Today, Microsoft unveiled not only a full refresh of the system—both tablet and base are being updated—but a whole new version of the machine. Surface Book 2 (Microsoft is using numerical version number suffixes here, even after abandoning the practice with the Surface Pro) will come in two sizes. There’s a 13-inch model, same as before, but this is now paired with a 15-inch version.
The broad concept of Surface Book remains the same. The screen half of the “laptop” is in fact a tablet computer, containing the processor, memory, mass storage, and a battery; the “keyboard” half is a larger battery, some expansion ports, and, optionally, a discrete GPU. The systems look essentially the same as the old versions, too, with the 15-inch version looking for all intents and purposes like a scaled-up version of the 13-inch one.
Microsoft claims that the LCD displays are thinner than ever before—each new iteration of Surface makes the display assembly slimmer to reduce the distance between a stylus and the image underneath and, hence, improve the experience of writing/drawing on the screen—and the company continues the Surface tradition of having really attractive displays.
