Microsoft’s Surface Book 2 is a New Portable Powerhouse for Creatives

Microsoft just announced the new Surface Book 2, a new laptop that’s designed to remove the distinctions between desktops, laptops, and tablets.

Inside the laptop is is the latest 8th Gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 and 1060 graphics card options, making it up to 5 times more powerful than the original Surface Book that was announced in 2015 and twice as powerful as Apple’s new MacBook Pro, Microsoft claims.

Despite the power increase, the Surface Book 2 still has “all-day” battery life that lets you watch up to 17 hours of video before needing to recharge — this is 70% more battery life than the new MacBook Pro, Microsoft says.

The new Surface Book laptops are also relatively light compared to other high-performance machines on the market. Instead of weighing over 8 pounds, the 13-inch Surface Book 2 weighs 3.38 pounds and the 15-inch version weighs 4.2 pounds.

“There has never been this much computational power in a mobile form factor this light,” Microsoft says. “This is a product that can stay with you from the moment your inspiration strikes to making it a reality.”

The laptop can be used in four different modes: standard laptop mode, tablet mode (when the keyboard is removed), studio mode (when the keyboard is folded back), and view mode (when the laptop serves as a base for the screen).

Here’s what Microsoft says about how the Surface Book 2 can be useful for photographers:

From the early days of Surface Pro to the launch of the original Surface Book, we’ve had incredible feedback from photographers and artists who loved the ability to shoot tethered or draw on a super portable device that could also run Adobe Creative Cloud desktop applications. The power of Surface Book 2 will help artists and professionals across the creative spectrum take their work to the next level. More power means faster renders and effects so you can make quick edits and decisions to get you to your finished work. And a deeper partnership with Adobe means even better integration between Surface Book 2 and the Adobe Creative Cloud, including new Surface Dial functionality coming to Photoshop to keep you in your flow and let you easily access and modify your most frequently used brush settings.

Other specs and features of the Surface Book 2 include USB-A/C ports, a full-size SD card reader, a pixel density of up to 267 PPI, and up to 16GB of RAM.

Here’s a short 2-minute video introducing the Surface Book 2:

The Surface Book 2 will be available for pre-order starting on November 9th and it will start shipping out on November 16th. The basic 13.5-inch version starts at $1,499, and the basic 15-inch version starts at $2,499.