5 Best And Worst Features Of Microsoft Surface Book!

| Updated: Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 19:12 [IST]

Microsoft launched their first laptop offering yesterday at their Windows 10 event in New York.

The Surface Book, the bigger sibling of the Surface Pro 4 tablet comes with a dockable keyboard. In fact, it can even be folded with the keyboard on - just like every other laptop out there. Rather it would be wise to refer to the Surface Book as a convertible which can always be docked out from the keyboard to be used a standalone tablet.

However like many other convertible in the market, the Microsoft Surface Pro Book isn't dearth of power. Microsoft claims, "Ounce by Ounce, Pound by Pound; it is one of the most powerful laptops ever built." But, just like any other convertibles in the market it too comes with a set of cons. Nevertheless it wasn't quite easy to find the cons in this beast!

Best:

The Surface Pro Book features a 13 inch display with a resolution of 3000x2000 and 3:2 aspect ratio. This result into a 267ppi and 6 million colours.

Unlike most other laptops in the market, where the display panel and the touchpad are separate entities, the Surface Book has an optically bonded panel. This is the similar to the OGS display implementation seen on smartphone. The Optically Bonded Panel helps in better color reproduction and viewing angles.

Best:

Most Ultra books of present days, still come with an 8GB of RAM. However Microsoft had decided to include a whooping 16GB of RAM in one of the variants.

Best:

In spite of using an Intel i5/i7 with the company's latest Skylake Technology, the Surface Book will supposedly deliver 12 hours of Battery Life (according to Microsoft). This is a solid 2 hours more than the one quoted by Apple for their MacBook Pro.

Best:

The Surface Book 4 features an added Security feature in the form of a Fingerprint Sensor on the side of the TrackPad.

Best:

An added feature the Microsoft Surface Book is the presence of Pen that also features an Eraser at the bottom. The Pen responds to 1024 pressure point and features a button on the side which can be pressed to open Cortana directly. Further it comes with replaceable tips.

Worst:

The Surface Book is designed to be used as a tablet too, where on can detach the display from the main keyboard. However a large 13 inch screen may be too large for most out there to use as a tablet.

Worst:

Unlike most other laptops which comes with an Ethernet port as standard, the Surface Book misses out on that. But does this mean that you can never use a wired broadband connection on the Surface Book? No, as Microsoft will be selling a Surface Dock which can be plugged onto the body of the laptop. The Surface Dock includes an Ethernet port, 2 x USB 3.0 port, 1 x 3.5mm Headphone jack and 2 x HDMI ports (4K).

Worst:

The Surface Book utilizes a large Glass TrackPad - Microsoft is rather proud regarding this. However the Force Touch Implementation of the TrackPad of the MacBook Pro is rather initiative and useful. It is similar to the Force Touch Display on the iPhone 6S. With Force Touch displays gaining popularity in the smartphones market, it would have been a wise decision for Microsoft to include it onto their TrackPad.

Worst:

The Surface Book is available only in a Silver variant. However many would have loved Gold variant. May even a Rose Gold?!

Worst:

In case convertible is not what you are looking for and just need a powerful laptop then the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 will appear too heavy on the pocket. You can buy any other laptop with an Intel i7 inside and 8/16GB of RAM at around Rs 70,000.