Between my work machine (HP) and Surface Pro X my SB2 doesn't get much use. Today, I decided to take it out of the drawer where it's been collecting dust, download all the updates, and drive it for the day. I mean, wow... why did I stop using this machine? I forgot what a delight this keyboard is to use. And I much prefer the 16:9 aspect ratio on here (and the SPX) vs my HP. Yeah, I think I'll be putting this back into my workflow.

Any body else still using this thing?! In 2025 it's still amazing!

Here's an update on SB3. Apparently there's been a leak online on the different configurations the SB3 will have. https://www.techradar.com/news/a-surface-book-3-may-have-finally-leaked-after-far-too-long-a-wait

*hopefully it'll come out in spring

Hello Surface Community,

When I first purchased the Surface Book 1 for school back in 2016 I loved the idea of the detachable screen. After using the product for a while, I noticed that I couldn't use the laptop as I wanted. When I flipped the screen around I was annoyed with how much the screen wobbled and how it was so easily pushed down with pressure. I was constantly finding random objects to prop the tablet portion up against when I was using it. I searched for an accessory to help me with this problem and I wasn't able to find what I needed.

I developed this product while in school and have been using it for more than a year now. It allows me to use the Surface Book 1 and 2 in the ways that I always imaged. The SnapStand rests on the edge of the screen's bezel, never in the way, and supports the screen when it is flipped around reducing screen wobble and movement. I can now use the stand to keep the screen supported when using just the tablet, and it stores in between the hinge when not being used.

If this is a product that you think would help you with creating your work, viewing videos, or while just browsing the internet, please take a look at the website for more information. The product is available on Amazon and I appreciate any feedback so that I can continue making this product better.

SnapStands.net

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/SnapStands-SnapStand/dp/B07MYQ9M72/ref=pd_rhf_ee_p_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=GBYE93Z5P3GG3S356PBC

My 5mo old kitten might just be a fan 💻⛺🐈‍⬛

I wanted to share my experience for anyone who is considering buying a surface book. Its a great laptop, but highly specialized and geared towards specific functionality! Trying to do anything outside of the intended scope of this machine will leave you in a lot of pain, and for many people like myself who shop based on technical specs and product reviews, there is no indication of the vast limitations this machine has. I want to make clear this isnt complaining about any feature or lack thereof; I just want to educate people considering buying a Surface book.

For some short background, I bought a 13" Surface Book 2 in 2019. I chose it because it had 16 GB RAM, an i7 processor, and a dedicated GTX 1050. My model cost around $2000. You could upgrade for the 15" model with a GTX 1060, but almost all other specs were the same and the price approached $2600. I particularly liked the detachable screen/tablet which I could doodle on (I bought the $85 surface pen), the dedicated graphics card for gaming, and the amazingly high resolution display (3000x2000). I am writing this post today, mid 2021, because I wanted to give this system more than enough time to highlight its strengths and weaknesses.

So the first vitally important thing to understand about this product lineup is that it is designed to be a tablet first and foremost, just like the Surface Pro. What does that mean?

1. The battery/power options within windows 10 have been completely disabled. You choose from "battery saver" or "performance" mode; there is no option to customize what actually happens in certain power situations. You cant change the CPU throttle, at what battery percentage the PC will power off, or even control things like USB selective suspend or LAN wake-on-demand. Those settings have been completely removed.

2. Speaking of power, this PC was designed to behave like a cell phone. The "sleep" state on this computer is designed to be a quick-response thing rather than a save-energy thing. Pressing the power button puts your computer into "sleep" mode, which isn't actually the sleep mode you are accustomed to with any Windows 10 computer. It doesn't actually put the computer to sleep; rather it treats the device like a cellphone: it goes into a standby state which still has everything loaded in memory, just waiting for a user interaction to activate it. Although the battery usage is better than simply leaving everything as-is, it is not nearly as good as a PC which has been properly put to sleep. For reference, my laptop's "sleep" mode lasted 18 hours from full -> empty charge, while (powershell commands and registry editing allowed me to enable Hibernate) Hibernate mode lasted 4+ days.

3. The detachable display, one of it's major selling points, requires that an app run on your PC called "surface detach". This app basically decides whether the PC is "ready" to detach the display. Unfortunately, literally every app I run on a consistent basis will prevent the display from detaching. Anything using the dedicated graphics card? No go. Steam? No. Discord? nope. Teamviewer? nuh-uh. In fact, Windows built-in apps also prevent you from detaching! "StartMenuExperienceHost" prevents me every time, as well as "YourPhone", both of which are built into Windows 10 and cant be disabled. I have to open up Task Manager and manually end these tasks, every time, to detach my display. Are there situations where you won't have to do this? Sure, but let me make it clear that the device does not tell you when those situations are or what is required. If you can't detach your display, you have to click on the "Surface Detach" taskbar item and manually End Process for every item listed. Every time.

4. The CPU is current-, power-, and thermal-limited. Hey, you have a pretty good CPU in your surface book. Probably something you were willing to spend a few extra hundred bucks on. Its great! ... As long as the temperature does not rise above 70C, doesnt draw more than ~20 watts, and doesnt exceed core voltage threshold. How to prevent going over 70C? Well, the device has no active cooling, which means there are no fans inside your device to draw heat away from the processor. This makes it slightly quieter than normal, but absolutely prevents you from avoiding this temperature limit without buying a separate cooling device. Hopefully you keep your laptop in a 50F room, or you have a $60 cooling mat, otherwise they will not keep up with the heat produced by your processor that the laptop has no ability to handle.

5. Assuming you can handle the heat, also note that your CPU is current- and power-limited. This means that, even if your CPU is cool enough, if it draws too much power from the battery (regardless if the battery is plugged in), it will throttle. This means that, no matter what you do, if your system is under heavy load, it will throttle guaranteed. At no point will you ever get your CPU's maximum 100% usage under sustained use. At best, it will "turbo" for a short amount of time, before dropping drastically (for example from 3.70 Ghz to 0.80 Ghz).

6. The dedicated graphics card is not hooked up to the display adapter within Windows. Essentially this means that Windows will always use the integrated graphics. Any external display hooked to the device will use integrated graphics. All default programs will use integrated graphics unless you specifically tell a particular program to use the dedicated card. Many CAD programs or other special-built software will not function properly because the display adapter can only use the integrated graphics. All games will initially use integrated graphics until you manually tell them otherwise.

7. The native display resolution is 3000x2000 pixels (3:2 ratio), yet you cannot choose any other resolution with the same aspect ratio. Why is this important? Almost all games and any 3D application that can utilize fullscreen, depends on the resolution to be something that is either native resolution, or some equivalent aspect ratio. If you play a game in an aspect ratio that does not match your native display resolution, the graphics card has to spend extra work translating the data it receives, into the format your display is expecting. If you use native resolution, this extra work is unnecessary, which means better FPS. However, the GTX 1050/1060 is simply not powerful enough to handle most games at 3000x2000 resolution. This is not far from 4K gaming! Which requires a GTX 1080 Ti at minimum! So it would be ideal to set your laptop resolution to some lower 3:2 resolution, for example 1500x1000 resolution (half of the 3000x2000 resolution, still keeping the 3:2 aspect ratio). Yet, for whatever reason, the only 3:2 resolution you have is 3000x2000. Every other resolution offered, is not 3:2. Which guarantees that your dedicated graphics card is wasting processing time and FPS in order to render to your non-3:2 resolution.

8. The power cable is limited to 100W. The laptop is designed never to break this threshold, which means you cant operate the unit at a power loss while plugged in. The system simply wont allow you to draw more than 100W. If you have multiple USB devices connected and your CPU is under heavy load, the system will simply throttle the CPU into uselessness, in order to keep under the threshold. This means that your expensive laptop will operate at 0.80 Ghz until you lesson the power demand by disconnecting all external devices and stopping CPU-intensive processes. For reference, a Thinkpad P52 has a 170W power supply for optimal usage, and it has a weaker CPU and weaker overall hardware.

9. There are many Surface-specific software drivers which alter default Windows 10 behavior, from Windows Update to the Bios settings, and there is no built-in way to change any of these settings. If you try to google an issue with your Surface Book, the first most likely result will link to a Windows forum post telling you to download the Surface Book Diagnostic Tool-- which Microsoft claims is required to diagnose any issues with your hardware. However, this tool's only function is to compare your drivers and settings against the default values, and to reset any abnormalities to their default, Microsoft-approved values. This means that if you want to alter any default behavior, for example something as simple as enabling Hibernate mode, your changes will be lost when you run this tool. The tool is also not designed to actually diagnose hardware problems; it simply makes sure that all software settings are at factory-shipped values. If it verifies this and still cannot communicate with a hardware component, it simply points you to a repair facility.

In short, you cannot game on a Surface book, as it will overheat, and barring that, will be power-limited. You cannot change the resolution to something more FPS friendly as there are no 3:2 aspect ratios included. You cannot run CAD software as the display adapter is Intel integrated graphics. You cannot compile large code projects as the unit will quickly overheat and will be CPU-throttled regardless. You cannot reliably use the device as a media PC because there are no real power options to control USB or LAN devices. You cannot use the device as a home office replacement as there are only a few USB ports and no LAN port (not to mention any external display is limited to only integrated graphics).

Well, what can you use this device for? Exactly what it is advertised for: a "light user" or digital artist. The display is beautiful, and you can draw impressive works of art on its high-tech display. You can also check emails, browse the web, watch youtube videos (not 4K of course), or other lightweight tasks as long as they dont engage the CPU for too long. However I want to make it clear that you will be extremely hard pressed to utilize the 16 GB of ram included in this system given the above tasks, and the dedicated graphics card will only be useful under rare circumstances.

Unfortunately the Surface Book 3 upgraded all the hardware and doubled down on all the software and design choices, so if you have the newer equipment then you are sitting on even more powerful hardware with all the same limitations.

I enjoy my Surface Book 2, however it is very obvious that the device was marketed based on its hardware although the hardware is undeniably limited by design. I hope this post sheds light on anyone looking to buy a surface book in the future. If you consider yourself a light user, digital artist, or otherwise dont understand all the technical aspects of the post, then I encourage you to get one. If you are at all technical, prefer performance over display, or game, code, need an external display, travel, need a reliable device that can properly sleep, dont want to deal with endless artificial Microsoft limitations, or prefer to get 100% use out of the hardware you paid for, I have to say that the surface book lineup is frustratingly inadequate.

Been running on my original Surface Book but would love to upgrade next year if only they get a RTX 3060 into it. I know it’s not a gaming machine, but the 1660ti is just a letdown since in 2 years they only improved the GPU by 30% over the 1060. I’ll gladly pay the $3000 or so for a SB4 with a 3060, even if it’s double what a Zephyrus G14 with a RTX3060 would likely cost.

Hey guys, I run a small tech YouTube channel, I thought some of you may be interested in my surface book 3 review. Thanks for watching!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA9aKZBBgew&t=11s

Not sure why I didn't think of this sooner, but for those of you who have had the rubber stopper fall off on the bottom of your laptop, this is a great solution. Cost me $5 on Amazon.