Microsoft Surface Book 2 13.5″ Professional 2-in-1 Laptop with Detachable Keyboard

The Microsoft Surface Book 2 is a professional-oriented 2-in-1 PC with a detachable keyboard. You can use it in laptop, tablet, or presentation modes. This is an overview of the ultra-portable 13.5-inch version of the Surface Book, with a starting weight of 3.4 pounds and a price of $1,499 and up. Microsoft also offers a larger and pricier 15″ version.

The 13.5″ screen of the smaller Surface Book 2 provides sharp picture thanks to available 3,000 x 2,000 resolution. Microsoft still sticks to the original Surface Book design with recognizable “dynamic fulcrum” hinge and 3:2 screen ratio. 3:2 is rather optimized for productivity than watching movies. The panel supports 10-finger touch, as well as active Surface Pen input with pressure sensitivity and work with Microsoft’s Surface Dial accessory. The Pen and Dial are sold separately.

Internally, the silver-colored magnesium-topped 2-in-1 laptop features Intel’s Core series mainstream processors – the dual-core 7th Gen Intel Core i5-7300U and quad-core 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8650U. The latter is noticeably faster when handling demanding tasks. RAM size can be either 8GB or 16GB. For storage, the Surface Book 2 13.5″ uses a solid state drive with 256GB, 512GB or 1-Terabyte capacity. For graphics processing, Surface Book 2 configurations with the i5-7300U CPU rely on its basic Intel HD 620 integrated graphics. For those who want more graphics power for gaming, CAD design, and other purposes, Microsoft has provided an optional Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 2GB discrete video card. The card is available in the i7-8650U-powered configurations and is housed in the keyboard base. So, it can’t be used if the base is detached. The same applies to the device’s secondary battery. Together with the battery located in the tablet portion, it can provide “up to 17 hours” of video playback on a charge, according to Microsoft.

Besides the optional Nvidia GPU and secondary battery, the base of the Surface Book 2 carries a chiclet-style keyboard with backlight and a spacious trackpad. On the sides of the keyboard deck, there are two standard-size USB 3.0 ports, a compact USB-C port with support for video output, an SD media card reader, and Microsoft’s proprietary Surface Connect port for charging.

The screen part also includes a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with Windows Hello face authentication, an 8MP rear cam, stereo speakers, a combo audio jack, 802.11AC wireless, Bluetooth, and another Surface Connect port.