OUR EARLY VERDICT
The Surface Studio is an incredibly clever, powerful and gorgeous all-in-one PC that, judging by its price, is clearly not for everyone. Regardless, Microsoft may very well have set the bar for all-in-one PCs in the same way it has for 2-in-1 laptops.
FOR
- Gorgeous touch display
- Clever design
- Powerful innards
AGAINST
- Quite pricey
- Surface Dial not included
- Old graphics tech
Update: Craving something in a more portable creative workstation? The Surface Book i7 combines strong graphics power with the versatility that only a 2-in-1 laptop can provide.
In the hardware space, Microsoft has been all about setting standards. It’s done it for 2-in-1 laptops with the Surface Pro 4, and now it seems to have set the bar for all-in-one PCs with the Surface Studio.
Just as the rumors and leaks foretold, the Surface Studio is a 28-inch all-in-one PC with a new iteration on Microsoft’s PixelSense display, and an all-new way to control the device in the Surface Dial.
What the rumors and leaks didn’t prepare us for, however, was the price: a whopping $2,999 (around £2,450, AU$3,920; UK and Australia pricing is yet to be confirmed).
How does the Surface Studio justify that astronomical price tag? By being a very strong contender for the title of ‘Best All-in-One PC of All Time’, that’s how.
Release date and price
You can pre-order the Surface Studio right now, assuming you have a minimum of $2,999 (around £2,450, AU$3,920) lying around. It doesn’t come cheap, but for that price you’ll get an adjustable, 28-inch PixelSense display, a 6th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M GPU.
If you need more power for your day-to-day routine, however, you can upgrade to an i7 configuration with 16GB of RAM or an i7 with 32GB of RAM and a 4GB GTX 980M GPU for $3,499 (about £2,780, AU$4,590) or $4,199 (about £3,340, $5,510), respectively.
Since its reveal on October 26, Surface Studio pre-sales have fared so well Microsoft is actually out of stock, with any orders made after that brief window following the announcement set to ship in “early 2017.” Those fortunate enough to buy early should have received their units in the mail by now.
Although every Surface Studio comes with a Surface Keyboard, Surface Mouse and Windows 10 Pro pre-installed, the complementary Surface Dial offer, a $99 (about £79, AU$130) accessory, expired on December 1.
Latest developments
For those who ordered early enough, the Surface Studio should have arrived on your doorstep by now. Otherwise, when it does, make sure to crack open Windows Update to take advantage of some of the snazzy improvements to the GPU, including an expanded catalog of supported games, perfect for Insiders taking advantage of the recently-launched Game Mode.
More recently, Microsoft even cited Surface Studio in a slideshow it presented at the WinHEC 2016 conference in China back in December. This news stems from slides acquired by ZDNet, which suggest that the ‘modern PC’ – at least according to Microsoft – leverages a sleek bezel-less design, quirky peripherals like Surface Dial and support for ‘hero features’ such as touch and pen.
Better yet, Dell has challenged Microsoft with its Canvas 27 touch monitor that can be used in conjunction with your existing PC. It packs roughly the same screen size as the Surface Studio, but according to a rep speaking with Gizmodo, doesn’t sport last year’s hardware, a clear jab at the Surface Studio’s use of the Intel Skylake processors and Nvidia Maxwell GPUs.
Design, feel and what’s inside
Microsoft touted on stage that, at 12.5mm at its thickest point, the Surface Studio is the thinnest desktop monitor ever created. The word ‘monitor’ is key there, as there’s actually no hardware within the screen unit, as with most all-in-one PCs.
Nay, Microsoft shoved all of that stuff – the processor, the graphics, the memory and the hard drive – into the tiny base that holds the ‘zero-gravity hinge’. It makes for a beautiful-looking product that makes the hardware seem to disappear.
The zero-gravity hinge absorbs all of the torque required to move the 13-pound display, making it shockingly easy to switch between its standard desktop PC orientation and that of a massive digital drawing surface. The chrome hinges on which the screen sits give the all-aluminum device a welcome touch of sheen.
Using the device in its 20-degree-angled drawing orientation feels wonderful, even for someone who isn’t a digital artist by any stretch. It’s like having the most powerful Wacom tablet in the world, which just so happens to be a complete computer running Windows 10 Pro.
The components inside allow for a seamless drawing experience, in that your taps, swipes and other stylus gestures are rendered so near 1:1 that it seems as instantaneous as creating physical art.
Those components include up to a quad-core Intel Core i7-6820HQ processor at 2.7GHz, Nvidia’s GTX 980M graphics chip with 4GB of memory, as much as 32GB of RAM and a hybrid hard drive as large as 2TB (128GB SSD).
All of this sits in the Mac Mini-like puck in the base, which in turn powers the 4500 x 3000 (!!!) touchscreen at 192 pixels per inch.
Now, you might balk at the graphics chip from last year, and Microsoft hasn’t had much to say about why this device doesn’t include a 10-series Nvidia chip with the latest Pascal architecture.
Our best guess is that Microsoft started work on this way before Pascal was even a thing, and got the power it wanted out of the old-hat graphics processor.
Likewise, it’s also running an older-generation Intel mobile processor, due to there not being any high-end Kaby Lake processors yet.
In our brief time with the device we didn’t encounter any graphical performance issues that we think would be fixed with the absolute latest Nvidia graphics. While you could certainly game on this device, that shouldn’t be the end goal for your three grand spent.
All in all, the Studio feels like the most premium all-in-one we’ve ever laid hands on – and something we’d have no business working on short of a full TechRadar review.
The Surface Dial, and how it works
One of the most interesting bits about the Surface Studio isn’t the all-in-one at all, but its brand-new accessory, the Surface Dial. This is a radial control module that operates over Bluetooth, just like the included Surface Keyboard and Surface Mouse.
But, unless you’re pre-ordering a Surface Studio immediately as of this writing, you’ll have to pony up an additional $99 to take advantage of it – here’s why you might want to do that.
The Dial offers specific controls in certain Windows apps, like the upcoming Paint3D, allowing for quick access to controls that you’d otherwise have to stop drawing to use. For instance, in Bing Maps, you can use the Dial to zoom and tilt a 3D map image.
In an app like Paint3D, you can access all sorts of color swatches and pen or brush styles by simply long-pressing the Dial. Then, you just turn the dial to your desired selection, and press in once.
Better yet, the Dial can interact with the Surface Studio screen to make its radial options around the device when it’s placed anywhere on the screen’s surface. Imagine drawing something with the Surface Pen in your right hand and immediately changing the color of your input with the Dial in your left hand. It’s a marvel to watch, much less try yourself.
Of course, the Surface Dial is one of those accessories that only digital artists and other creative professionals are going to get the most out of. But that’s who the Surface Studio is aimed at anyway: digital artists that are sick of using separate surfaces to create on.
Early verdict
Microsoft may very well have set another high bar in a hardware category that hasn’t seen much innovation geared toward professionals in a while, save for advances in resolution. You might balk at the price, and chances are that, if you do, then you don’t work for a design firm or do freelance digital artwork.
And, with such an exorbitant price, it’s as if Microsoft knows that. That’s compounded by the fact that the company is releasing the Surface Studio in limited quantities for the holidays, and it has kept tight-lipped on international pricing and availability as well.
From its gorgeous touch display that can switch between DCI-P3 and sRGB color profiles in an instant to its awfully powerful innards and clever design, Surface Studio is the most beautiful and complete all-in-one we’ve ever seen.
The Surface Studio might not be for all of us in the same way a Surface Pro 4 might be, but that’s not the point. The point is to lay a figurative mic drop on the tech vendors powering the creative industry, and we think it’s done just that.
Sourse: techradar.com
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Man that’s way more expensive than an iMac…
The price isn’t exorbitant. There are plenty of AIOs out there that don’t have a touchscreen, or that do but you can’t use with a digital pen. Or that don’t drop to the angles that this one does. Or that don’t have the colour-switching capabilities, and so on. There are so many of these little nuances on this machine that add up to a fantastic piece of kit that is unrivalled.
The point is you go into a DIY store and you look at the price of professional tools – why pay £200 for a drill when you can buy one for £50? – but then you use the tools and you realise why the professionals buy them and pay the money.
I know if this had Pascal graphics it would have been amazing, but realistically a 980M in a device of this intended purpose is more than enough. It’s still plenty good enough to play all modern games at a respectable level. Only a few months ago it was basically the best low power GPU you could wish for. It’s a shame everyone latches on to that.
This is one of those devices, like the Surface Book, that I have no requirement for but I want one anyway.
Microsoft are top of their game right now.
I’ve had a Surface Pro 3 for about a year and love it. But it works best at close quarters, and for my “desktops” I have more conventional setups. (A MacBook Pro provided by my employer at work, and a tricked-out non-touch Win10 laptop for a home music production studio.)
I’m maybe a year away from upgrading the home studio, and was thinking of building it around a Surface Pro and a docking station, but something like the Surface Studio just might be the answer.
OMG. Surface Studio look amazing. This looks like the ultimate Adobe Creative Suite System. Pen, Dial & Touch with Photoshop, Premiere? Yes, right now.
The worst thing is you’re missing the fact that touch screens now have oleophobic coatings that are so good that you can use them all day long without needing to clean them or worry about greasy finger smears. These hugely impressive coatings also reject dust a hundred times better than screens used to.
Can’t speak for other people but I’m not one for using anything with greasy hands and like to keep my screens clean anyway.
You’re obviously not creative enough to appreciate that there are products out there that are as good as and in fact now much better than anything Apple has to offer. I feel sorry for anybody who fails to realise that the world has moved on since the the likes of the MacBook were first introduced.
As an example, you only have to look at the Touch bar to recognise the fact that Apple now have an outdated operating system that is unsuitable for touch and this is the best alternative they could come up with.
In fact it’s rather naive and short sighted not to recognise the fact, the sort of attitude I would expect from a rank amateur. Your loss though, there are plenty of professionals out there using products other than Apple and are doing rather well for themselves.
No, you’re just being pedantic. It’s perfectly obvious to everybody else that “products at all price points” means the range of products they have, not the main event.
Take a look at the LENOVO
IdeaCentre AIO 910 – pretty much where MS stole their idea from.
I don’t think it’s fair to say they stole the idea. I see your point but most AIOs look pretty much the same to begin with, and there are a few with a lot of adjustment on the hinges, but I think it’s about there that the comparisons end.
The Lenovo does make a decent cheaper alternative though and I like the fact that you can turn the monitor on without having to turn on the rest of the PC. However the touchscreen model is only available with an i5 processor and the huge bezel, which has to be the thickest I have ever seen, makes it look dated and does spoil the appearance somewhat.
Wacom is pricy, but their pens are superior – the tech used in the Surface pens has a bit of a jitter problem, requires more initial activation force (meaning it’s more difficult to get light strokes), and has fewer pressure levels. However it’s still not bad, and it’s good that the Surface & iPad Pro is forcing Wacom to actually innovate – its new displays coming out in Dec finally have improved accuracy, less latency, and a huge jump in pressure sensitivity (though I think it’ll be hard to tell the difference in pressure in real world use).
Are people saying that the Surface pen is jittery because that is what they have read elsewhere, or from experience? I only ask because I use one daily with a Surface Pro 4, i5 processor, and I have never experienced any jitter whatsoever.
When making light strokes the screen must be absolutely clean for best results – I only mention it because I saw a YouTube video where an “artist” was complaining about it but he was using a demo Studio at the launch venue, and when the camera caught the reflective light you could see that the screen just needed a good clean – but if it is, it seems fine to me, I have been hugely impressed with the pen.
Apple took the glowing fruit away. How will everyone at the Starbucks see your beacon of individuality across the room? Maybe vigorously swipe your fingers across the touch bar while mixing some def tunes, something like Moby. That should get their attention.
I have a Dell XPS with a touch screen and I never see smudges. That’s because when its on, smudges simply do not show up with the screen brightness. I clean my screens (regardless if they are touch) once a week anyway.
Touch screen iPads seem to be so popular that Apple has not felt the need to add mousing to iOS.
You might want to look at the Razor Blade Pro. Far better spend for high end portable workstation that is far more powerful and has far more features.
I agree with the idea of having this as just a monitor that, say, a Surface Pro could plug into or even a high end tower. I would not be surprised if that actually gets made next year.
You can’t compare this superb, ground-breaking product with 28″ touchscreen and Surface Dial to the boring, grossly-overpriced MacBook with gimmick Touch Bar and only 16gb of ram. MacBook also runs the buggy OS X, which is far inferior to Windows 10 Professional.
The products are in different classes, Microsoft has created something revolutionary here.
I am more of a Microsoft fan but even I would not suggest Mac OS is more buggy than Windows 10. The thing about W10 is that its innovation dial is set to 11 and is just screaming with new features every quarter. Mac is more stable, its just a bit stale.
I haven’t used mac in a while, but isn’t their cloud stuff a little glitchy still? Like nearly everything that relies on Apple Servers (which probably haven’t been upgraded ever since the Xserve was discontinued)?
Yes, this is my take too. My Surface Pro 4 pen is excellent. After trying a Cintiq, I could notice the quality, but it also made me realize how good the SP pen is too.
Surface 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Book