The Surface Pro 7 is appealing, but can it beat the beefier Surface Book 2?
Microsoft’s Surface products aren’t for everybody , but if you would like a strong 2-in-1 with great battery life, there aren’t many who can compare. once you check out the new and different entries within the Surface line though, it becomes much harder to make a decision which is best. to undertake to nail it down, we pitted the Surface Pro 7 versus the Surface Book 2 and compared them on design, performance, and portability.
For a glance at a number of our other favorite 2-in-1s, inspect our purchasing guide.
Design
Almost everything of Microsoft’s Surface line of products exudes a cool professionalism that's hard to seek out outside of Apple’s MacBook Pro line of portable computers, and therefore the Surface Book 2 is definitely the flagship device therein respect. It’s exceedingly sturdy, with a solid, magnesium frame that’s both lightweight and very durable. It feels solid, professional, and high-quality — although you'd expect intrinsically with its high tag .
The Surface Pro 7 is an equally well-built device, though with its thinner keyboard it’s not as substantial or as domineering. But, since both devices have detachable keyboards, they're each incredibly light during tablet-mode, with the Surface Book 2 somehow coming in ever slightly lighter at 1.6 pounds (vs. 1.75 pounds), despite its larger 13.5-inch display.
The Surface Book 2 also has similar range of ports to the Surface Pro 7. It sports a pair of USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports (it’s confusing, we know) also as a headphone jack, two Surface Connect ports, and a full-size SDXC card reader. The kicker though, is that it's a USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 port.
The Surface Pro 7, meanwhile, comes equipped with a USB-A 3.0 port, a headphone jack, and USB-C port, Surface connect port, and micro-SDXC card reader. That’s a pleasant mixture of connectivity, meaning you won’t got to use a dongle with either of the 2 devices.
Performance
Despite the pricing disparity between these two devices, their hardware configurations are closer than you would possibly think. The Surface Pro 7 starts at $749 and starts with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a tenth-generation, dual-core Core i3-1055G1 processor. Upgrades include a quad-core Core i5-1035G4, or for $1,500 you'll get a Core i7-1065G7 CPU with 256GB of storage. For $2,300 you'll net yourself 16GB of RAM and a terabyte of SSD space.
The Surface Book 2 starts at $1,200 and comes with a seventh-generation Core i5-7300U CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. That’s a rather weak start line compared to the Surface Pro 7, considering the 7300U is an older generation dual-core CPU. most significantly though, with the Surface Book 2, you get an Nvidia GTX 1050 discrete GPU. For $2,000 this is often leaps and founds more powerful than anything the Surface Pro has.
Spending $2,500 gets you double the RAM and storage, while the top-end $3,000 configuration nets you a terabyte of SSD space. There also are options for a 15-inch version if you would like more screen-space and power, with a GTX 1060 graphics chip on board, though those configurations are costlier again.
For general computing, the Surface Pro 7 is definitely the higher machine in terms of price vs. performance, but when it involves graphical capabilities, the Surface Book 2 is miles before its smaller sibling if you configure it with the dedicated graphics chip.
Feeding off of all that power, the displays in both systems are excellent, each with identical pixel densities of 267 pixels per inch. the sole difference is that the Surface Book 2 features a slightly higher resolution of three ,000 x 2,000, vs. 2,736 x 1,824 on the professional 7, to account for its extra inch of screen space.
Portability
Both the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Book 2 are amazingly portable 2-in-1s, especially when in tablet mode. The Surface Book 2 is that the larger and heavier device with a keyboard attached, measuring 12.3 x 9.14 x 0.59-inches and weighing 3.62 pounds within the Core i7 configuration. However, once you remove the keyboard and use it as a tablet, it weighs just 1.6 pounds.
The Surface Pro 7, on the opposite hand, weighs 1.7 pounds without the detachable keyboard and measures 11.5 x 7.9 x 0.33-inches.
Where the Surface Pro 7 may be a little easier to handle, it can’t match the Surface Book 2’s battery life. the professional 7 offers eight and a half hours of battery life in our testing, but the Surface Book 2 managed 11 hours of web browsing and 17 hours for video playback in our testing. One important caveat, though, is that the Surface Book 2 has two batteries — one within the keyboard, and one within the tablet. The one within the tablet is smaller, so battery life in tablet-only mode is merely two to 3 hours.
The Book is best , but there’s a but
Picking a winner out of those two Surface 2-in-1s is difficult, as it’s a case of every being better at certain things. The Surface Pro 7 is cheaper and offers better hardware at that lower cost point. But it’s not as sturdy, nor as capable graphically, nor as long-lasting because the Surface Book 2.
Even still, the Surface Pro 7 are going to be the higher option for many people. The Surface Book 2 is that the more advanced piece of hardware, but it’s also costlier and has an outdated CPU. If you would like a fanatical GPU and killer battery life, it’s near-perfect. most of the people don’t need that graphical might, which makes the Surface Pro 7 the higher option.
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