Apple either, as two new touchbar Mac Pros I've had have reliability issues
(sticking key on one, crashes from the Thunderbolt driver on another).

Can't beat the previous gen Macbook Pros for reliability, user experience and
ruggedness.

~~~
struppi
Hmm. I own a Surface Pro 4 too, and I have a completely different experience.
I love it and use it very often. It already _almost_ replaced my "big" Lenovo
laptop as my working machine.

Doing everything on the Surface Pro that I also do on the bigger laptop -
Programming, writing, image editing, ...

------
neals
Let's hope the screen holds up better than it's little brothers
[http://flickergate.com/](http://flickergate.com/)

------
moron4hire
I wish I could find a laptop with:

\- a none-nerfed NVidia GTX 1080 GPU

\- more than two hours of battery at full load

\- not a complete piece of garbage otherwise

I could deal with absolutely everything else on my own. Weight won't be a
problem, as I'll be putting the thing in a backpack. The actual screen won't
be a problem, I'll be plugging in a VR headset. Keyboard and trackpad aren't
an issue, I'll be using VR controllers. I just want a max-spec VR rig that I
can wear on my back for more than 2 hours. And if I'm not in VR, everything
comes with USB-C now, so I should be able to setup a dock to my 4K monitor and
good keyboard and mouse.

Hell, forget the battery. I'll hack together a DC powerbank on my own; it's
not that hard. I just want full power and not-garbage WiFi and audio drivers.

But I've yet to find this computer. I've found a bunch of VR-ready laptops
that creak under their own weight if you lift them by the corner, or they
throttle the GPU even when plugged in, or they can't stay connected to a WiFi
network for more than 4 hours, or they pick up EMF over the speakers from all
over everywhere. I'm sorry, but if I'm going to be spending more than $3000 on
a computer, I expect it to work and not break itself.

~~~
bryanlarsen
How are you planning on wearing this on your back? You need to exhast more
than 200W of heat, you can't just put that into a backpack!

The battery required would be larger than the FAA will allow on an airplane;
the limit is approximately 100 watt-hours and not surprisingly the largest
battery I've ever seen in a laptop is 99 watt-hours.

~~~
moron4hire
Backpacks are easy to customize with sharp knives and duct tape, and you're
assuming one battery.

------
chx
Below 2kg 15" laptop with a 1060 6GB? Hot damn impressive.

~~~
dagw
If only it had come with a 32GB of RAM option then this would be my dream
laptop.

~~~
josteink
My laptop runs fine for development and all I need on 8GB. 16GB would be a
waste.

What are you guys doing making you need 32?

~~~
dagw
I do a lot of 'small data' analysis. Being able to simply load my datasets
into R or Python and start playing around with them is very important. Even if
my initial data set is only ~4-5 GB in memory I can quickly end up with 4 or 5
different copies in memory when testing different approaches. Obviously I can
work around memory limitation by using on-disk data structures, avoiding
copying data and being careful with only keeping the most important data in
memory, but the less I have to think about that sort of stuff the faster and
easier it is to work.

------
Brometheus
It has only 16GB of RAM like the MacBook Pro!!!

~~~
kristofferR
Microsoft and Apple don't want to use power hungry regular DDR4 RAM, they use
low power DDR RAM. LPDDR4, which supports 32GB, has been repeatedly delayed by
Intel. We probably won't see 32GB "thin and light's" until 2019.

[https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-
ram/](https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/)

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/20/delays-in-intel-
ca...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/20/delays-in-intel-cannon-lake-
processor-rumored-again-may-impact-32gb-macbook-pro-plans)

~~~
Joeri
As I understand it, and I may be wrong, the power usage of DDR4 compared to
LPDDR3 under load is not that much higher, but the standby mode power draw is
a lot higher, so the real reason is standby time and thinness.

Anecdata: I have a 32 gb RAM laptop (thinkpad t460p) and battery life is
excellent while actively but lightly using it, but I charge it every day so I
don’t know what standby time is like. Also, while it is light and compact it
is absolutely not thin.

~~~
kristofferR
Yeah, according to the article I linked to regular DDR4 RAM uses around 30%
more power while in use and totally destroys standby time.

------
masklinn
Still no word on availability outside the US I'm guessing?

The 15" SB looks like a stellar machine, but given MS's non-worldwide support
and the history of variable reliability of the Surface line, it doesn't look
like a good idea to import it when you don't live in the US, the only country
where it's currently available.

~~~
lucaspiller
It's available from the Microsoft Store in Europe, probably will take time
until it's available from third party retailers as it was only released last
month:

UK from £1499 [https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/d/surface-
book2/8MCPZJ...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/store/d/surface-
book2/8MCPZJJCC98C/7B49?icid=PDPBuyBox-Surface-Book2-091117_en-gb)

DE from €1749 [https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/store/d/surface-
book-2/8mcpz...](https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/store/d/surface-
book-2/8mcpzjjcc98c/BXGX)

~~~
masklinn
> It's available from the Microsoft Store in Europe

No. The links you provide are for the 13.5", notice they all specify a 1050
and make no mention of a 15" option unlike the US store[0].

The article and my comment are about the 15" machine, which is literally only
available on the US storefront (not even the Canadian one[1]) with no word
whatsoever that I could find (so far) as to its eventual availability outside
the US.

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-
book-2/8MCPZ...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-
book-2/8MCPZJJCC98C?icid=Cat_Surface-NavLink3-SurfaceBook2-102517-en-us)

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/store/d/surface-
book-2/8MCPZ...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/store/d/surface-
book-2/8MCPZJJCC98C?icid=SurfaceCat_Nav3_SurfaceBook2_101717_en-ca)

PS: comment formatting on HN is a pile of garbage.

------
golergka
Have only skimmed the article, but it reads as something people would write
about a MacBook Pro 5-7 years ago.

Is it time to switch back to Windows?

~~~
sunnyps
No, because Microsoft does things like this:

"For about eight days, some versions of Windows 10 quietly bundled a password
manager that contained a critical vulnerability in its browser plug in, a
researcher said Friday. The flaw was almost identical to one the same
researcher disclosed in the same manager plugin 16 months ago that allowed
websites to steal passwords." [1]

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/12/micro...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/12/microsoft-is-forcing-users-to-install-a-critically-flawed-
password-manager/)

~~~
dsego
As opposed to this?

Anyone can login as "root" with empty password [1]

[1][https://www.wired.com/story/macos-high-sierra-hack-
root/](https://www.wired.com/story/macos-high-sierra-hack-root/)

------
Theodores
I was hoping it was going to not have a keyboard, to be detachable. This is
what I am in the market for, since I carry a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and
use 'Synergy', the ideal is to have a high end i7 machine that is just a big
tablet. I hoped this product would be it, to compliment my main laptop and be
a secondary screen that has its own CPU.

~~~
masklinn
> I was hoping it was going to not have a keyboard, to be detachable.

You were hoping for a device to be an entirely different device with no
connection to its name whatsoever? The Book line is a laptop series with a
low-autonomy detachable display.

What you're looking for is the Surface Pro, or an HP Spectre.

------
k_sze
Still no 4k display. :(

