Shane
Microsoft are showing that they are a serious player in the hardware market with their releases of Surface laptops and tablets.
The newly released Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a near-to high end content creators dream.
Sure, it is a Windows based laptop, but the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a laptop with a difference. The 14.4 inch PixelSense touch screen can unclip from the magnetic back and be slanted forward over the chiclet keyboard giving you use of the trackpad and of course moving the screen front and centre.
This second edition of the Surface Laptop Studio sees some very nice spec bumps from the previous model, and via the Microsoft website you can configure your specs to your liking, at a cost.
The review model STG Play received has a 1TB SSD (this is swappable), an impressive NVIDIA RTX 4060 graphics card and a whopping 64GB of RAM.
You have side ports, that being two USB-C and a single USB-A. The charger is the Microsoft Surface universal magnetic cable with quick release.
To process all of your digital goodness is the latest Intel i7 13th Gen. For day to day tasks the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is lightning fast. But I highly doubt you will ever buy one of these for mundane things like spreadsheets, word processing and emailing… the Surface Laptop Studio 2 has got some growl under the hood and ready to go for high end graphics rendering and gaming.
The LED backlit LCD screen has a 120Hz refresh rate and has a total resolution of 2400 x 1600 (200 PPI). Not bad, but also not 4K. And no OLED, which given the price tag is a little bit head scratching.
Nonetheless it does have the inner specs to handle almost anything you throw at at it.
Given that the screen can be moved forward and tilted make the Surface Laptop Studio 2 the perfect device for digital creation. Whether you’re a graphic designer, professional photographer or similar, having that movable screen transforms this laptop in to something like a Wacom tablet.
And if you’re going to down tools and get your game on, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 has got you sorted there too.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 has 8GB on-board RAM and beefy enough to be handle high-end PC games.
Borderlands 3 ran superbly with no compromise to the game’s inner graphic settings. Forza Motorsport also purred along nicely with the heavier resource chomper, Alan Wake II being the last game tested, and while this also ran well, it was on Alan Wake II that the laptop tended to heat up a bit.
If you’re going to cloud game your Xbox library, there’s no issue here whatsoever, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 has way more specs than you need for that.
One core missing piece with the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a stylus.
While having a screen that can unclip and move forward is great – not having an included stylus in the box is questionable. Sure you can get one, it’s called the Surface Pen and is sold separately, but if you’re in the market for one of these and have the budget for it, as well as given the price point, I feel that it should be absolutely included.
Battery life is damn good. You can expect around 18 hours of consistent use for ‘everyday’ use. Everyday use excludes high end content creation and gaming.
The likes of Forza and Alan Wake II were heavy hitters on battery consumption, seeing the Surface Laptop Studio 2 take a 40% hit from a full charge after a couple of hours of play.
Rendering out a 30 minute 4K videos was not only real quick, it didn’t hit the battery too badly, shaving only 7% from a full charge.
But with all of this super power, highly spec’d goodness we get to the price tag. This specific model reviewed will not see you get any change from $6.5K (NZD).
Yep the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is a super pricey investment.
You could weigh it up that it is future proofed, and it is, taking this review model in mind, the inner config is going to see you right for years to come, but I still can’t help feeling that it is over priced.
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 has packed on some pounds too. Weighing in to the ring at 2KGs which almost offsets the size of the laptop and it’s portability.
If, like me, you tend to use a laptop like a desktop, then weight is a no-issue.
Overall, I have much love for the Surface Laptop Studio 2. It’s unique, intuitive and excellently designed while being a powerhouse when it comes to work or play. Just be prepared to pay the big dollars to own one of these.
Released: December (NZ) 2023
Device Name: Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2
Processor: Intel i7 13th Gen
RAM: 64GB
Internal Storage: 1TB SSD
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060
Battery: Up to 18 hours
