Surface Book and Surface Pro 4

[khon]

The Surface book uses a Samsung NVMe SSD. The Lenovo is not in the same league when it comes to SSD speed when it comes to the Surface Book.

That's true, but Samsung has a $150 price difference between their 256GB and 512GB NVMe drives, while Microsoft charges $400.

And while the NVMe drives are certainly faster, they also use a lot more power, so they are not necessarily better for a portable device.

 

[TeknoBug]

I wouldn't touch Lenovo these days, never know what that Chinese based company is up to anymore- too bad because I LOVED the IBM laptop line. I'd support Acer, Microsoft and the American based Dell more although Acer makes junk laptops, their Windows tablets are phenomenal.

 

[Oyeve]

Looking and AT review of the SP4 makes me proud of my Dell Venue 11 Pro. It tests well against the SP4.

 

[sm625]

Are there benchmarks of the i7 and m3 versions?

 

[CSMR]

The SB4 is almost the perfect machine in my view, especially once the i7 Iris version comes out. Tablet/laptop/desktop/Wacom with impressive power.

I only wish they made it openable so you can replace the battery/RAM/SSD. I guess that would make it 1mm thicker.

 

[SexyK]

Got shipment notification of my Surface Book i5/dGPU late last night. Should have it in hand by 10:30AM Monday. Excited to see how it stacks up overall versus the SP3.

 

[Face2Face]

Got shipment notification of my Surface Book i5/dGPU late last night. Should have it in hand by 10:30AM Monday. Excited to see how it stacks up overall versus the SP3.

Congrats! Let us know how you like it. Oddly, I should be getting my SP3 by the end of the month

 

[smithkt]

I have an i7 SP4 sitting in the cart. I am holding off until I see a review to see how much faster the iris graphics are.

It's also really silly that they won't let you select the pen color. They all come with the silver pen. You can by a pen separately for $50 in a choice of colors. Given the cost of these things you would think they would offer the option during the purchase.

 

[holden j caufield]

Do any of these have upgradeable ssd or ram?

 

[giantpandaman2]

Do any of these have upgradeable ssd or ram?

Not by the user.

 

[yottabit]

Just tried out the SP4 & Surface Book today

Very impressed by the Surface Pro 4. Personally I would take one over the Book anyday. The new type cover is great. I really like what they did with the pen. I've tried sketching with every Surface and the Surface Pro 4 is by far my favorite. Simple stuff but adding a soft tip makes the writing/sketching much more natural. And an ERASER... kind of a necessity.

For me the Surface Pro 4 would still be a companion device to go along with a workstation class laptop. If you're looking for a full laptop replacement then maybe the Book is better. But I didn't find the keyboard to be an improvement. So unless you really need the extra battery life or discrete graphics I don't see what you'd be paying for.

What I would like to see (that I haven't seen yet- maybe I missed it skimming the Anandtech review) is the i5 vs i7 graphics performance, since the i7 has the Iris GPU

 

[giantpandaman2]

Got my Surface Book yesterday. Runs smoothly. After spending a few hours updating the firmware and everything else, Windows Hello works pretty well. The only pain is that Windows Update wouldn't update the firmware. Actually had to search around and do everything manually. Not hard, mind you, but still annoying.

The screen is pretty spectacular. The new n-trig pen works very well, much better than my old Wacom pen on my Thinkpad x220t. The keyboard is very solid. The magnesium casing is extremely solid. Definitely better than aluminum in terms of feel and strength.

Biggest negative so far is the fact the rubber feet might be a little too thin. That might not sound like a big deal, but I'm wary of leaving a big scratch on an expensive table. (I go to a lot of houses and use the computer on a lot of expensive tables.) I might actually pick up some 3M rubber buttons to protect things. The problem is it seems the fulcrum hinge might be the scratch causing part which makes it more difficult to protect against.

As far as software and normal teething problems...I haven't had any. All in all, that's a good start. We'll see how things work out in a week or two. So far so good though.

 

[you2]

Didn't the surface pro 3 have bettter battery life than the surface pro 4. I'm leaning towards an i5 pro4 but bit concern about the battery life. The book is a bit heavier than I want. Also can the battery be replaced in the pro 3, pro 4 or book or are these devices designed to be tossed in 3 years when the battery degrades?

 

[giantpandaman2]

Didn't the surface pro 3 have bettter battery life than the surface pro 4. I'm leaning towards an i5 pro4 but bit concern about the battery life. The book is a bit heavier than I want. Also can the battery be replaced in the pro 3, pro 4 or book or are these devices designed to be tossed in 3 years when the battery degrades?

Pro 4 has better battery life than the Pro 3. You may be thinking of the Surface 3 (non-Pro). An Atom processor will gave any computer much more battery life...but will be anemic on the speed side. Personally, Atoms are still too slow for me.

Similar to an Apple device, you'd have to bring it in to have the battery changed or you'd have to figure out how to do it on your own. I've actually been surprised by how little batteries have degraded lately in my laptops. My almost daily use 4+-year-old Thinkpad battery still works quite well. Too bad the screen only sort of works.

 

[khon]

Surface book review:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-Surface-Book-Core-i5-Nvidia-GPU-Notebook-Review.153126.0.html

Not that great overall. The battery life, connectivity and sound seem to be weak points.

 

[weevilone]

So far the Pro 4's battery seems terrible, but it might be more of a Windows 10 issue. Since MS controls all of this, I'd have expected a better out of box experience, honestly.

There are screen flickering issues as well. I've had to turn off Hyper-V as well as auto-adjusting brightness to get around this.

 

[linkgoron]

So far the Pro 4's battery seems terrible, but it might be more of a Windows 10 issue. Since MS controls all of this, I'd have expected a better out of box experience, honestly.

There are screen flickering issues as well. I've had to turn off Hyper-V as well as auto-adjusting brightness to get around this.

If 2-in-1/pen and all that are unimportant, is there any reason to buy a surface pro 4/book instead of a 512GB,16GB,i7 yoga 900 for 1400$?

 

[weevilone]

If 2-in-1/pen and all that are unimportant, is there any reason to buy a surface pro 4/book instead of a 512GB,16GB,i7 yoga 900 for 1400$?

Honestly, I didn't consider it b/c it's been a long while since I've seen a Lenovo that had acceptable build quality. Maybe the Yoga is fine, but again it didn't get any consideration.

 

[ikjadoon]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1578968/...e-samsung-tlc-terrible-write-performance/0_30

The SP4/SB use the worst possible PCIe NVMe SSDs: they have terrible write performance and, groan, use Samsung TLC. The 128GB SSD has sequential write speeds similar to a hard disk (yes, hard disk). WTF happen, Microsoft...

Now the upgrade cost is DEFINITELY not worth it.

 

[TahirMarfani]

The most exciting issue from a business perspective (that they did not bit on in any respect within the presentation) is that the new dock!

They're moving to a universal dock model that is kind of like the third party USB port replicators, however with the Surface charge/data connection cable.

Which means I will have SP one, 2, 3, 4s, and Surface Books all deployed to users and not got to keep 3 completely different arrival stations in inventory.

That's *huge* as way as creating a business case to shop for this stuff goes. Model-proprietary accessories ar continuously a giant red flag once it involves major hardware deployments.

 

[you2]

Sequential write speed of hard disk is not that bad. For the longest time hard disks out performed ssd with regards to raw linear write performance. While the newest pcie ssd have changed this (esp with pcie interface); the real advantage was random write/reads. The samsung are pretty darn good when it comes to random small writes (compared to sandisk and a few other brands).
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Having now clicked your link and read the benchmark; they really aren't that bad from a pragmatic perspective. Now you might argue that you are over-paying for the drive but I doubt the user experience will suffer.
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I'm more concern about the battery life esp for the pro 4 without gpu but that is just me.

 

[TeknoBug]

Yeah I'm leaning more towards a 2-in-1 over the Surface Pro/Book. I'm interestd in the Dell Inspiron 13 7000, I can easily remove the back and upgrade the drive and RAM down the road.

Constant writing with a SSD isn't a good idea so if you're a video editor or CAD designer that's out of the picture. I do know a few laptops has 2 drive options, SSD/M2/eMMC for OS and HDD for the other stuff such as what I mentioned would be ideal.

 

[Mushkins]

Just tried out the SP4 & Surface Book today

Very impressed by the Surface Pro 4. Personally I would take one over the Book anyday. The new type cover is great. I really like what they did with the pen. I've tried sketching with every Surface and the Surface Pro 4 is by far my favorite. Simple stuff but adding a soft tip makes the writing/sketching much more natural. And an ERASER... kind of a necessity.

Yeah, I'm not an artist so I can't speak to the precision of a soft tip stylus. But as a regular user the idea of intentionally scraping a plastic pen across the glass of a monitor gives me goosebumps. I know it's built for it, and I know it's not *supposed* to scratch it, but the very concept is insane to me so the pen on my SP3 doesn't get much use. The soft tip feels like I'm not going to ruin my device just through using it.

 

[giantpandaman2]

Sequential write speed of hard disk is not that bad. For the longest time hard disks out performed ssd with regards to raw linear write performance. While the newest pcie ssd have changed this (esp with pcie interface); the real advantage was random write/reads. The samsung are pretty darn good when it comes to random small writes (compared to sandisk and a few other brands).
-
Having now clicked your link and read the benchmark; they really aren't that bad from a pragmatic perspective. Now you might argue that you are over-paying for the drive but I doubt the user experience will suffer.
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I'm more concern about the battery life esp for the pro 4 without gpu but that is just me.

I agree with all of this. I think battery life is the Pro 4's biggest weakness. It's terrible for a modern tablet and less than mediocre for a modern laptop.

Of course, I'm someone who doesn't mind carrying an extra pound for better battery life. I've seen a lot of other uses bitch and whine about an extra 8 ounces. Unfortunately it seems the SP4 was designed to cater to that community. It's ridiculous. Women have purses with 5 lbs. of junk in them. Men whine about carrying 4.5 lbs. instead of 3.5 lbs. It's just gotten plain absurd.

 

[giantpandaman2]

Honestly, I didn't consider it b/c it's been a long while since I've seen a Lenovo that had acceptable build quality. Maybe the Yoga is fine, but again it didn't get any consideration.

Same. I carry a laptop nearly everyday. If I can flex the base or the screen with just my fingertips, I don't trust it. That and thermals are my go to checks for whether I think a laptop will last. Friend of mine had an early HP Envy laptop. Beautiful piece of hardware but the laptop turned out to be a piece of crap. Fan labored constantly and the thing was a blow dryer. Overheated and died years before my old Thinkpad had any issues.