Surface Book 2: More cores, more GPU, and more screen

Just over two years ago, Microsoft unveiled its Surface Book hybrid laptop: a tablet with a detachable hinged keyboard base. It was a compelling concept, with Microsoft pulling off some clever tricks. The base contained a battery, boosting the life of the tablet portion substantially, and could optionally contain a discrete GPU, too. A little under a year ago, the Surface Book was partially refreshed: a new base was offered with a bigger battery and a faster GPU. The tablet portion, however, was left unchanged.

Today, Microsoft unveiled not only a full refresh of the system-both tablet and base are being updated-but a whole new version of the machine. Surface Book 2 (Microsoft is using numerical version number suffixes here, even after abandoning the practice with the Surface Pro) will come in two sizes. There's a 13-inch model, same as before, but this is now paired with a 15-inch version.

The broad concept of Surface Book remains the same. The screen half of the "laptop" is in fact a tablet computer, containing the processor, memory, mass storage, and a battery; the "keyboard" half is a larger battery, some expansion ports, and, optionally, a discrete GPU. The systems look essentially the same as the old versions, too, with the 15-inch version looking for all intents and purposes like a scaled-up version of the 13-inch one.

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