Surface Book – 13.5″ laptop with a weird but impressive hinge, starts at $1499

Microsoft adds a new product to their Surface lineup, the Surface Book – a laptop with really distinctive design and actually an awkward but interesting hinge design. Surface Book is the first ever laptop from Microsoft, having a detachable screen making it look like a Surface Pro tablet. Then you can flip the screen and attach it back on which makes it a convertible laptop.

During the Windows 10 Devices event, Microsoft also announced its first laptop. Running on Windows 10 Pro operating system, the Surface Book features a 13.5 inch screen with PixelSense display and resolution of 3000 x 2000 pixels serving at the pixel density of  267 PPI – It’s 3:2 display aspect ratio with 10 point multi-touch. The magnesium built Surface Book weighs around 1.5 kg (3.34 pounds, or 1516 grams) including the keyboard.

Surface Book comes with 6th-gen Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM. The package with i5 gives option to choose from Intel HD or dedicated NVIDIA GeForce graphics while the i7 package only comes with dedicated NVIDIA graphics. Storage options are 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB or 1 TB.

With all the sensors as found in tablets such as ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, the very first Microsoft laptop gives connectivity via two standard USB 3.0 ports, standard sized SD card reader, SurfaceConnect, Headset jack and Mini DisplayPort.

Front and rear-facing camera are placed on the screen at front and back of it. It’s 5MP image sensor on the front while an 8 megapixel image sensor is on the back with auto focus capability and FHD 1080p video recording. There are dual microphones (front + rear) and stereo speakers with Dolby Digital audio on the front.

The most interesting thing is its hinge design which is very uncommon and unseen on any other laptop. It really stands-out to get noticed at first impression. “Dynamic fulcrum hinge” is what Microsoft calls it.

We don’t know how this type of hinge will facilitate the purpose. But it definitely is not like what other laptops have offered. Additionally when closed, the Surface Book will have space between the screen and the keyboard which is not the case with the laptops currently in the market.

Price and Availability

The Surface Book is set to ship by October 26th and the pre-orders are started. Microsoft Surface Book costs starting at $1,499 with base version stocking Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB SSD and goes up to $2,699 with power packed with higher performance CPU and dGPU along with larger disk capacity. While the specifications hint about a 1 TB SSD option, the price of such a package is not currently listed. Without having customization option, pre-configured options are available for pre-orders as follows.

After currency conversion, the respective prices of above machines in Pakistan would be approximately: Rs. 1,56,000/-, Rs. 1,77,000/-, Rs. 1,98,000/-, Rs. 2,20,000/- and Rs. 2,80,000/-

The Surface Book comes with a responsive pen support which is bundled with retail package.

Considering the price one thing comes to mind as if it was something from Apple. But comparatively, this machine offers much more at least. Still no wonder, as Microsoft taking steps into laptop market with its own Windows 10 OS, it will all depend on the consumers how will they react on a top-of-the-line machine like this with an expensive value.

It is more like a design game as Apple’s customers want Mac machines but they have only one OEM which is Apple. Unlike that, Windows 10 OS will be running on a variety of machines from different OEMs – there will be only one thing distinguishing those machines which is the hardware. Surface Book indeed looks great but with this heavy price tag it will be in interest of very keen ones.

I’ll refrain myself from saying that it’s an expensive machine as after having a lot from Apple with such a price tags since years. If Microsoft wants to play like that, there should be no objection – when they come with even better package.