Surface Hub 2 Coming in 2019, Looks Amazing (arstechnica.com)

Microsoft gave an early look at its next-generation Surface Hub 2 today. It will go on sale next year, with certain selected customers testing it this year. From a report: Microsoft's Surface Hub, its conference room computer, was something of a surprise hit. The system has been in short supply since its launch about three years ago, especially in its 84-inch version: its combination of video conferencing and whiteboarding makes it a collaborative tool with few direct competitors. The central feature of the new system is that it's a 50.5-inch 4K display with a rotating mount. Instead of the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio, the Surface Hub 2 has the same 3:2 ratio of Microsoft's other Surface systems.

Comments

Terrible headline, great product

[turp182]

We have a Surface Hub 1. We use it everyday. It's nice to be able to switch from whiteboard (which has cool features like auto-tables and auto-shapes) to our intranet/internet, maybe fire up Excel.

The people we collaborate with don't have one, so we are missing out on some of the best features (other regional office).

It's nice that anyone at the Hub can just walk up and interact with others using it.

It's not perfect (horrible external keyboard/touch pad, we could use different hardware I imagine) but we've really enjoyed it. It's the first "collaborative" hardware that I've found effective. People have commented that it's nice to be able to see us as well.

Re:Best product in its category.

[jellomizer]

A conference room system features:
A Video Camera: Which most people want turned off because seeing people talking on the screen isn't helpful, plus you want to mute and turn off video on yourself and your team so they can discuss issues privately. Also the Video gets in the way of a screen shot or a presentation.

Some Sort of Smart Board features: Either a stylus or touch interface. All seems good, until you realize most of the presenters don't know how to use it, save the data or in order to have it seen by everyone in the meeting it is high up so it is difficult to reach.

These things are a wast of money.

Just get a good size TV (Get a 4K if you feel like it, but most of the time you will lower the resolution to 1k or below so people can see the text) Have cords to plug in your VGA, DVI and HDMI to it. So you can plug in your laptop. Finally get a separate good quality Conference room phone. Loud and crisp enough to hear from, and able to pick up with what you are saying clearly.

These things look cool, but rarely ever utilized.