Gadgetory

for 40 years the desktop PC has been an uninspiring box that sits to your desk Apple's iMac showed that desktop computers could be beautiful too and have been some Windows machines that have gotten close but now Microsoft is trying its own hand a desktop PC and it's the wildly different surface to do this PC sits on a desk looking pretty just like an iMac but the surface studio doesn't just sit still this beautiful 28 inch display transforms into a drawing board with just a push it's all part of the fancy hinge that let's display flow you can draw on it from any position or touch the display to interact with apps just like you do with a tablet in fact it really feels like a giant tablet you can draw and it's exactly what the surface studio is designed for you could combine that natural drawing mode of a new accessory the $99 surface dial it's funky and it looks like a volume knob on an old-school radio but it's a useful tool to use while you're drawing there's something really futuristic about it but it really jumps into outerspace when you stick it on the screen you can tap on the top crank the dial around or tap and hold to access menus and controls in absolute sketch Abul the surface dial creates a radial menu it's used to alter various inking controls it feels oddly natural to use it while you're drawing and I found myself tweaking the brush size and colors a lot the only disappointing part of the dial is the lack of app support there's nearly 20 apps that support it right now but the controls are really limited to just zoom functions in several of them I'd also like to see Microsoft improve the base of the dial so it sticks to the display better even at the near flat angle is slowly creep down and display on a model I was testing aside from the studio's creative assets is a PC at heart the stunning 28 inch display is truly one of the best monitors I've ever used even though it's glossy and slightly reflective it's just 13 millimeters thin and it has a beyond 4k resolution that really makes what you see on the screen fill lifelike there's even a free by 2-bit ratio just like the surface pro and surface book and I love the vertical space to read articles or write documents overall it just feels really good when you tilt on pull the display towards you you can see every detail in photos documents and videos underneath the display is where all the PC components are housed on the model I was testing there's a sixth generation quad or intel core i7 processor 32 gig of ram a 2 terabyte rapid hybrid drive an nvidia gtx 980m graphics card that's actually a lot of old tech for such a futuristic looking PC it means Microsoft has opted for last year's Intel chips last year's in video chips and no full solid-state disk despite this it was still very capable italic coped well with games like Gears of War 4 or Forza horizon free you're not going to be able to play either on the top settings but they're perfectly playable on the studio if you don't care about maxing out all the details having all that power at the Bates means system compromises with the surface studio all the ports are at the rear which means it's hard to access them if you have the studio placed against the wall the PC aspects of this surface studio are exactly what you'd expect from a Windows all-in-one and is very little to fall here the questions I have around it are based on its price and use cases at starting price of $3,000 is up there with Wacom Cintiq but for that extra $200 you're getting a full PC and not just a monitor for creatives that's a tempting offer but you're really buying the surface judo because of its display it's stunning and there's nothing quite like it on the market right now that has the same aspect ratio touch and pen all are being almost pixel perfect and super thin it's an engineering marvel of a monitor but I really wish Mike's was sold it separately because I want to dock my surface book to it and if I'm investing in a desktop PC I really want to be able to upgrade it and use it for gaming a more powerful work I can't do either of those things with the surface studio that doesn't discount what Microsoft has attempted to do here it's truly something unique and a hint of exciting innovation we haven't seen for some years but it has a small target market that will need to weigh up whether this beautiful set of floating pixels is worth the high price probably be cooler if it wasn't getting them tea stains the shot too though Max is sick shoddy look at the camera