Surface Book’s surprise break-out: Screen dazzles as a tablet

Microsoft’s new line of polished portable computers, introduced for sale this week, should give a bit of competitive Halloween-week fright to laptop manufacturers, including Apple.

When the company introduced new devices to the tech media early this month, expectations focused on a version 4 of the Surface Pro — Microsoft’s powerful tablet with a detachable keyboard.

But Microsoft also unveiled the Surface Book, a clamshell laptop with a detachable screen. That was a bit of a surprise.

The Surface Book is a high-end, and high-priced, laptop that matches Apple’s MacBook Pro in performance and quality of construction, but it goes the Apple laptop better by offering a high-resolution, detachable touch screen that can be used very effectively as a tablet.

As a laptop: A striking feature of the Surface Book is its silver-anodized case, which is distinguished from a MacBook Pro mainly by its sharp edges and the curious sliver of empty space that remains when the device is closed. That space is created by the design of the hinge, which accommodates the display either in the usual laptop fashion or reversed, so that the display can be used as a tablet while still attached to the keyboard base.

Used as a laptop, the Surface Book has a solid feel, and the backlit keyboard matches other high-end devices, with good travel on the keys and excellent tactile feedback.

The display — at 13.5 inches and a maximum resolution of 3,000 x 2,000 — is spectacular. Whether in laptop mode or tablet mode, the Surface Book offers the best digital reading I’ve experienced.

And thanks to the inclusion of a dedicated Nvidia chip with hardware acceleration, the Surface Book is fully up to handling professional photo- and video- editing tasks, though it might lag a little when it comes to the most demanding gaming.

There are three pointing devices you can use: the built-in (and very responsive) trackpad, the new Surface Pen and an optional Bluetooth mouse.

Oh, yes. There’s actually a fourth pointing device you can use: your fingers. Because the Surface Book supports 10-point multitouch, you can scroll with the flick of a finger, zoom in or out by squeezing or spreading two fingers, and select items on screen with a tap. While I largely rely on a mouse, I soon found myself using my fingers to scroll and zoom documents, even when working in laptop mode.

While the Surface Book — with a footprint of 12.3 x 9.14 inches — is significantly larger than the Surface Pro, it’s actually easier to use in places with limited tabletops, including your lap, since the device requires no kickstand to support the display.

Tablet mode: Many of the device’s components, including all the ports except the headphone jack and most of the battery, were designed into the keyboard half of the laptop, making the tablet surprisingly slim and light and a delight to use.

Bear in mind, however, Microsoft’s decision to house 75 percent of the battery in the keyboard base also means a relatively short battery life of three hours for tablet use alone, compared with the 11-plus hours supported by the conjoined device.

That said, Microsoft was smart in designing the parceled-out battery system. When using the Surface Book as a laptop, the device will drain the main battery first, leaving the tablet part almost fully charged. And when you reconnect the display, its battery will be charged before the main battery.

Undocking the tablet is done by pressing down the docking button at the top of the keyboard until you see the screen flicker — a result of the display switching over to the lesser-powered graphics processor embedded in the Intel CPU — and you hear the sound of a latch opening.

The stylus included with the Surface Pro 3 has been enhanced and included with both the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4. The pen can detect 1,024 degrees of pressure, making it much more effective as a drawing and painting device.

You can also use the button on the top of the pen to launch OneNote, or by holding it down instead of clicking you can summon Cortana, the voice-enable assistant in Windows 10. The new pen attaches firmly to the side of both the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4 via magnetic connection.

The keyboard base of the Surface Book also offers two USB 3.0 ports, a mini-DisplayPort for video and a full-size SD card slot. I just wish Microsoft’s designers had opted for a spring-loaded slot that allows the SD card to be inserted fully in the base.

Bottom line: Other than the exposed SD card, the only design and performance shortcomings I’ve found are minor. The Surface Book, for example, does occasionally have audible fan noise, but that’s bound to be the case until next-generation processors eliminate the need for fans.

Also, on one occasion the task bar and system tray disappeared, and I had to reboot to get them back.

Finally, I find the slim design of the front edge of the clamshell makes it difficult to open the device, and very awkward to do so with one hand.

And yes, you pay more in dollars and extra weight (the unit I tested — with 16 gigabytes of RAM and 500 gigabytes of SSD storage — weighed in at 3.4 pounds, about twice as heavy as the Surface Pro 4).

While the Surface Book is pricey — beginning at $1,499 and topping out at $3,199 — it is powerful, solid and has a beautiful, high-resolution display. The Book is, in short, a classy, professional machine. And when you detach the screen, you’ll find it delivers an unsurpassed tablet experience.