Microsoft Surface Studio 2 - Full Review and Benchmarks
Our Verdict
The Microsoft Surface Studio 2 is the best touch-screen all-in-one you'll find for cartoon and digital cosmos, but even with updated hardware, this device is not as amazing the 2d time around.
For
- Excellent design lets yous utilise equally a desktop or drawing board
- Flexible hinge
- Fantabulous display quality
- Potent audio
- All-time-in-grade pen support
Against
- Pricey
- Inconvenient port placement
- Hardware is dated from the get-go
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Microsoft Surface Studio 2 is the best touch-screen all-in-one you lot'll detect for drawing and digital cosmos, but fifty-fifty with updated hardware, this device is non as amazing the second time around.
Pros
- +
First-class design lets you use as a desktop or drawing board
- +
Flexible hinge
- +
Excellent display quality
- +
Strong audio
- +
Best-in-class pen support
Cons
- -
Pricey
- -
Inconvenient port placement
- -
Hardware is dated from the showtime
Microsoft's Surface tablets and laptops may exist well-known, only for artists and creative pros, there's only one Surface PC to consider: the Microsoft Surface Studio 2 ($three,499 to start, $iv,199 as reviewed). This is the latest version of the impact-centric all-in-one desktop.
We loved the first version of the Surface Studio, thanks largely to its beautiful PixelSense brandish, piece of cake-to-reposition hinge pattern, superb pen support and strong overall performance. The 2018 model gets beefier processing and graphics hardware, switches to all-solid-country drives for storage, and gets an fifty-fifty meliorate version of the PixelSense display that offers enhanced brightness and dissimilarity. It's ane of the best all-in-i computers — and one of the all-time computers flow — we've seen, and our top pick for media creators and artists.
Design
The Surface Studio two has the same exterior design equally the original 2017 model, but that's no knock. The Surface Studio may not exist as well-known every bit the iconic iMac, but the design is hands 1 of the well-nigh refined of any all-in-one I've reviewed. Measuring 25.1 x 17.three x 8.vii inches and weighing 21 pounds, the Surface Studio is superlative in its design. All of the usual terms reviewers use to depict a swell-looking product — sleek, sexy, polished, elegant — apply in spades. But the biggest thing to notation about the design is that it's useful, in a way that very few all-in-one systems tin match.
The impact-screen panel is mounted on what Microsoft calls a "nada gravity hinge." This spring-assisted, dual-hinge stand lets you lot put the screen upright for traditional desktop use or down low for more-comfortable use of the stylus and touch on screen.
The depression bending puts the screen into a position similar to that of a drafting table, making extended stylus employ both comfortable and efficient. The hinge also allows for both angle and height adjustments.
I odd quirk of the goose egg gravity hinge is that the angle and peak are linked, then you lot can put the screen upright when information technology's raised and at an angle when information technology'due south lowered, only the angle self-adjusts as you raise or lower the display. As a result, it'south not equally adjustable as many all-in-ones that offer merely angle aligning, such as the Apple iMac, because adjusting the bending, by necessity, volition also change the tiptop.
The PC components are housed in the base of the stand, a squarish box that measures 9.8 x viii.7 x 1.iii inches. The base is foursquare, with rounded corners and a rounded rear finish that also has all of the PC'south ports. Putting the internals into a carve up base like this keeps the display slim and unencumbered by extra bulk, then it measures simply 0.iv-inch thick.
Brandish
Displays are e'er an of import function of an all-in-ane, but Microsoft has gone to cracking lengths to make the Surface Studio ii a display-kickoff experience, leveraging the extensive bear upon back up of Windows. In addition to 10-point multitouch support, the Surface Studio 2 comes with a Surface Pen, offering superb stylus input that boasts iv,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt support. The consequence is an extremely natural-feeling experience equally you describe and write on the screen.
The 28-inch brandish isn't quite similar any other all-in-one nosotros've reviewed. The 28-inch panel has a 3:2 aspect ratio, instead of the more common xvi:ix displays used on most all-in-ones. Information technology's a bit more foursquare in shape, only the real depict is that it matches the iii:2 attribute ratio of 35mm film for photographers; offers a better reading feel for websites, digital books and magazines; and is more comfortable than annihilation that uses on-screen handwriting, like Microsoft OneNote.
Watching the 4K demo video for Cyberpunk 2077, I was impressed with how conspicuously the colors came through. Whether it was a dark warehouse coming together with some cyborg thugs or a daylight negotiation with a nameless corporate actor, the details were articulate and the colors were vivid. This may be 1 of the most beautiful displays I've seen.
Testing with our Klein Chiliad-10A colorimeter put some numbers to our first impressions. In Vivid manner, the Surface Studio 2 reproduced 167 percent of the sRGB color gamut, which matched the Apple iMac'south output (167 percent) and was better than the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IE's result (146 per centum). But while it'southward a strong showing, the Studio 2's effect actually falls slightly behind that of last yr's model, which displayed 181 per centum of the color gamut under the same settings.
The new device'south display is ane of the almost accurate we've seen, with a Delta-E rating of 0.xiii (closer to zip is better). This is an improvement over the result from last year'south model (1.0) and puts the Studio 2 alongside some amazing competitors, similar the Dell XPS 27 7760 (0.11) and the Apple iMac Pro (0.38).
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The effulgence is too potent, with this display averaging 456 nits at peak levels. That puts it right alongside some of the brightest displays available on an all-in-one, like the brandish on the Apple iMac (463 nits). That score also makes the Studio 2 brighter than the previous Surface Studio (354 nits) and dramatically brighter than both the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IE (247 nits) and the Dell XPS 27 7760 (344 nits).
From a technical perspective, the Surface Studio's PixelSense display — Microsoft's answer to Apple'south Retina branding — has some serious chops. The resolution of 4500 10 3000 goes above and beyond 4K Ultra Hd (3840 x 2160), and this is the only all-in-one display nosotros've seen effectively challenge the Apple iMac's 5K display.
Each display is color calibrated before it's shipped, and so display quality is at its best right out of the box. And Microsoft touts the congenital-in color settings, which are optimized for sRGB, DCI-P3 and Vivid color modes. What I didn't see support for is the Rec. 2020 standard, which would be needed for real HDR adequacy. As video and photograph editors increasingly piece of work with HDR content, it'due south disappointing to see the Surface Studio omit this standard.
For those who admittedly need HDR support, however, the Surface Studio can run a secondary display (via USB-C), and it does output HDR-enabled video. You'll merely need to provide your own HDR-capable display.
The drinking glass on the display is besides very reflective, catching glare from overhead lights and presenting users with mirror-like reflections in both desktop and drawing positions. While this screen looks cracking for most applications, I'm certain that many artists and photographers, ostensibly the target marketplace for the Surface Studio, would adopt a matte display.
Sound
Audio quality is besides quite good, though the competition is just equally fierce. The Studio has 8 speakers built in to the display and some other ii in the base, and it delivers Dolby Audio Premium sound. When I listened to the song "Spoiler" past Hyper, the Surface Studio offered high-quality sound, with clear channel separation and well-baked clarity.
The only means to become better sound would be to add a set of external speakers or opt for an all-in-one, like the Dell XPS 27 7760, that places a much larger priority on audio.
Keyboard, Mouse and More
As with nigh all-in-ane PCs, the Surface Studio 2 comes with a keyboard and mouse. Both connect over Bluetooth and match the blueprint artful of the PC itself.
The Surface Keyboard has a low-profile design, with tile keys. The grey-on-gray color scheme looks dandy, and the keyboard offers a very comfortable typing experience. Compared to the Apple tree Magic Keyboard, for example, the overall look is like, but the individual keys feel more than substantial, with better stabilization and deeper cardinal travel.
The Surface Mouse has the same gray colour scheme, which matches the metal exterior of the Surface Studio's base. This mouse'due south curved contour is one of the most visually sophisticated designs of any included mouse, but it's still a basic wireless mouse.
The Surface Studio two comes with something actress: the Surface Pen. More than simply a stylus, the pen has wireless connectivity, a built-in eraser and tilt support. The improver of tilt back up, along with the 4,096 levels of pressure level sensitivity, makes using the pen an extremely natural-feeling experience.
There also very little lag. It'south the sort of affair you don't even think about under most circumstances, simply when you routinely use pen input on a PC (either on the screen or with a Wacom tablet), yous grow accustomed to seeing the path of a sketched line trail your pen slightly. The Surface Pen is better than most in that regard.
Drawing on the display is exact and intuitive, with fantabulous accurateness and control. Whether I was writing by hand or sketching a quick doodle, the pen input was more similar cartoon on newspaper than with any other stylus or connected pen I've used.
The Surface pen connects via Bluetooth and is powered by a unmarried AAA bombardment, which is included. This stylus is likewise piece of cake to keep track of thanks to a magnetic holder built in to the right- and left-hand sides of the brandish chassis.
One additional accessory unique to Microsoft's own make is the Surface Dial. This is sort of its own thing, a round, metal-surfaced knob designed to provide an piece of cake, tactile style to cycle through options or scroll back and forth through media (like recorded audio or video) with ease and precision. Though this accessory wasn't role of this review, I've used the Punch a scattering of times, and I've always been impressed. But it doesn't come standard with the Surface Studio 2. Instead, if you want to add a unique peripheral in the Surface family, yous'll need to buy the Punch separately, for an actress $99.
Finally, if you want to use an Xbox 1 controller with the Surface Studio 2, you're in luck: Microsoft has also built in Xbox wireless support. You can even use the controller with the Dial's palette-style menus for art and media editing, giving you an interesting productivity utilise for your game controller.
Ports
The Surface Studio'southward square-shaped base has a rounded back end, which matches the curve of the bottom hinge on the stand. Fix into that curved rear face, you'll find 4 USB 3.0 ports, one USB Type-C port, a full-size SD card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a 3.5mm jack for sound.
The option of USB ports offers plenty of connectivity for wired peripherals, but we do wish that there were more one USB-C connection — or fifty-fifty better, if the Studio 2 offered Thunderbolt iii connectivity. Such a connectedness would also enhance the adequacy of the motorcar for media pros, who could add external graphics cards if they need more-substantial graphics adequacy.
But the much larger issue is port placement. With all of the ports on the dorsum of the machine, and with the unusual curved surface on that rear panel, the Surface Studio'southward ports are hard to reach and brand information technology more than difficult than usual to blindly plug things in.
Simply that inconvenient port placement is less of an aesthetic choice and more of a design necessity. When the display is positioned low for drawing and pen utilise, the pivoting arms of the stand come down parallel with the sides of the base, making side-mounted ports impractical. And the lower screen position would as well interfere with any plugged-in peripherals in front, precluding any front-facing ports. The result: All of the ports are on the back side of the base, requiring you to turn the entire organization for port access. If yous find the port placement to be a real inconvenience, yous can get some additional flexibility with a USB hub or similar solution.
Performance
Our review unit was the midtier version of the Surface Studio, which is outfitted with an Intel Core i7-7820HQ CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB solid state drive. The processor is a full-fledged quad-core desktop CPU, unlike the laptop-class models used in lower-end all-in-ones. But it'southward also on the older side, a seventh-Generation processor when 8th-Generation processors are readily available. It however offers plenty of processing power, and there'southward no immediate detriment to operation, only it's likely to show its historic period sooner than systems equipped with more-electric current hardware.
When using the Surface Studio, I was able to run more than 30 simultaneous browser tabs in Microsoft Edge (the Surface Studio's default browser), while likewise streaming music and watching motion-picture show trailers in 4K. At no indicate was in that location a hint of slowing downwardly or struggling to keep up as I switched betwixt tabs.
The Surface Studio line has also switched from hybrid drives that pair SSD storage with larger spindle drives to all-solid-state storage. That should deliver a faster experience even when the system's fetching giant files, and it should boost the longevity of the system due to the lack of moving parts. Still, in our file-transfer exam, the operation was good, non groovy.
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The Surface Studio transferred our 4.97GB test folder in half-dozen.24 seconds, at a rate of 815 megabits per second. That puts the Microsoft car ahead of the Apple iMac 27 inch with 5K (710 MBps) and makes it drastically faster than the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IE (101.78 MBps), just it doesn't come shut to the category-leading scores of the Dell XPS 27 7760 (one,208 MBps) or the Apple iMac Pro (two,544 MBps). More than importantly, it doesn't offer any improvement over the previous model, which completed the same task in 6 seconds (848 MBps).
Overall performance, as measured in our Geekbench 4 benchmark, was stiff. The Surface Studio scored 14,971 points, even with an older processor. That'southward an comeback over the previous Surface Studio model's event (13,197; Intel Core i7-6820HQ) and is better than the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IE'due south score (11,817; Intel Core i7-7700T), just it's far from the best showing out there. The Dell XPS 27 7760 (xv,749; Intel Core i7-7700) did a bit ameliorate, and the Apple tree iMac 27 inch with 5K (19,773; Core i7-770K) pushed out even farther alee.
But the absolute functioning champ, with a wickedly powerful Intel Xeon Due west-2150B workstation-grade CPU is the Apple iMac Pro (36,705). While I wouldn't expect the Surface Studio to beat out out the top-specced iMac Pro, Microsoft has thrown around the term workstation in its marketing materials. The company has stopped far short of claiming workstation-course operation or features like ISV certification, but even bandying the term about suggests a level of performance that the Surface Studio can't deliver. And that's something of a shame, considering yous'll pay so much more than for this motorcar than any standard all-in-one.
Number-crunching performance is also good on the Studio 2, only far from best-in-form. This machine completed our Excel spreadsheet macro examination in just over a minute (ane:01), simply in our older, OpenOffice version of the exam, Microsoft's device took 3 minutes 15 seconds. That's, once again, faster than last year's model (3:48) and ameliorate than the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IE's time (3:40), simply the Studio 2 is bested by competitors similar the Dell XPS 27 7760 (3:00) and completely outpaced by the Apple tree iMac (1:57).
Graphics
The Surface Studio is all almost content cosmos, and it delivers thank you to an Nvidia GTX 1070 graphics card with 8GB of VRAM.
On the graphics front, the Surface Studio 2 bested its peers, completing 3DMark Fire Strike with a score of 12,554. That's significantly improve than the previous Microsoft Surface Studio's score of but viii,177, as that auto has an older graphics carte du jour (Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M, 4GB). The Studio 2 also pulls ahead of the Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IE (five,383), which has a slightly lower-powered GPU (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, 4GB), and the AMD-powered Dell XPS 27 7760 (nine,393 with an AMD Radeon RX 570 and 8GB of VRAM).
That too means you've got plenty oomph in your content-cosmos automobile to enjoy some gaming in the off hours. The Surface Studio put upwardly playable frame rates in both Rise of the Tomb Raider (50.81 frames per 2nd) and Hitman (94.13 fps), only only at 1080p resolution. Bumping upwards to native resolution or 4K dropped the frame rates well beneath the thirty-fps threshold needed to actually enjoy a game.
Webcam
The Surface Studio has an integrated webcam just above the display. With five-megapixel resolution, this machine is capable of 1080p video capture, and depth sensing makes this camera a good fit for Microsoft's facial-recognition tool, Windows Hullo. Just prepare your security preferences to permit login with Windows Howdy, and you'll be able to unlock your system just by looking into the camera.
The webcam photo accurately captured my confront, with good item in my hair and beard. Withal, the brighter portions of the prototype are a scrap done out, and my cheeks took on a pronounced rosy color that isn't present in real life.
The organization pairs the camera with dual microphones, allowing both improved audio capture every bit you move in front end of the PC and better noise counterfoil to filter out ambient dissonance.
Software and Warranty
As this is a Microsoft production, in that location was never any doubt that the Surface Studio ii would come with Windows x, the latest version of the company's operating system. Only what did grab united states off guard was the inclusion of a lot of extraneous add-ons, like Minecraft and a collection of solitaire games. You'll get a 30-twenty-four hours trial version of Microsoft Office, including OneNote, as well as Skype, Paint 3D and several other common inclusions. Only, more often than not, this is a fairly clean installation of Windows, with very few third-party programs.
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Microsoft covers the Surface Studio with a 1-twelvemonth warranty simply beefs information technology up with several premium touches. You'll get 90 days of free tech support over the phone, a full year of free support and technical help in whatsoever Microsoft Store, and even a free sixty-minute grooming session that walks you lot through all the features and capabilities of the organisation.
Configurations
The Surface Studio ii doesn't take a huge number of configurations. In fact, you can customize only three components: the memory, storage and graphics card.
Our review model is outfitted with an Intel Cadre i7-7820HQ processor, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for storage, with an an Nvidia GTX 1070 graphics carte du jour. This version sells for $4,199.
The more affordable base of operations configuration drops the memory downwards to 16GB and uses a less powerful Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of VRAM. That model sells for $iii,499.
At the pinnacle of the ladder is the a model very like our review unit; it has the aforementioned Intel Core i7-7820HQ CPU, 32GB of RAM and Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU. Merely it doubles the SSD storage to 2TB. That version goes for $4,799.
Bottom Line
When Microsoft introduced the Surface Studio, the company made a bold move, staking out a merits for the traditionally staid Microsoft as the biggest innovator in the PC world. And two years later on, the Studio is still a one-of-a-kind car. The touch on and pen capabilities are superb, the display is both cute and flexible, and the design is extremely refined. It's easily the most well-designed all-in-one I've ever used on well-nigh every count (except for the port placement, merely that'due south a pocket-size quibble).
However, the Studio is not quite as impressive the second time around. The new hardware is slightly dated and slightly underpowered. It's still an impressive machine, with strong operation, merely information technology doesn't take the class-leading ability and leading-edge hardware you might look from Microsoft. The Studio 2 faces tough competition from both the Windows and Apple worlds, and it doesn't always come up out the victor.
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That said, if you want the hands-down best drawing experience available, the Surface Studio two delivers. If you want to ditch your Wacom tablet or aggrandize your hands-on digital artistry, you won't notice anything better. In that location are systems, like the Dell XPS 27 7760, with more horsepower and better audio, and the Studio ii is on par with Apple'south own artistic media system, the 27-inch iMac with 5K display. And both of these systems are significantly more than affordable.
But the Microsoft Surface Studio 2 does a number of things those other all-in-ones just can't. It'due south a drafting tabular array, a sketch pad, a canvas and a media studio in one, all on top of beingness a high-operation desktop PC. If yous want the best tool for easily-on content cosmos, this is it.
Credit: Tom's Guide
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/microsoft-surface-studio-2,review-5933.html
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