That also means, however, there are no entry points for repairs on the Surface Book 2 nor any way to upgrade internal components. There are no creaks or weak points due to the unibody design. Since there is no paint – unlike the Surface Laptop in various colors – there is only concern over light scuffing rather than paint scratches.

The magnesium chassis of the Surface Book 2 15 is stable, smooth, and very durable. Microsoft kept everything the same except for the larger display and matching base. Take the 13-inch Surface Book 2 and enlarge it and you now have Surface Book 2 15.

Microsoft did not deviate from the original Surface Book design with the Surface Book 2. Not messing with a good thing Surface Book 2 15 design Magnetic attachment for Surface Pen (optional) works on either side of the display instead of just the left.įor the CPU and GPU, those changes result in a significantly more powerful computer, which will be demonstrated in benchmarks below.Larger display (15- vs 13.5-inch) with a higher resolution (3240 x 2160 vs.NVIDIA GTX 1060 with 6GB of video memory instead of an NVIDIA GTX 1050 with 2GB.Fan for the CPU in the tablet half of the Surface Book 2 15.Core i7 with a thermal design point (TDP) of 20W compared to just 15W in the 13-inch.Microsoft was able to do this by including active cooling – a CPU fan – in the 15-inch model, which is eschewed in the 13-inch variant.Īt least with the 1TB version Microsoft is using a Samsung PCIe NVMe solid-state drive (SDD), which is an excellent choice for those concerned about performance.Īs summarized, here is how the Surface Book 2 15 with Core i7 differs from the 13-inch variant: That means the 15-inch model should run and maintain higher CPU speeds for longer durations given the same test environment. More interestingly, the Surface Book 2 15 has the same processor as the 13-inch Core i7 model, but it has a higher TDP at 20W instead of 15W. That matters less for running a web browser or Windows Store apps and more for CPU-intensive applications like CAD, video and photo rendering, 3D model makers, or crunching large amounts of data in Excel or engineering applications. Up until now, only more massive laptops with 45W processors were quad-core, but now Ultrabooks with 15W motherboards can get double the cores and threads.

The big deal here with the Core i7 processor is it is the brand-new 8th generation version that goes from a dual-core to quad-core. The jump to an 8th generation Intel Core i7 processor is also a jump from dual-core to quad-core.

Surface book 2 15 inch