Microsoft’s Newest 15-Inch Surface Book 2 Config Is $200 Cheaper
The Surface Book 2 is an impressive 2-in-1 laptop for sure, provided you're comfortable spending a premium on such a device. There is really no way around it—the Surface Book 2 carries a high price tag. That said, Microsoft has added a slightly cheaper configuration of its 15-inch model, one that is $200 less expensive than the previous baseline config.
Before today, the least expensive 15-inch Surface Book 2 was $2,199, which came with an 8th generation Intel Core i7 8650U processor paired with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU (6GB GDDR5), 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB solid state drive.
What about the cheaper $1,999 model? It swaps the Core i7 chip for a Core i5-8350U CPU, which is also an 8th generation part (Kaby Lake-R), and ditches the discrete graphics. It retains the 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD, though.
You're essentially trading raw CPU horsepower and of course a fair bit of GPU muscle to hit the cheaper price point, while still spending in the two-grand tier. As for how the processors compare between the two configurations, here's a look at the speds...
- Core i5-8350U: 4 cores / 8 threads, 1.7GHz to 3.6GHz, 6MB cache, 15W TDP
- Core i7-8650U: 4 cores / 8 threads, 1.9GHz to 4.2GHz, 8MB cache, 25W TDP
Dropping down to integrated graphics is the bigger blow, unless you don't plan on doing anything GPU intensive, like playing games or certain content creation chores. In that case, it's a savings of $200 for a premium 2-in-1 in the 15-inch space.
To be clear, the Surface Book 2 is not a gaming laptop. However, the $2,199 configuration certainly has the hardware to play games at 1080p. If you need graphics horsepower, the more expensive configuration is still the way to go.
Hit in the link in the Via field below to check the Surface Book 2 out and/or to play with different configuration options.
