Microsoft just launched a new Surface Book to little fanfare. Like the two other high-end Surface Books in its line, the new 2-in-1 device comes with the same powerful features except for one - a dedicated graphics card unit or GPU.
Neowin noted that the new Surface Book runs on the 6th-generation Core i7 Skylake processor and comes with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of solid-state storage. This is the third 2-in-1 convertible from Microsoft to come out with such impressive specs after the Surface Book with Performance Base and the Surface Book without Performance Base were made available in October and January, respectively.
The best thing about the new Surface Book, however, is its price. Its $2,999 price is way cheaper than those of the two other high-performance Surface Books. The highest-end Surface Book, which boasts of a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, is also the most expensive of the three with a tag price of $3,299. The other high-end Surface Book, meanwhile, is equipped with a lower NVIDIA GeForce GPU. As for the latest of the top-of-the-line 2-in-1 device, the NVIDIA graphics chips will be replaced with Intel's HD onboard graphics. This change is what made the new Surface Book cheaper than the two.
According to Hot Hardware, the latest version of the Surface Book also sports a 13.5-inch PixelSense touchscreen display with a 3,000 x 2,000-pixel resolution or a PPI of 267. Among the other features of the new high-end Surface, Book is a couple of USB 3.0 ports and a 5MP front-facing camera along with an 8MP rear camera. For connectivity, it has 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The new Microsoft device also comes with the Surface Pen and Windows 10 Pro. The new SKU has up to 12 hours of battery life which is a bit lower than the other two which can last up to 16 hours on one charge.
Interestingly, the new Surface Book is not yet available despite being listed on the Microsoft Store. The new SKU is currently listed as Out of Stock. The non-dGPU Surface Books are also listed as Out of Stock as of this writing.
