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Is the Surface Book 2 a MacBook Pro Killer?

2017-11-16
hey guys this is Austin this is the MacBook Pro and it is Apple's most expensive laptop now this is actually the computer that we've edited all of our videos for the last year on Hoover starting at $2,400 it does not come cheap that's where Microsoft comes in with their new service book - now full disclosure they actually did send this out for review pover as a laptop starting at $2,500 I'm curious to see how it stacks up so I should do the video on the original surface book a couple years ago and there's a very very weird concept so the idea here is that you're getting a computer that on the surface looks very much similar to something like a macbook but you can actually detach the screen and turn it into a tablet this guy open and the first thing we see is the wall surface book itself what really makes this unique is the hinge so as you can see when you close the laptop it actually doesn't go completely flat and that's because so if you press the button here for a second what you'll be able to do is remove the actual tablet put these two side-by-side and it first means they look pretty similar but there are a ton of differences so first of all while they do have 15 inch display is each the port selection is very different where the MacBook has four Thunderbolt three ports two on either side the surface instead has a single USBC paired with a surface connector for charging and docking but importantly it also has two full-sized USB ports and an SD card reader when it comes to screens it is really hard to argue with either of these laptops but the surface is slightly sharper with a resolution of thirty to forty by 2160 compared to 2880 by 1800 on the MacBook and the service has the added benefit of being a touch screen where the surface book 2 really excels in performance so inside it has a core i7 8650 you a gtx 1060 16 gigs of ram and anywhere between 2 and 56 gigs and 1 terabytes of SSD storage with a gtx 1060 inside this is going to be a very powerful laptop when it comes to video editing and eating gaming so to put things in context a 1060 is usually what you find in fairly high end gaming laptops but one of the advantages of the surface book is that still fairly thin Microsoft has updated the surface book design since the original so the main things is that you can now just open and close it without having to put a hand on it to sort of steady it and the hinge feels good so in tablet mode you do get the full PC experience so the main thing is you're pretty much losing all the ports besides the headphone jack but what's cool is you can just drop it right back on even backwards and you can have yourself a super cruel even weirder than usual looking computer it might be a bit low-key at this point but I really appreciate the addition of a USB C port so yeah it might not be thunderbolt but I've actually moved a lot of my accessories over to USB C at this point and it is really nice to be able to use a single cable to not only connect to a monitor but also to get power into the laptop speaking of power I love the idea that I can use a single power adapter for not only the laptop but also my pixel or even a MacBook I like the keyboard so the keys are on the stiff side but unlike on the MacBook there's actual travel here you know I do think I slightly prefer the way that the butterfly switches work on the MacBook Pro but you're not going to be disappointed with either of these something interesting is that Microsoft's slightly tapers the middle of the keyboard and that comes down on the sides and it's kind of hard to see this on video but we're actually typing what it means is that your fingers are going to be slightly elevated which for me alleviates a lot of wrist strain the trackpad is decent so as you'd expect from a Microsoft device it is a Windows precision touchpad and that means that not only do you get the additional three finger gestures like swiping up to pull up your desktops but it also tracks really accurately as good as it might be though it can't match the MacBook Pro this trackpad is enormous I mean serious it's like the size of my hand now yes you can totally get by with the surface but Apple has the best track pads in the business as you'd expect from a device straight from Microsoft there's basically no bloat in Windows except they're actually kind of is so a lot of laptops this included have a few different pre-installed games such as march of Empires candy crush and while that's fine on a 300 all a laptop I'm paying over $3,000 for a laptop I don't want to have any bloatware at all sure it's easy enough to uninstall it just feels weird that they're trying to make a few extra bucks on something that's this expensive where the surface book 2 really shines is in performance so something by side with the MacBook you can see that for shorter periods and single-threaded tasks it does hold it pretty well from the multi thread side you're going to lose some performance but the real star of the show here is that GPU with the gtx 1060 inside while you should be using this for video editing i'm playing some rocket league now actually we'll say that with this much power you can play a lot more demanding games at rocket League but even at 2560 by 1600 with pretty much all the settings cranked up this looks really nice we're getting in order to feel like 60 and 70 frames per second and because this is Microsoft there's a little bit of Xbox inside the surface as there's an Xbox one wireless radio built-in no it's interesting about having a GTX 1060 and a laptop that's so thin is that besides the battery the base of it is totally dedicated to cooling it so yes it's a little bit loud but no worse than most gaming laptops and it's a lot thinner for 15-inch laptops battery life actually isn't bad so the MacBook should go for around 10 hours where the surface is rated for up to 17 hours now part of that is because it has two batteries one in the screen and one in the base but something to keep in mind with both of these guys is that when you're actually doing heavier lifting such as gaming and especially video editing expect that number to be a lot less the surface has a pair of front firing speakers in the screen and it sounds good but the MacBook sounds phenomenal it has two giant speakers besides the actual keyboard and this is hands-down the best sounding laptop I've ever tried when it comes to price both of these laptops are incredibly expensive so the surface book starts at $2,500 but that's only with a 256 gig SSD bump that up to 512 and you're at $2,900 the MacBook is $100 cheaper but I don't think that's going to change anyone's mind at this price point if you can take advantage of the extra GPU horsepower and especially the ability to use stuff like the surface pen the surface dial for maybe something like graphics work then the surface can make sense however when it comes to the MacBook it's just a solid laptop all around it's thinner it's lighter and while the touch four might seem like a gimmick it really doesn't affect the actual laptop itself and stuff like touch ID is actually really helpful to have the surface does have a wider variety of ports but I've got to say over the last year having four Thunderbolt three ports on the MacBook has come in handy quite a bit the surface book 2 might be the most incredibly engineered laptop you can buy today everything from these hinge which will maybe not perfect is actually a really clever way of doing something like this screaming everything you need for a full 15-inch PC into the thin screen they've done an incredible job however the MacBook kind of wins in its simplicity both of these laptops are available on a smaller 13-inch size and in that comparison the GTX 1050 inside the smaller surface book is a major contender with or pro however when you look at the 15-inch sizes the surface book is a hard sell so what do you guys think about the new surface book - let me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one
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