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Two years after introducing the original Surface Laptop Studio as a premium convertible notebook designed for digital content creators, Microsoft is back with a new model featuring the same easel-like display and unusual design, but packing twice the processing power.
The new Surface Laptop Studio 2 is up for pre-order for $2000 and up, and it should be available starting October 3.
Powered by an Intel Core i7-13700H 14-core, 20-thread processor, the new model also features an Intel Gen 3 Movidius 3700VC VPU AI accelerator and optional support for discrete graphics.
That’s right: the entry-level model costs $2000 and only features Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. But customers can pay extra for a discrete NVIDIA mobile GPU, with options including:
- GeForce RTX 4050 (6GB GDDR6, 2.13 GHz boost clock speed, 80W max GPU power)
- GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB GDDR6, 2.01 GHz boost clock speed, 80W max GPU power)
- RTX 2000 Ada (8GB GDDR6)
The Surface Laptop Studio 2’s stand-out feature continues to be the display, which is a 14.4 inch PixelSense Flow display with a resolution of 2400 x 1600 pixels, a 3:2 aspect ratio, 120 Hz refresh rate, and support for 10-point multitouch input and pressure-sensitive input from a Surface Pen.
You can lift the lid to reveal the screen and use the computer like a traditional laptop, pull the screen forward so that it rests over the keyboard like an easel to get closer to the screen for writing or drawing, or pull it all the way forward so it covers the keyboard for use in tablet mode.
The laptop supports 16GB to 64GB of LPDDR5x memory (which is not user-upgradeable) and comes with a 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD (which is user-replaceable).
Ports include two Thunderbolt 4, one USB 3.1 Type-A, a microSDXC card reader, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a Surface Connect port, and the system supports WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity.
It has an anodized aluminum body and a Gorilla Glass 5 screen, and the notebook measures 323 x 230 x 22mm (2.7″ x 9.1″ x 0.9″) and has a starting weight of 1.89 kg (4.18 pounds) with a 58 Wh battery and Intel Iris Xe graphics, although models with NVIDIA graphics are a little heavier at 1.98 kg (4.37 pounds).
Other features include quad speakers, dual microphones, a 1080p front-facing “studio” camera with IR support for Windows Hello face recognition. The dedicated VPU also enables support for Windows Studio Effects in video calls, like automatic framing, eye contact correction, and enhanced background blur.
It’s an interesting and unique machine but from a value perspective Asus x13 or z13 is providing much more. The Microsoft machine is starting at $1999 and that does not give you a discrete GPU whereas for hundreds less Asus will sell you a convertible laptop / tablet with Nvidia RTX 4050 or 4060 included, higher resolution screen supporting VRR, larger hard drive, and a Core i9 CPU.
Ok so apparently the surface studio didn’t launch with VRR but supports it now.
Still the only advantages I see for Microsoft here are that they advertise all day battery life (we’ll see what reviews say on that one) and that they offer a 64GB RAM configuration.
Something like this, or the One Netbook OneMix 5 with a Ryzen APU and plenty of RAM and storage, would be an amazing choice. Hopefully we will see something like this in the near future.