There’s no doubt that Microsoft has packed in the latest technology into the Surface Book 2 - that is part of the brand appeal - but it has pushed the boat out with the larger 15-inch version. Of course if you detach the screen, then you leave the graphical power behind and are left with the Intel UHD 620

Yet the 15-inch Book 2 does have the potential to be a fantastic all-rounder.

While the larger Surface Book 2 is not specifically a gaming machine, it does have the chops to give most modern games a good go, especially if you’re happy to tweak the game performance down just a little (and Microsoft has included the Xbox Wireless Radio for native communications with the Xbox One controllers) but you’ll get ultimate gaming power out of a specific gaming laptop. Tucked inside the base is Nvidia’s GeForce GTX1060 graphics card, with 6GB of RAM - the top end 13-inch Surface Book 2 sports the GTX1050 with only 2GB of memory. Put some significant load on this machine and the fan will allow the performance to stay higher than the passively cooled 13-inch model. Unlike the 13-inch model, the Surface Book 2 has a small fan inside the base section to aid cooling. If you need the size, then it is available, otherwise the tablet mode is not something I find useful during my office work and audio editing. Yes, a 15-inch tablet is a bit unwieldy, but again you need to think about the use cases. Let’s not forget that the Surface Book 2’s trick of detaching and working as a tablet is also present and correct. Along with this default there are two extra color profiles for ‘sRGB’ and ‘Improved’ display of colours. Microsoft calibrates each screen individually. The distance between the glass, the touch sensitive layer, and the pixels has been reduced from the first generation. It also means a change in manufacturer, with the Panasonic display of the smaller models replaced by an LG screen that is slightly brighter.Ī lot of technology has been packed to the PixelSense screen. You genuinely have more pixels to work with. That means the resolution steps up to 3240x2160. Microsoft has retained the 3:2 ratio screen of the Surface Book design, and also kept roughly the same density of pixels - 260 dpi on the 15-inch machine, 267 dpi on the 13-inch model. Microsoft Surface Book 2 15-inch model (Ewan Spence) Ewan Spence

Surface book 2 15 inch