**The Microsoft Surface Book: A Flagship Computer that Exceeds Expectations**

As I put the Microsoft Surface Book through its paces, I was impressed by its performance and features. The first thing I noticed was the fans kicking on, which is to be expected when heat isn't dissipating as much as it would under normal circumstances. However, this was mitigated by having the monitor slammed on top of the device, leaving only 80% of my Surface Book usage with it plugged in and not worrying about battery life. I did take it home and used it as my only computer when traveling and at home, which is where I really tested the battery claims.

The Microsoft Surface Book's battery life is impressive, but not quite up to the 16 hours that Microsoft claims. In reality, I got a solid almost 12 hours of battery life with brightness set at around 80%. However, if you turn the brightness all the way down to black, you can get closer to their claimed 16 hours. This was my real-world usage while testing, and it's worth noting that if you dock the clipboard and use it on its own, you're only going to get about 2 hours of battery life.

**Intangibles that Make the Surface Book Stand Out**

One of the things I appreciate about the Surface Book is the surface pen. Although I didn't use it as much as I would have liked, it works really well and offers a range of features, including different ways to interact with the device. You can tap once to launch OneNote or Cortana, long press to launch those apps, and even erase the screen like an actual pencil eraser. Additionally, the pen feels like an actual pencil and sticks magnetically to the side when not in use.

Another feature that impressed me is how seamlessly the Surface Book integrates with Windows 10. I found that many of the issues I had with my previous review, such as screenshots and automatically signed documents, have been resolved. You can also drag and drop files like you would on a Mac OS, making it easy to transition from Apple to Windows.

**A Pleasant Transition to Windows**

I was a bit hesitant when I first started using the Surface Book, as I had previously reviewed the previous generation and found some issues with Windows itself. However, once I got past that initial hump, I really enjoyed using Windows 10. The interface is elegant, and Microsoft has clearly done its homework in terms of creating a user-friendly experience.

**The Verdict: Is the Surface Book Worth It?**

One thing to note is that the Surface Book is a very expensive computer, priced at $3,300. While it's definitely worth considering if you want the best of both worlds – portability and power – it may be out of reach for many consumers.

Ultimately, I think the Surface Book is a great option for anyone looking for a flagship computer that showcases what Windows 10 can do. If you're in the market for a new computer and are considering making the switch from Apple to Windows, I highly recommend checking out the Surface Book at your local Best Buy or Microsoft Store.

**Final Thoughts**

Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with the Microsoft Surface Book. Its combination of power, portability, and flexibility make it an ideal choice for many users. While there were some minor issues with Bluetooth, I found that these were isolated to my specific setup and didn't affect my overall experience. If you're looking for a computer that can keep up with your demanding needs, the Surface Book is definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the new Microsoft Surface Book with performance Bas looking almost identical to the last end Surface Book the Magnesium clad 2in1 the Microsoft was touting as the ultimate computer and we really liked the first gen thought it showed a lot of promise but it it's lacking some things both hardware and software that we thought future iterations would improve on well we've got it here in this performance base you've got bigger batteries faster processor you've got an improved video card things that ordinarily make a laptop Zoom faster and I was really excited to test this and I figured what better way to test a computer than to actually use a computer so I took some advice for myself and I test it the way I do with phones I Ed this as my only computer for the better part of a week I unplugged my 5K iMac set this up with a dock and two monitors and got to work using this as I needed to use a computer throughout the days and beyond that took it home with me use it as my home computer as well this is my only Computing that I've been using and I want to share my thoughts with you whether or not I'm going to keep using it and most importantly should you consider buying a Microsoft so any review of the Surface Book I think should start with the design since that's a big chunk of what you're paying for and for this version you're going to be paying a lot this is a $3,300 fully loaded version Microsoft sent us so the big story here is not necessarily the Magnesium body which looks and feels really nice uh it's the hinge and the hinge is different right off the bat you can tell it's not your typical clamshell laptop as you go and open it up it kind of unfurls like a rug and one of the issues we had last gen was that I couldn't quite open it with one finger so let's see if that's been fixed this time around not quite but the opening is still really cool and as it unfurl you're greeted with now the traditional laptop look but with that kind of cool hinge there are some downsides first you've got that gap which allows dust or papers to get in there although with the performance base it is is much smaller because the base is bigger for the batteries and presumably uh for the extra GPU horsepower if you're not familiar with the surface book it detached into two separate pieces you got the clipboard and you've got the performance space and it does in kind of a cool way push the button next to the leite key you get an audible unlock noise which actually just being piped through the speakers and this part comes off completely and this part Microsoft calls a clipboard actually houses almost your entire PC it's got your core i7 your rain and a smaller battery how the performance base way more batteries that people talk about and the dedicated GPU uh generally just using the clipboard I got about 2 hours of battery life and it connects via five pins on the bottom the two on the left and the right are just for connection and the three are for actually transferring data although the middle one you can actually use the charger that comes with the computer to charge it on its own uh but it will not charge itself with the performance base without being plugged in so if you want to charge this this has to be plugged in when you plug things back in though it does recognize it really quickly which is improvement over lash generation and you can plug it in a few different ways you can plug it normally like a laptop or turn it around put it in its Dock and you could use it as a presentation mode it's great for airplanes for watching movies or you can always fold it down and use it as a heavy 3.63 lb tablet the keyboard on the original Surface Book was one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever tested I loved the throw on it unfortunately Microsoft didn't change it if it ain't broke don't fix it it is a really good typing experience and the glass trackpad is still amongst the best glass track pads that I have ever used it feels a little bit different texture wise so you get on something like a MacBook Pro but it works equally well if you want worried about scrolling how smoothly it's going to be with two finger scrolling don't be it also supports multi-touch gestures it's a really weird time for Io or input output everything's clearly moving to the combo Port of USB type-c and Thunderbolt 3 but nothing's really there yet so you look at a new computer and you're like yeah it's good but is it future proof and that's a question to ask yourself with the Surface Book and it's got a pretty generous io on the Le hand side you've got two USB type A ports or just traditional USB a really shallow SD card reader but you do have an SD card reader here on the opposite side you've got mini display port and you've got Microsoft proprietary surface charger or dock port and it's magnetic not unlike mag safe and that's where everything's going to kind of plug in uh from the accessory front but no USBC here and it's kind of hard to knock a computer for not having it while I'm knocking some computers for having too many USBC ports if it's important to you know this doesn't have it but at least right now it's not really a deal breaker for me but it may be in about 12 months performance is What mattered with the Surface Book and again this being the full top-of-the-line spec surface book including the GTX 965m with 2 gigs of ddr5 memory to expect it to be fast performance is also the reason that we ended up returning our first gen service book I couldn't handle the editing load that we were putting on it at a big show like CES so I had Ron PRI to come give it a shot on Premier Pro and happen to report the results were very different to what we saw just about a year ago 4K scrubbing was very smooth rendering was very fast in fact Ron said it was on par with his 5K iMac and faster than his spec to the gills 2015 MacBook Pro so this solved the fundamental problem we had again with last year we could use this as as an editing Powerhouse and it worked well it's not going to replace a desktop any stretch of the imagination but it works extremely well and adobe's kind of tight lipped about what they use most with their sweet of software whether or not it's really heavily GPU based or CPU based or a combination of both whatever it is Microsoft really has optimized the software and the hardware to hum along smoothly with Adobe site if you want to see a full video on how the Surface Book performs with editing let us know we'll have Ron or Andrew make a full video showing you how it performs but if you want to know if you can use this as editing machine in fact making this even more impressive was the smooth performance was even when the computer was docked to two separate monitors and testing this as my everyday computer I didn't have that much time to push it with gaming we plan on doing a follow-up gaming dedicated video but I did try some Starcraft 2 which is my vice when I take a few minute breaks here and it worked really well and obviously it's not the most Graphics intensive game but I easily push it to 50 frames per second at 1080p I probably could have even gone higher and it was buttery smooth another knock we had on the last gen was the SSD was fast on the read but not fast on the right Microsoft has wred the ship here I got little over 1,600 Megs per second on the read and now 1200 Megs per second on the right so it's way faster it probably accounts for a lot of the improvements that I saw while I was editing I mentioned using this as my everyday computer and that means all the emails I was doing and the video editing and browsing and it worked really well it did choke a little bit on Chrome with eight video tabs open where an edge didn't that's certainly more of a chrome issue than a service book issue but if you do work in Chrome and you have a lot of video tabs open bear that in mind the fans here also ran relatively silent when it was open being used as a laptop when it was docked in a clamshell mode you could definitely hear the fans kick on but that's to be expected because heat isn't dissipating as much as it would it's got that monitor just slammed on top of it so about 80% of my Surface Book usage was right here with it plugged in and not really worrying about battery life but I did take it home and used it as my only computer when I was traveling and at home and that's where I really tested the the battery Microsoft is claiming up to 16 hours of battery life and that wasn't quite realistic although I did get a really solid almost 12 hours with brightness set at about 80% now you can turn the brightness almost all the way down to Black which is nice to see and if you do that they know come close to their 16 hours I never did I like a bright screen and that was my real world usage while testing but if you decide to undock the clipboard and use that on its own you're only going to get about 2 hours of battery life just through that it's also a lot of intangibles that come with the Surface Book you get things like the surface pen which admittedly I didn't use that much but it does work really well it's got different things you can do you can tap it once to launch one note long press to launch Cortana and the back feels like an actual pencil eraser and you can use it to erase the screen and when you're not using it sticks magnetically to the side really nice that it does that you don't have to plug it into a power port or anything it just sticks there on its own I was tough on the service book and not tough in what I tested but tough in how I use it cuz it was my only computer for the better part week so I got a chance to really learn windows and some of the knocks I had when I did the last generation review was with Windows itself the mail app for example I couldn't find one I liked the built-in one it wasn't playing an address book you couldn't drag and drop files Microsoft has fixed that that's no longer an issue I found third party apps or fixing things I was used to on the Apple side like screenshots and had automatically signed documents to the a preview uh things like sear and now let you had spacebar to open up a document like you can on Mac OS made this a really Pleasant transition position now it did take me about 3 or 4 days to actually get used to the differences uh in Windows but once you get past that hump if you push through it I really found the Elegance in Windows and I've really enjoyed using Windows 10 I think what Microsoft has is a flagship computer to showas what the OS can do but not everything was giant roses and wonderful I did have a few issues primarily with Bluetooth my Bluetooth headphones of choice are the Bose qc35s I think they're the best out there but about 8% of the time I'd get cracked L it disconnect and reconnect nothing I've had any other computer that I've tested but it appears to be isolated to just those headphones might be a Bose issue things like Bluetooth my and printers I had no issues with it all so if you couldn't tell I really liked using the Surface Book I like having the power of a desktop the portability of a laptop the flexibility of a tablet and be able to combine my home and work computer into one so I asked two questions at the beginning one am I going to continue using the Surface Pro and two should you consider buying one I am absolutely going to keep using this as my only computer I've learned the Elegance of Windows it does what I need to do it's flexible when I need it to be and I like the power that comes with it in fact I can see myself very happily using this for the next one to two years now should you buy it's a different story uh it's a very expensive computer this one's jacked up again at 3,300 bucks but if you want the best for Microsoft from a hardware and software standpoint I think look no farther than the Surface Book what do you guys think about the surface book is that the computer for you is price holding you back I know a lot of folks are considering making a switch from Apple to Windows this generation if that's you look at this go to Microsoft Store go to your Best Buy wherever you can get your hands on one and try it I think you're really going to like it now you're going to take a while to get used to the aspect ratio and that kind of stuff once you do think you're going to appreciate what Microsoft has done here give the video a thumbs up you always appreciate it let us know again if you want to see dedicated videos on gaming and video editing until next time John Ranger from techno Buffalothis is the new Microsoft Surface Book with performance Bas looking almost identical to the last end Surface Book the Magnesium clad 2in1 the Microsoft was touting as the ultimate computer and we really liked the first gen thought it showed a lot of promise but it it's lacking some things both hardware and software that we thought future iterations would improve on well we've got it here in this performance base you've got bigger batteries faster processor you've got an improved video card things that ordinarily make a laptop Zoom faster and I was really excited to test this and I figured what better way to test a computer than to actually use a computer so I took some advice for myself and I test it the way I do with phones I Ed this as my only computer for the better part of a week I unplugged my 5K iMac set this up with a dock and two monitors and got to work using this as I needed to use a computer throughout the days and beyond that took it home with me use it as my home computer as well this is my only Computing that I've been using and I want to share my thoughts with you whether or not I'm going to keep using it and most importantly should you consider buying a Microsoft so any review of the Surface Book I think should start with the design since that's a big chunk of what you're paying for and for this version you're going to be paying a lot this is a $3,300 fully loaded version Microsoft sent us so the big story here is not necessarily the Magnesium body which looks and feels really nice uh it's the hinge and the hinge is different right off the bat you can tell it's not your typical clamshell laptop as you go and open it up it kind of unfurls like a rug and one of the issues we had last gen was that I couldn't quite open it with one finger so let's see if that's been fixed this time around not quite but the opening is still really cool and as it unfurl you're greeted with now the traditional laptop look but with that kind of cool hinge there are some downsides first you've got that gap which allows dust or papers to get in there although with the performance base it is is much smaller because the base is bigger for the batteries and presumably uh for the extra GPU horsepower if you're not familiar with the surface book it detached into two separate pieces you got the clipboard and you've got the performance space and it does in kind of a cool way push the button next to the leite key you get an audible unlock noise which actually just being piped through the speakers and this part comes off completely and this part Microsoft calls a clipboard actually houses almost your entire PC it's got your core i7 your rain and a smaller battery how the performance base way more batteries that people talk about and the dedicated GPU uh generally just using the clipboard I got about 2 hours of battery life and it connects via five pins on the bottom the two on the left and the right are just for connection and the three are for actually transferring data although the middle one you can actually use the charger that comes with the computer to charge it on its own uh but it will not charge itself with the performance base without being plugged in so if you want to charge this this has to be plugged in when you plug things back in though it does recognize it really quickly which is improvement over lash generation and you can plug it in a few different ways you can plug it normally like a laptop or turn it around put it in its Dock and you could use it as a presentation mode it's great for airplanes for watching movies or you can always fold it down and use it as a heavy 3.63 lb tablet the keyboard on the original Surface Book was one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever tested I loved the throw on it unfortunately Microsoft didn't change it if it ain't broke don't fix it it is a really good typing experience and the glass trackpad is still amongst the best glass track pads that I have ever used it feels a little bit different texture wise so you get on something like a MacBook Pro but it works equally well if you want worried about scrolling how smoothly it's going to be with two finger scrolling don't be it also supports multi-touch gestures it's a really weird time for Io or input output everything's clearly moving to the combo Port of USB type-c and Thunderbolt 3 but nothing's really there yet so you look at a new computer and you're like yeah it's good but is it future proof and that's a question to ask yourself with the Surface Book and it's got a pretty generous io on the Le hand side you've got two USB type A ports or just traditional USB a really shallow SD card reader but you do have an SD card reader here on the opposite side you've got mini display port and you've got Microsoft proprietary surface charger or dock port and it's magnetic not unlike mag safe and that's where everything's going to kind of plug in uh from the accessory front but no USBC here and it's kind of hard to knock a computer for not having it while I'm knocking some computers for having too many USBC ports if it's important to you know this doesn't have it but at least right now it's not really a deal breaker for me but it may be in about 12 months performance is What mattered with the Surface Book and again this being the full top-of-the-line spec surface book including the GTX 965m with 2 gigs of ddr5 memory to expect it to be fast performance is also the reason that we ended up returning our first gen service book I couldn't handle the editing load that we were putting on it at a big show like CES so I had Ron PRI to come give it a shot on Premier Pro and happen to report the results were very different to what we saw just about a year ago 4K scrubbing was very smooth rendering was very fast in fact Ron said it was on par with his 5K iMac and faster than his spec to the gills 2015 MacBook Pro so this solved the fundamental problem we had again with last year we could use this as as an editing Powerhouse and it worked well it's not going to replace a desktop any stretch of the imagination but it works extremely well and adobe's kind of tight lipped about what they use most with their sweet of software whether or not it's really heavily GPU based or CPU based or a combination of both whatever it is Microsoft really has optimized the software and the hardware to hum along smoothly with Adobe site if you want to see a full video on how the Surface Book performs with editing let us know we'll have Ron or Andrew make a full video showing you how it performs but if you want to know if you can use this as editing machine in fact making this even more impressive was the smooth performance was even when the computer was docked to two separate monitors and testing this as my everyday computer I didn't have that much time to push it with gaming we plan on doing a follow-up gaming dedicated video but I did try some Starcraft 2 which is my vice when I take a few minute breaks here and it worked really well and obviously it's not the most Graphics intensive game but I easily push it to 50 frames per second at 1080p I probably could have even gone higher and it was buttery smooth another knock we had on the last gen was the SSD was fast on the read but not fast on the right Microsoft has wred the ship here I got little over 1,600 Megs per second on the read and now 1200 Megs per second on the right so it's way faster it probably accounts for a lot of the improvements that I saw while I was editing I mentioned using this as my everyday computer and that means all the emails I was doing and the video editing and browsing and it worked really well it did choke a little bit on Chrome with eight video tabs open where an edge didn't that's certainly more of a chrome issue than a service book issue but if you do work in Chrome and you have a lot of video tabs open bear that in mind the fans here also ran relatively silent when it was open being used as a laptop when it was docked in a clamshell mode you could definitely hear the fans kick on but that's to be expected because heat isn't dissipating as much as it would it's got that monitor just slammed on top of it so about 80% of my Surface Book usage was right here with it plugged in and not really worrying about battery life but I did take it home and used it as my only computer when I was traveling and at home and that's where I really tested the the battery Microsoft is claiming up to 16 hours of battery life and that wasn't quite realistic although I did get a really solid almost 12 hours with brightness set at about 80% now you can turn the brightness almost all the way down to Black which is nice to see and if you do that they know come close to their 16 hours I never did I like a bright screen and that was my real world usage while testing but if you decide to undock the clipboard and use that on its own you're only going to get about 2 hours of battery life just through that it's also a lot of intangibles that come with the Surface Book you get things like the surface pen which admittedly I didn't use that much but it does work really well it's got different things you can do you can tap it once to launch one note long press to launch Cortana and the back feels like an actual pencil eraser and you can use it to erase the screen and when you're not using it sticks magnetically to the side really nice that it does that you don't have to plug it into a power port or anything it just sticks there on its own I was tough on the service book and not tough in what I tested but tough in how I use it cuz it was my only computer for the better part week so I got a chance to really learn windows and some of the knocks I had when I did the last generation review was with Windows itself the mail app for example I couldn't find one I liked the built-in one it wasn't playing an address book you couldn't drag and drop files Microsoft has fixed that that's no longer an issue I found third party apps or fixing things I was used to on the Apple side like screenshots and had automatically signed documents to the a preview uh things like sear and now let you had spacebar to open up a document like you can on Mac OS made this a really Pleasant transition position now it did take me about 3 or 4 days to actually get used to the differences uh in Windows but once you get past that hump if you push through it I really found the Elegance in Windows and I've really enjoyed using Windows 10 I think what Microsoft has is a flagship computer to showas what the OS can do but not everything was giant roses and wonderful I did have a few issues primarily with Bluetooth my Bluetooth headphones of choice are the Bose qc35s I think they're the best out there but about 8% of the time I'd get cracked L it disconnect and reconnect nothing I've had any other computer that I've tested but it appears to be isolated to just those headphones might be a Bose issue things like Bluetooth my and printers I had no issues with it all so if you couldn't tell I really liked using the Surface Book I like having the power of a desktop the portability of a laptop the flexibility of a tablet and be able to combine my home and work computer into one so I asked two questions at the beginning one am I going to continue using the Surface Pro and two should you consider buying one I am absolutely going to keep using this as my only computer I've learned the Elegance of Windows it does what I need to do it's flexible when I need it to be and I like the power that comes with it in fact I can see myself very happily using this for the next one to two years now should you buy it's a different story uh it's a very expensive computer this one's jacked up again at 3,300 bucks but if you want the best for Microsoft from a hardware and software standpoint I think look no farther than the Surface Book what do you guys think about the surface book is that the computer for you is price holding you back I know a lot of folks are considering making a switch from Apple to Windows this generation if that's you look at this go to Microsoft Store go to your Best Buy wherever you can get your hands on one and try it I think you're really going to like it now you're going to take a while to get used to the aspect ratio and that kind of stuff once you do think you're going to appreciate what Microsoft has done here give the video a thumbs up you always appreciate it let us know again if you want to see dedicated videos on gaming and video editing until next time John Ranger from techno Buffalo\n"