The touchscreen + pen combination eliminates the need to carry a Wacom device, which not only frees up space in a laptop bag, but also eliminates the need to carry more tools and cables when traveling. While for some people this might seem like a “nice to have” feature, once you get used to these capabilities, it is hard to go back to a traditional laptop.
Third, the Surface Book 2 has two distinct advantages over the MacBook Pro that are very important for photography needs – and those are touchscreen capability, as well as being able to detach the screen from the keyboard. And that’s more tools to carry in an already tight camera bag! Thunderbolt is not mainstream yet to make such a rough transition, which means that one has to utilize extra connection gadgets on the MacBook Pro to be able to use existing equipment. Still, removal of the USB ports, as well as the SD card slot was a big mistake on behalf of Apple in my opinion, especially for us photographers who heavily rely on USB-powered equipment such as Wacom tablets and external hard drives, as well as SD cards for transferring media content to our computers.
Unfortunately, Microsoft screwed up with its USB Type-C port by not incorporating Thunderbolt 3 capability – that’s something that should have been there, especially to help those Mac users that want to transition to the PC platform. Second, unlike Apple that decided to throw away USB ports and an SD card port altogether, Microsoft kept two USB Type-A ports as well as an SD card slot and added a single USB Type-C port to make it easier for people to transition from older to newer technology. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 is a pretty powerful GPU that outperforms the Radeon Pro 560, as can be seen in the comparisons below. Still, based on the above specifications, you can easily see that there are pretty noticeable differences between these laptops.įirst of all, aside from the more power efficient and faster CPU, the Surface Book 2 has a better GPU on its top-end models.
This means that they are not going to be directly comparable to Surface Book 2 laptops, especially when it comes to battery life, since the 8th generation Intel CPUs are more power efficient in comparison. Intel Core i7-7920HQ 2.7 Ghz (7th Generation)Īt the moment, Apple does not have any laptops that use 8th generation CPUs from Intel. Intel Core i7-8650U 1.90 GHz (8th Generation) Surface Book 2 vs MacBook Pro Specifications Comparison Laptop Feature
Since it was about time to start replacing my aging Surface Pro 3, I wanted to evaluate both the new Surface Book 2 and Apple’s MacBook Pro to see which I would pick for my photography needs. Earlier this year Microsoft finally released the Surface Book 2, a second generation laptop specifically designed to challenge Apple’s MacBook Pro. I have written about my experience with the Surface Pro 2 from a photographer’s perspective a while back, then we wrote a detailed Surface Pro 3 review and my experience with the first generation Surface Book pretty much sealed it for me as a very desirable machine for working on the go, thanks to its excellent performance, flexible design, a built-in memory card slot, superb touchscreen experience and plenty of connectivity options. I have to admit, ever since Microsoft released the Surface Pro laptops, I have been a fan of these travel-friendly and light two-in-one machines.