Microsoft just announced a slew of new
products with the Surface Book 3 and Surface Go 2 being the highlight. There
aren't any major design changes with the Book 3, but the under the hood tweaks
are significant while the Go 2 is having both.
The biggest change in the Surface Book 3
is the newest 10th Generation Intel CPUs on board. The company is keeping both
flavors - the 13.5-inch and the 15-inch variant. The former can be configured
with Core i5 and Core i7 processors with the base model starting at US$ 1,599,
while the base model with a discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU starts
at US$ 1,999.
The 15-inch model can also be configured
with up to Core i7 chips, but more importantly, Microsoft is now offering an
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660Ti and Quadro RTX 3000 GPUs as an option. The latter
starts at US$ 3,499. The company says that the Surface Book 3 is built with
designers, engineers, developers and gamers in mind. And that's why
configurations can now go up to 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB PCie NVMe SSDs.
Moving onto the Surface Go 2, the smallest
tablet in the Surface family is getting a revamp on the outside and on the
inside. Well, as far as the front side is concerned. The screen has grown in size
from 10-inch to 10.5", but the body hasn't changed. This means that bezels
are considerably thinner this time around and resolution has been bumped up to
1920 x 1280 while still maintaining that 3:2 aspect ratio.
A Pentium Gold CPU still comes as a base
option for US$ 399, but there is also a new 8th Gen Core m3 option as well. The
latter also comes with upgraded 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD for US$ 629. You can spec
up the Pentium Gold variant too and it will cost you US$ 80 less. The Type Cover
is once again priced at US$ 99 and it's sold separately.
An upgrade in the battery department is
also at hand, so under normal usage, it should last you about 10 hours away
from the plug. LTE connectivity has also been added but only for the top Core
m3 configuration for US$ 729.
Finally, Microsoft announced a follow-up
of the Surface Headphones called Surface Headphones 2. The centerpiece feature
is still active noise cancellation, which is adjustable. The ANC has also been
tuned for human voices so it should be able to perform better in this regard.
ANC phones are usually struggling with that. A new black color option is
available.
The new version of the headphones bumps up
the Bluetooth to 5.0 and complies with Qualcomm's aptX Bluetooth codec. The ear
cups can now rotate 180 degrees too and battery life is rated at 20 hours up
from 15 on the previous generation.
No other changes have been made and the
price is still US$ 249 and will be available starting May 12.
