Many tech experts feel that the Surface Book with Performance Base is better than the Surface Book, though it costs a lot more. The Surface Book, in fact, reversed the equation compared to the Surface, by offering a powerful laptop combining many benefits of a tablet. The Surface, on the other hand, was sold as a tablet that could replace a laptop. However, the Surface Book with Performance Base surpasses both with its impeccable industrial design, war power under the hood and clear focus on creative work. It’s an amazingly balanced laptop albeit the price.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, all models of the New Surface Book have 6th gen Intel i7 processor, 2GB RAM for dedicated graphics and an Nvidia GTX 965M chip. Graphics-wise, it has twice the power compared to even the top-most Microsoft Surface Book previously available. Battery life is especially impressive with Microsoft claiming up to 16 hours of battery life. It can provide more than four to five hours of use in the tablet mode. The excess video memory combined with up to 16GB of RAM is more than enough to run any software.

Be it 3D modelling, high-intensity video editing or playing the latest video games, the new Surface Book, with its combination of form-factor, pen and high-end specs, allow users to carry out just about any creative work. Moreover, connecting the Microsoft Surface Book with Performance Base to an external keyboard, mouse and monitor opens up even more possibilities. Some of these include drawing on Surface with reference material on bigger screen and playing games in proper 16:9 format.

There are no USB-C ports and that could be a reason to sulk but the presence of two USB 3.0 ports, a MiniDisplay port and a full-size SD card reader allow users to work with all the old stuff and that’s kind of great. The 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM configuration at $3,799 is the least-expensive Microsoft Surface Book with performance base. The one with 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM costs $5,199. While there are many devices available with the same kind of specs but at less than half the price, the Microsoft Surface Book is still an excellent addition.

The Surface Book is a machine that can stand in for a laptop, media device, home desktop, drawing tablet and everything else one wants it to be. If the price still seems unworthy, one can always buy the original Microsoft Surface Book for $2,299.

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