The Microsoft Surface Book First Look

Today is the official launch day for not only Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, but also the Surface Book which was announced back at the Microsoft Windows 10 Devices event. There had been rumors of a larger form factor Surface Device, but launching it as a “The Ultimate Laptop” was certainly unexpected. Microsoft has tried to break the mold compared to the standard Windows Ultrabook, with a detachable display, which they call a Clipboard, and an optional GPU in the base. By moving the CPU and other components into the display, it has certainly freed up the base for extra battery capacity as well as the GPU, something that would not be thermally possible in a normal Ultrabook.

I was lucky enough to receive a Surface Book at the event, but the pre-production unit that I received had a defective keyboard. Due to very limited supply initially obtaining a replacement unit was difficult, but Microsoft came through with another sample. Due to the time needed to swap I haven’t had time to do a full review yet, but being that this is the launch day it’s important to offer a preliminary showing on the Surface Book. We have some results for both the base Core i5 model as well as the Core i7 version which comes with the NVIDIA GPU in the base.

First, I think the one piece of information that most of our regular readers are curious about is the GPU. At the launch event, Microsoft was pretty guarded about what GPU model was in the Surface Book. Their specifications just listed it as an “NVIDIA 8G” part, which was a custom Maxwell based GPU.

Taking a look at the GPU in our samples leads us to the conclusion that it is most certainly a GM108 based GPU, with specifications fairly close to the GeForce GT 940M. There are 384 CUDA Cores available, but the custom part is the memory. Normally GT 940M would come with 2 GB of DDR3 memory, and Microsoft has instead gone with 1 GB of GDDR5, trading memory capacity for improved GPU performance through additional memory bandwidth. This is a pretty typical tradeoff in lower-end GPUs, however to ship 1GB of GDDR5 in a mobile part in 2015 is quite unusual to say the least. Even GM108 should benefit from GDDR5 (thanks to its narrow 64-bit memory bus), but with only 1GB of memory it’s going to be cramped.

Moving on, the GPU connects over PCIe lanes provided by the Surface Connect port between the Clipboard and base.

Surface Book GPU

Microsoft does have Optimus enabled, with the default setting in the custom control panel for Auto-Select on the GPU, but you can also change to integrated or the NVIDIA graphics. There is no GeForce Experience installed, so in order to make the change you have to dive into the Control Panel. It’s not very elegant but I think the idea is that you just leave it in auto and let the whitelist handle when the dGPU is enabled. My experience so far is that the whitelist seems a bit bugged right now, and the dGPU runs all the time when the Clipboard is docked, which is clearly not the way it is intended to be.

With the GPU information out of the way, let’s dig into what makes the Surface Book so unique. The basis of the Surface Book is that it is designed to be used as a laptop most of the time, but the display can be removed as a Clipboard for use with the pen. The Surface Book is certainly not the first device to do this, but it does some things in new ways that are pretty interesting.

The display sticks with a 3:2 aspect ratio, the same aspect ratio as the Surface Pro lineup. This makes the Surface Book considerably taller than pretty much every laptop out there, with maybe the exception of the Chromebook Pixel if you want to count that. For what feels like too long, the standard Windows laptop comes with a 16:9 display, and even prior to that the standard was 16:10 which is slightly taller than 16:9. Moving to 3:2 on a notebook brings a lot of vertical space and makes it a lot easier to be productive on, at least in my experience in my short time with a review unit.

The Clipboard itself is pretty nice too, and with the decision to not include any USB ports on the display section, it gave Microsoft the ability to make the tablet portion even thinner than the Surface Pro 4. At just 7.7 mm thick, it is noticeably thinner than the 8.4 mm Surface Pro 4 even though it doesn’t sound like a big difference. At just 726 grams, the Surface Book display is even lighter than the Surface Pro 4, despite the larger 13.5-inch display compared to just a 12-inch display on the Surface Pro 4. The way they got it so light was to not include much battery cacity, with the display only packing 18 Watt-hours. The idea is that the Surface Book is used as a notebook most of the time, but if you find occasions where the tablet would be handy, you detach, so really long battery life is not the priority.

The base though is almost a blank canvas. By putting all of the major components in the display, not only have they made room for a GPU in an Ultrabook form factor, but they also have room for a lot more battery than most notebooks of this size. The additional 52 Wh of capacity in the base is as much battery as most Ultrabooks have. Combined with the 18 Wh in the Clipboard, the Surface Book packs in an impressive 70 Wh of capacity. I’ve run some battery tests already but I need to run a few more before I’ll have a good set of results so this will come with the review.

One thing the Surface Book does pack in is good performance. The Skylake 15 Watt processors are great for day to day tasks, and the GPU only puts it further ahead of most Ultrabooks. I’ll save the full performance figures for the review, but here’s a taste of what the GPU can bring to the table. Valve has recently revamped the Dota 2 game with a new Source 2 engine, and we’ve run a new version on a couple of devices to see how it fares.

The performance increase of the discrete GPU is a sizable jump over the integrated graphics of Skylake, and by moving the GPU into the base away from the processor, Microsoft is able to put the GPU in its own thermal zone. We don’t have exact TDP numbers from NVIDIA, but the GPU should be somewhere under 30 Watts. There is no way to fit that kind of TDP into a normal Ultrabook.

The Core i5 and i7 options offer performance right on par with other Ultrabooks too. Having a full 15 Watt Core processor in a 7.7 mm chassis is fairly impressive, especially since you almost never hear the fans kick in. Here is a taste of the CPU performance.

Obviously one of the signature design elements of the Surface Book is the hinge. I think this might be somewhat a love it or hate it idea. The hinge unrolls and actually lengthens the base of the notebook. Balance is the key here. With the majority of the notebook parts in the display, Microsoft is trying to avoid the one pitfall that most detachable 2-in-1s have, which is their tendency to tip backwards. By extending the base, Microsoft needs less weight in the base to overcome that balance issue. I’ve been told that the design means that they can get by with a 0.8:1 ratio of base mass to display mass. The other benefit of having the strange hinge which does not close completely is that the keys never touch the display. Most notebooks have the keyboard sunken in the deck, which reduces the maximum key travel. The extra room provided by the hinge lets Microsoft offer a 1.6 mm key travel on a very thin base. It also lets the Surface Book actually look like a book when it’s closed, which is a nice take on the design.

The Surface Book is a very interesting take on the Ultrabook by Microsoft. I’ll need some more time with it to get a full review completed, but initial impressions are that it’s a solid device with a great display, a good keyboard, and a generous trackpad. The overall device is not as thin or light as some other Ultrabooks, but generally those don’t pack in 70 Wh of battery and a real GPU. Stay tuned for a full review soon.

The Lenovo Yoga 900 Series Launched: The ‘Thinnest’ Core Laptop and a 27-inch Portable All-In-One

Lenovo’s Yoga line has been consistently at the forefront of attempting to define exactly what a combination clamshell laptop ‘that’s also a sort of tablet’ should be. Over the years we’ve reviewed several models, including the Yoga 2 Pro and the Yoga 3 Pro. The latter was the first Broadwell-Y device, taking a high frequency 4.5-watt Intel processor into a 13.3-inch QHD+ high-end device weighing only 2.6 lbs and with an interesting hinge that seemed to be a feat of mechanical engineering. The new Lenovo Yoga 900 released this week is in many ways the update to the Yoga 3 Pro but with full-fat 15W Skylake laptop processors and is advertised as the world’s thinnest ‘Core i’ laptop with Skylake.

Lenovo Yoga 900

With Intel’s 6^th Generation, as most OEMs will be moving to, Lenovo is hoping to leverage new features such as Speed Shift and video decode to improve both performance and battery life. Over the previous generation of Yoga laptops, the Yoga 900 comes in a little heavier than the Yoga 3 Pro but allows up to 16GB of memory, comes immediately with Windows 10 Home and also sports a USB Type-C 3.0 with video out functionality. Currently all versions listed online come with the i7-6500U, one of the top Skylake Core i7 15W models with GT2 integrated graphics. Lenovo is listing the battery life as nine hours of local video playback, as well as sporting a 50% increase in battery density.

Gallery: Lenovo Yoga 900

Prices start at $1200 for the 8GB/256GB version, rising to $1400 for 16GB/512GB models. There will be versions in Lenovo’s Clementine Orange, but also Platinum Silver and Champagne Gold. From looking at the breakdown online, not all colors will be available in all specifications.

Lenovo Yoga Home 900

Cast your minds back to 2014. It was a fun time, with Haswell and Broadwell processors from Intel being talked about as bringing a revolution to the mobile computing market. I remember some of the product ideas becoming quite amusing at the time, especially when Intel was talking about making all-in-one devices (where the PC built into the monitor and you just add a keyboard/mouse) something that could be carried around.  Clearly something that measures up to 32-inches in this context is going to be heavy and short on battery life, and was perhaps not something to be taken too seriously as a product idea. Fast forward to the end of 2015, and Lenovo is going to sell you one.

Information about the specifications is small right now, but we are told that at 27-inches, the device will come with a 5^th generation processor, Windows 10 and offer up to three hours of battery life. The 5^th generation processor part is interesting, suggesting a Broadwell part – if this is a 47W or 65W processor, it could be an eDRAM equipped processor in that instance. Nevertheless there will probably be a range available, as Lenovo is going to offer the Yoga Home 900 with optional NVIDIA GeForce 940A graphics as well. The software package from Lenovo will include the AURA 3.0 interface which allows for image manipulation and a selection of apps from the Windows Store developed with portable AIOs in mind.

Gallery: Lenovo Yoga Home 900

Prices for the Lenovo Yoga Home 900 will start at $1549 and be available from the end of October.

Source: Lenovo

Dell XPS Lineup Is Reinvigorated With Skylake On The New XPS 12, XPS 13, And XPS 15

Dell really put their stamp on the 2015 Ultrabook lineup this year with the Dell XPS 13 with its amazing Infinity Display. They packed a 13.3-inch display into a notebook that would normally house something closer to 11-inches, and no other manufacturer has come close to it this year. Performance was great, battery life was the new benchmark, and other than a couple of foibles such as a camera that points up at your chin, and some aggressive use of Content Adaptive Backlight Control (CABC) there was very little to complain about on the XPS 13. Today, Dell is refreshing the XPS 13 with Skylake, and trying to bring the same amazing design to the XPS 15 and the new XPS 12 2-in-1.

XPS 13

Let’s start with the XPS 13, which should be familiar to anyone who read my review of it. Dell has tried to take the XPS 13 and push it to the next level, and they are starting with Skyake. Dell will offer Core i3-6100U all the way up to Core i7-6600U. This means the GPU will be the Intel HD 520 model, so no Iris options on the XPS 13 range unfortunately. Memory options start at 4 GB and go up to 16 GB of LPDDR3, and storage gets a bump too. The base 128 GB model is still a SATA based SSD, but the 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB models are all PCIe versions. These are evolutionary updates, but the move to Skylake has also given Dell the opportunity to add Thunderbolt 3 to the XPS 13 through a USB Type-C which also supports 10 Gbps USB, VGA, HDMI, Ethernet, and charging.

Battery life was a pretty big part of the Broadwell based XPS 13, and on the 1080p model we got over 15 hours on our light workload. The move to Skylake looks to move that bar even further out with Dell saying the new model is rated at up to 18 hours.

Yes, it is an evolutionary update, but it is an evolutionary update of one of the best notebooks of 2015 so far.

XPS 15

For those that prefer a larger notebook, the XPS 15 has been around for a while now, but when we saw it refreshed back at CES, it was still in the 2014 chassis. Today Dell has brought the look and feel of the Infinity Display to the XPS 15. They have squeezed a 15.6-inch display into the body of a 14-inch notebook. Let’s talk about that display too. It is an Ultrasharp 4K Ultra HD model, which comes in at 282 pixels per inch and has a 350-nit brightness rating. The 4K model also covers 100% of the Adobe RGB color space which is a wider gamut than the typical sRGB space of most notebooks. It offers PremierColor Software as well to remap the smaller sRGB space into Adobe RGB so that colors are not portrayed incorrectly when viewing sRGB content.

The XPS 15 has been the model where Dell steps up the performance to a quad-core version, and despite the smaller chassis due to the Infinity Display that has not changed. The base model comes with the Intel Core i3-6100H which is a dual-core 35 Watt part, but you can also get the i5-6300HQ and i7-6700HQ which are both quad-core 45 Watt CPUs. Up to 32 GB of DDR4 is available through two SODIMM slots, and the XPS 15 offers a discrete NVIDIA GTX 960M GPU as well. You can get the XPS 15 with a spinning drive if you want (I wouldn’t recommend it) or, like the XPS 13, Dell offers PCIe SSDs up to 1 TB. Dell is offering either a 56 Wh or 84 Wh battery, and the larger battery on the 1080p version of the XPS 15 is rated for up to 17 hours. For those that need faster wireless connectivity, Dell also offers a 3×3 802.11ac wireless card. Like the XPS 13, it also features Thunderbolt 3 through Type-C. One thing you do lose by moving to a 14-inch chassis is the room for a dedicated number pad.

XPS 12

The final XPS model announced today is the XPS 12, which is a 2-in-1 tablet with a docking keyboard. Think of this as Dell’s take on the Surface Pro, but Dell has taken a couple of different paths than Microsoft did on their 2-in-1 tablet. First, the display is a 3840×2160 UHD with a smartphone level 352 pixels per inch and 400 nits of brightness and 100% Adobe RGB. There is also a 1080p model with sRGB coverage which should help with battery life. Dell has gone with the latest Skylake version of Core m to power this tablet, with the m5-6Y54 processor which turbos up to 2.7 GHz. 8 GB of LPDDR3 memory is available, and you can get either 128 GB of 256 GB of SATA SSD storage. Keeping all of this powered is a 30 Wh battery.

We tested the Dell Venue 11 7000, which was similar to this in that it had a docking keyboard, but the keyboard added a lot of weight due to the extra battery inside. Dell has taken a different approach here and the keyboard base only adds just under a pound to the 1.75 lb tablet. The keyboard on the Venue 11 7000 was also not great, and the XPS 12 is offering a full size backlit keyboard with 1.3 mm of key travel, which should be a lot better. The trackpad is a glass precision trackpad.

The device itself is made of a magnesium alloy and covered in soft touch paint, and the display has Corning Gorilla Glass NBT.

Dell seems to have gone all-in on Thunderbolt, with this tablet featuring not one but two Type-C connectors with Thunderbolt 3. The 45 Watt A/C adapter also connects over the Type-C, and it is great to see Dell embracing this to get rid of the myriad of proprietary charging connectors that have plagued PCs for decades.

Dell was already at the forefront this year with their notebook design, so it’s great to see them take that same design and apply it to the XPS 15. The XPS 12 looks to be a decent tablet with a good looking keyboard dock, and that has been one of the biggest issues with convertible tablets with attachable docks so I am excited to see this in person and give it a try. The notebooks will be available on Dell.com starting today, and the tablet will be coming in November.

Source: Dell