The Microsoft Surface Studio Review
by Brett Howse on January 20, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Desktop
- Microsoft
- Surface
- Surface Studio
Microsoft has only been in the PC system game for a few years now, but over the last couple of years they have made a lot of progress rather quickly. These days they have a solid foundation of products available, with the Surface Pro 4 being one of the best convertible tablets, the Surface Book being a very solid convertible laptop, and also the more specialized products like the Hololens, and Surface Hub. Going into their October 2016 event, the one missing piece of their PC product lineup was a desktop computer, but with the announcement and release of the Surface Studio, that particular gap has now been filled.
But the Surface Studio is not your typical desktop PC. Even at first glance, the sleek, beautiful lines are readily apparent, and once powered on, it is rare for anyone to first glimpse the 28.125-inch 4500x3000 display and not say “wow”. It’s not only the very high resolution, but also the 3:2 aspect ratio that is unheard of in this segment, that makes the display stand out as something unique.
Microsoft has become one of the superlative hardware manufacturers in only the short span of four years or so, and the Surface Studio is one of their finest designs yet. However, from the very first Surface RT, Microsoft always tries to add something different, but more importantly interesting, to their designs, and in the case of the Surface Studio, it is the zero-gravity hinge, which allows the all-in-one to be quickly and easily tilted back to a 20° angle, letting it be used as a huge, digital drafting table. Microsoft announced the Surface Studio at their October Windows event, where they also announced the next Windows 10 Update, called the Creator’s Update, and it is wonderful to see them building hardware to truly bring out the exclusive features of their software.
Packed into the base of the Surface Studio is a laptop-class computer, with three different models available now. The base model, coming in at $2999, features an Intel Core i5-6440HQ processor, 8 GB of memory, a 1 TB hybrid drive with a 64 GB SSD cache, and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M GPU. The mid-level model, which costs $3499, bumps the CPU up to an Intel Core i7-6820HQ, doubles the RAM to 16 GB, and doubles the SSD cache to a PCIe 128 GB model, with the same 1 TB HDD and GTX 965M. The highest priced model, at $4199, is an Intel Core i7-6820HQ, 32 GB of RAM, a 2 TB hybrid drive with a 128 GB PCIe cache, and a NVIDIA GTX 980M GPU with 4 GB of memory.
| Microsoft Surface Studio | ||||||
| Base | Middle | Top (As Tested) | ||||
| CPU | Intel Core i5-6440HQ Quad-Core, 2.6-3.5 GHz 6 MB Cache, 45W TDP, No Hyperthreading |
Intel Core i7-6820HQ Quad-Core, 2.7-3.6 GHz 8 MB Cache, 45W TDP, Hyperthreading |
||||
| GPU | NVIDIA GTX 965M 1024 CUDA Cores 944 Mhz + Boost 2 GB GDDR5 128-bit memory |
NVIDIA GTX 980M 1536 CUDA Cores 1038 Mhz + Boost 4 GB GDDR5 256-bit memory |
||||
| RAM | 8 GB DDR4 | 16 GB DDR4 | 32 GB DDR4 | |||
| Storage | 1 TB Hybrid Drive 64 GB SATA SSD Cache / 1 TB SATA HDD |
1 TB Hybrid Drive 128 GB PCIe SSD Cache / 1 TB SATA HDD |
2 TB Hybrid Drive 128 GB PCIe SSD Cache / 2 TB SATA HDD |
|||
| IO | 4 USB 3.0 ports - one high power port Full size SD Card Slot Headset Jack Xbox Wireless Connectivity DisplayPort |
|||||
| Display | 28.125-inch PixelSense Display 4500 x 3000 resolution 192 DPI sRGB, DCI-P3, P3 D65 color modes |
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| Webcam | 5 MP Webcam Windows Hello Facial Recognition |
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| Networking | Marvel AVASTAR 802.11ac Intel I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet |
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| Price | $2,999 | $3,499 | $4,199 | |||
There was quite a bit of discussion at the time of the Surface Studio launch over the fact that it was equipped with older technology. Intel’s Kaby Lake quad-core parts just launched at CES this year, so Skylake quad-core CPUs were the latest generation available at launch. The Maxwell based graphics options chosen were not the latest generation mobile graphics from NVIDIA, with the GTX 965M and GTX 980M available in the Studio. The Pascal based GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 would have been much more powerful substitutes, but they are not pin-compatible drop-in components with the Maxwell GPUs in the Surface Studio, meaning a new board design and thermal considerations would have been necessary late in the design phase, and Microsoft appears to have been conservative here to avoid missing their launch window.
Microsoft has also been very conservative with their I/O choices, with four USB 3.0 Type-A ports on the back of the Studio, along with a SD card slot, and mini DisplayPort. As with the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, Microsoft has continued to provide only the older USB-A ports, and not even offer a single USB-C port, let alone with Thunderbolt. Anyone purchasing a Studio will likely be using it for several years, and the lack of USB-C is going to be an issue in the future, if not already today. The Surface team really needs to reconsider this as it is already a detriment to not include any.
There also must be some questions raised about the use of a hybrid drive in a PC of this price. We’ll dig in to the experience later, but Microsoft could and should offer a larger SSD as the boot disk, complimented by a HDD as a secondary disk, at least on the highest end model. A 512 GB NVMe SSD as the boot drive would appease much of the criticism. The computer does cost over $4000 after all, and while much of the cost of the device is in the display, SSDs have been the biggest improvement in user experience on the PC in a long time.
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tipoo - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
Nice machine it seems like. People may balk at the price, but a 27 inch digitizer like a Wacom almost costs as much as this machine, and doesn't have a fairly high performance computer inside either.That said, that's also why I wish there was a touchscreen-free version for less, I'm not artsy enough to need that, but a straight iMac competitor from Microsoft could be nice.
Seems a lot of people have been griping about lack of a 1060, but the 980M is near identical in performance.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards...
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
A 1080m would be preferred, in all honesty.tipoo - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
Probably wouldn't fit in here. The laptop TDPs aren't that much lower than the desktop TDPs in this generation as they're mostly the same chip with slightly lower clocks. The cooling design seems pretty elaborate as-is just for the 980M.DanNeely - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
TDPs for the mobile pascal are finally out, and a mobile 1070 might fit the TDP constraints. the 980M is a 100W part, vs 80/110/150 for the mobile 1060/70/80 GPUs. It's 10W more on paper; but nVidia has been more flexible with power vs performance on mobile parts before. Worst case I'd assume that like the surface book, they'd just slap a different model number on a cut power/performance model.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graph...
BrokenCrayons - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
I have to wonder a little where those TDP numbers came from because GeForce.com, the cited source, doesn't appear to have them listed anyplace I could find on a cursory search. If the numbers are accurate, then when I made an off the cuff estimate about the mobile 1080 TDP being not too far off the 180W of its desktop counterpart based on heat pipe counts extrapolated from a single pipe on a Dell Latitude D630 accounting for power draw from the dual PSUs of this laptop...http://www.anandtech.com/show/10795/the-clevo-p870...
...then I was pretty darned close to reality. Anyway, if those are accurate, the TDP is HIGHLY disappointing. 75W for the 1050? What's wrong with people? A midrange GPU used to have a TDP of 20W back in the 8600M GT days and a low end 8400M GS was a mere 11W. Those GPUs were in much thicker, relatively less cramped laptops too so cooling them was easy. While it's nice to see Intel lowering TDP as technology improves, Nvidia (AMD too) continue to increase TDP despite node shrinks. It's a good time to exit computer gaming entirely and sit it out until GPUs hit the same TDP peak and then decline the CPU industry discovered years ago.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
I am curious as well. the 1050 mobile pulling 75 watt would make no sense, as the 960m was only a 55 watt part, and the 1050ti is not only faster, but fits in the same power envelope. The 1050 is much more likely to be a 30 watt part.Icehawk - Sunday, January 22, 2017 - link
Huh? Since Maxwell power #s have been getting smaller, I can run a gaming rig off a 450W supply instead of a 600+.BrokenCrayons - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
"Since Maxwell" is not a very long history. Besides that "can run a gaming rig" isn't a very specific measurement. SLI? Low end GPU? High end GPU? CPU TDP? Number of hard drives? Other components in the system? Look a bit deeper. In addition to that, I've NEVER run a "gaming rig" off more than a 400W PSU. That doesn't mean much of anything though without me offering a long history of computer hardware configurations that can quantify power consumption. In addition to that, most people usually purchase more power supply than they really need because they're caught in marketing hype and overly conservative vendor recommendations. I've seen quite a few 1KW power supplies feeding a 95W processor and a single midrange graphics card for when 350W would be entirely sufficient.fanofanand - Monday, January 23, 2017 - link
You couldn't be more correct. I got swindled by the MOAR POWER hype on my first build, ended up with a 700W PSU to power a single HDD, a Q6600, and an 8800 GTS. I could have gotten by with 400 EASILY.BillBear - Friday, January 20, 2017 - link
A Wacom Cintiq continues to work after you purchase upgraded computer hardware, so you aren't stuck with an outdated CPU and GPU.Also, the Cintiq has double the pressure sensitivity, adds tilt sensitivity that the Surface lacks completely, and most troublesome, there is a distinct lag between moving the pen and seeing your input on the screen when compared to Wacom's professional solution.