Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book Reviews

An anonymous reader writes: Anandtech posted reviews of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the Microsoft Surface Book today. They write: "After launching Surface Pro 3 with Haswell in 2014, Microsoft — like so many manufacturers — opted to skip the short-lived Broadwell generation of Intel CPUs in favor of making the larger jump to Skylake. Skylake brings with it notable increases in both CPU and GPU performance, particularly in the mobile space thanks to a series of optimizations and the use of Intel's leading 14nm manufacturing node," about the Pro 4 and with regards to the Book, "The basis of the Surface Book is that it is designed to be used as a laptop most of the time, but the display can be removed as a Clipboard for use with the pen. The Surface Book is certainly not the first device to do this, but it does some things in new ways that are pretty interesting."

Comments

Anyone got Ubuntu Touch running on one yet?

[Assmasher]

Looking to do so...

Skylake is awesome

[TomGreenhaw]

We're testing Skylake processors and Z170 chipset motherboards for moderately priced POS systems. The Core i5-6500 based system is 3X the performance across the board of an i7 based system from 2.5 years ago at 1/4th the cost. The relatively low cost, low power (read quiet operation), and performance are amazing. Putting these into a surface pro has got to be really awesome.

Re:yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

from all the reviews the hardware is exceptional, The OS is obviously personal preference, win 10 being probably the best MS based OS so far and unlike what the trolls and shills try to claim it isn't malware, people making those claims only hurt the rest of the Linux community as it makes us look like a bunch of clueless zealots.

Re:Too costly

[ranton]

1. Developers would rather have lots of RAM and disk space, they can have those systems with better CPU for far less than what this thing costs

Very few developers need more than 16 GB RAM or a 1 TB SSD. Also very few need a processor faster than an i5-6300U. I currently develop on an i5-4300U with 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD, and never feel it is insufficient.

The extra cost is trivial for any professional use. If there is even a slight need for a touch screen for things like notes taking or drawing diagrams / UI mock-ups, then a few hundred dollars amortized over 2-3 years of use is virtually nothing. $500 of extra up-front cost comes to $20 per month even if you replace your machine every two years, or approximately 0.2% of the labor cost of a decent developer.

2. Obviously not for gamers, the system does not have powerful GPU

This is mostly true, as you aren't going to play Witcher 3 on either of these machines. But you could play plenty of casual games or even many non-cutting edge games. I assume playing Civ 5, for instance, would be fine on the Surface Book with a discrete video card.

3. Regular users now are moving away from laptop

... to devices like this. I am finally making the move from a laptop & tablet to a 2-1 when my Surface arrives next week. I will still have a desktop at home for gaming purposes, but everything but the video card is from 2011 since there is rarely a need to upgrade anything else now a days.

Re:Wait for the Shills

[Overzeetop]

I suspect it's because it's sort of niche hardware. There are a very small number of active digitizer tablets, and even fewer that can be considered convertable to laptop-like usage. It leads to Apple-like devotion, if not because of the actual benefits but because - for them - there simply isn't anything else out there that's comparable. Pen, regular ULV processors (vs m series or Atom), integratable keyboard, all day(-ish) battery, and under 2 lbs. It's a pretty small product space so I think people tend to get defensive.

I'm surprised they stayed with Marvell for wifi, given the complaints and mediocre speeds (though the ac, tbh, is as fast as my server can push data). The dock has changed (no more kbd interference), the keyboards have been vastly improved if the reviews are to be believed, and W10 works a lot like W7 (that may or may not be an improvement depending on your opinion of W7).