RIP Surface Book
October 28, 2021
I’m a huge sucker for beautiful tech stuff, and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Surface Book series.
It may have started out as no more than an attempt to build a series of MacBook Pro competitors, but the three generations of Surface Book achieved more than that. Notably, the detachable design and the hybrid CPU-GPU feature make it quite a graphics-intense powerhouse that vastly outpaced any MBP at the time. Design-wise, they were also a culmination of Microsoft hardware division’s vision for personal computing.
While not technically dead (still sold refurbished and the official successor, the Surface Laptop Studio was just announced), Microsoft said that Surface Book is no more. Well, late is better than never right? Here I revisit some of the most notable design features of the Surface Book. It’s my personal tribute to the series.
THE CLIPBOARD
If the running theme of the Surface Pro is Microsoft trying to deliver a practical, appealing-to-the-mainstream design, then the Surface Book would be the physical materialization of Surface idealism verging on avant-garde. The very opposite.
The clipboard portion is the perfect tablet that Apple could/would never make because the backlash would be too much (yeah, even for Apple): No ports beside a proprietary charging/data port and a headphone jack. Small battery with just an-hour-or-so of battery life. It even gladly ditches the iconic Surface kickstand. It’s painfully obvious that the clipboard alone is 100% form-over-function, but I won’t have it any other way.
It’s a whole computer, complete with a giant 3:2 display, facial recognition cameras, and a motherboard containing the CPU, memory, SSD, WLAN, and cooling fan(s). But this entire computer system measures just a little over 7mm. It’s so thin for a PC it’s almost like a portable monitor with a smartphone motherboard taped to it.
At the end of the day, Surface Book is laptop-first, and the clipboard is meant to be docked on the keyboard most of the time, with the clipboard only serving as a transitional device when a situation calls for it: when you want to draw or take a note, when you want to ditch the keyboard, or when you intend to travel light.
But with power that outmatched any pre-M1 iPad, the clipboard is decidedly anti-iPad. It’s anti-doomscrolling. You only use it shortly because it doesn’t last long on its own. But that also means you might just use it for the specific task you need it for, then attach it right back to the base.
It’s also not a do-it-all device like the iPad. Running Windows, the SB clipboard only does the few things aforementioned well, but exceptionally so.
Now with M1, the iPad Pro comes very close to this vision, but still, it’s a different type of computer. Yes it’s very powerful, but it doesn’t run AutoCAD, Premier Pro, or Blender like the SB clipboard. The clipboard retains most of its compute power even when detached, whereas the iPad Pro needs the Magic Keyboard accessory to even feel like it could be a productivity device.
SB’s clipboard reminds me of Intel NUC’s Compute Element concept. For those of you who are not familiar, the Compute Element is Intel’s modularized, upgradable compute system. As Intel releases a new generation of CPU, a user can choose to upgrade the Compute Element, and keep the NUC casing and dGPU (if any). Likewise, the RAM and SSD can also be upgraded as they are located on the Compute Element.
The clipboard is similar because it’s like a barebone laptop core designed to be paired with the GPU-inside keyboard base. Unfortunately it’s not the same. The older clipboards are not compatible with newer-gen keyboard bases. And the clipboard has really poor repairability due to Surface’s love for extensively using glue to keep the chassis pieces together. That’s a shame.
Still, it’s really surreal to hold the Surface Book clipboard in your hand, and think: “Huh, this is a computer.”
THE SPINE
The Surface Book’s unique design wouldn’t be possible without its meticulous and overengineered (really?) “Dynamic Fulcrum Hinges”, which are a natural continuation from the generations of perfecting on the Surface Pro kickstand, but substantially more complex.
On the outside, one might even call it unsightly if they don’t understand what the spine could do. The laptop doesn’t fully close when shut, leaving a non-insignificant wedge-shaped gap that can look a bit jarring.
But the Surface Book doesn’t just have an odd look. PCIe connections are running through the hinges, which allow for power and data transfers between the clipbord and the base. They also extend the base outwards, creating a leverage to better stabilize the clipboard (which, don’t forget, is a full-fledged computer and has actual weight in it).
Towards the two ends of hinges, there are also a pair of “Muscle Wire Lock” made from “shape-memory alloy”. These components are use a tiny amount of heat to change shape, to latch onto the clipboard when inserted, or release it when the user prompts the action.
For more anatomical revelation, check out the iFixit teardown on the original Surface Book.
Personally, I really like the wedge shape of the Surface Book for aesthetic reasons.
I love the way the clipboard seamlessly transitions into the hinges and then the base at a visually uniform thickness, it makes the device seem more like an organism that adapts (the hinges look like the spine on a dinosaur lol) than a machine-made laptop.
Many other laptops have hinges often break the smooth, continuous rectangular outline of a laptop deck (whether it’s a hinge bar in the middle like MacBook Pro, or a pair of smaller hinges, like the ThinkPad X1 — the Surface Laptop on the other hand, has a hidden hinge that leave the keyboard deck a complete rectangle). On the Surface Book though, every part fits together like an organic whole.
And because of the wedge-shaped gap, the keyboard on the Surface Book doesn’t recess like on every other laptop in the market, but rather it feels more like a standalone keyboard accessory. There’s also a clever raise running towards the spine, which also hides the exhaust vents among the hinge pieces from the user’s view.
The gap when closed additionally serves two purposes: finger oils collected on the keycaps won’t easily transfer onto the display, and whatever display coating there is won’t be scrapped off by the keycaps (an actual widespread issue I also had with my 12” MacBook and 13” MacBook Pro).
So, if anything, Surface Book’s spine are more than a clever solution for the engineering. It is a part of and still contributes to the Surface hardware design identity that very much holds its own against a hoard of competitors.
THE BASE
The unassuming-looking base houses an optional discrete GPU, a giant battery pack, keyboard, touchpad, and look — ports!
If it hasn’t already, the clipboard + base combo should remind you of the “MacBook Pro + Thunderbolt 3 eGPU” combo Apple was pushing a few years ago. This is basically that: an NVIDIA GPU connected to the clipboard via four PCIe 3.0 lanes.
The latest Surface Book 3 comes with either GTX 1660 Ti (15”) or GTX 1650 (13.5”), or even Quadro RTX 3000 in the business version, which is basically a pro-oriented RTX 2070. While the level of power afforded by the RTX 2070 would be too much, Quadro GPUs are standard-issue within many pro industries like visualization, CAD design, STEM, etc.
Even the “consumer” GTX cards were both meaningful upgrades over the previous GTX 1060 or 1050, which were already faster than the AMD Radeon Pro 5000 series GPUs in the MacBook Pros.
This two-part design also enables something truly one-of-a-kind in the system engineering sense: the CPU, RAM, and SSD are in the clipboard, and the GPU is in the base, creating two thermal zones far apart from one another. This allows better sustained performance particularly for the GPU, who gets a fan and dedicated vents all to itself.
What do you do with all the ample space in the base left after fitting in the NVIDIA GPU and dedicated cooling? You fill it with batteries! (We’re channeling Phil Schiller.) You fit in more ports! And you put in the best keyboard and touchpad you can!
These are exactly what Microsoft did.
- There’s almost three times as much battery in the base (15”) — the 13.5” and 15” Surface Book have 75WHrs and 85WHrs respectively. It’s no coincidence that the Book, irregrardless of the size picked, has amazing battery life.
- There’s two USB-A ports, an SD card reader, a full-feature USB-C, but don’t count out the Surface Connect port, which supports docking in addition fast-charging. There’s no HDMI, but USB-C adapters are now more ubiquitous than ever.
- The keyboard is full-sized, large, and backlit, with a comfortable 1.6mm travel. The Precision touchpad is covered with glass, which is never really massive, but it’s smooth and for a long time the best you can have on a Windows laptop.
All of these can be set aside at any time with a single press of a button — there’s the release key next to Delete on the keyboard deck, and that’s all you need to do if you need to switch up the mode or use the clipboard solo.
I’ve already showed how it’s more than just a tablet in the clipboard mode, but you can also re-attach the clipboard with the base to use in alternative ways. Either way, you detach the clipboard flip it around so the display faces outwards, then re-attach. Now, you can present your screen to other people, or press down the screen to use the Book as a digital studio.
In this mode, the display is angled, making it great for taking notes and drawing, while still benefiting from the NVIDIA GPU acceleration, making inking smoother and more fluid. Remember, because it runs full Windows, you can draw directly into PhotoShop or Illustrator, which will happily take in all of those graphics power as you work on complex, multi-layer artwork.
I don’t draw as often as I’d like, but I do enjoy highlighting and annotating PDFs in Microsoft Edge on my Windows tablet (the ThinkPad X1 Tablet Gen.3) as well, so I can imagine the versatile design of the Book makes it even better.
Also, I remember the first generation of Surface Book couldn’t detach when the dGPU is busy — you’d have to quit that app before trying again. That has been improved, since it is now possible to move the app from dGPU to the integrated graphics on-the-fly with DX12 on the Surface Book 3.
DESIGN
Let’s cap it off with the design. The design of the Surface Book 3 is sublime. It’s understated but thoroughly brilliant. The use of magnesium alloy gives it a polymer-like matte finish, but it’s metal through-and-through. I already mentioned how at the thinnest point, the clipboard and the base are of equal height, which makes it seem like the entire device is one continuous piece when opened, and this simply striking and futuristic.
The elegant “peripheral venting” from the Surface Pro 4 are also here, and they replaced the traditional exposed vent commonplace on the back of a tablet PC. The vents in the base exhaust upwards towards the screen instead of towards the back, which allows them to be more out-of-sight.
Overall, if you take your time and pay some attention, you can really understand Surface designers’ intentions behind the design details. You will be amazed by the amount of consideration when suddenly something just clicks.
But more often than not, the design lets you work, it lets you focus on your task at hand, and that speaks so much, to Surface Book’s positioning of being a true pro laptop. ∎