Microsoft announces the upgraded, more powerful Surface Book 2

In a surprise move, Microsoft has announced the Surface Book 2, the company’s successor to the original Surface Book released back in 2015.

While the first Surface Book received an upgrade last year, including improved internals and a new Nvidia GeForce GPU, along with additional battery life, Microsoft is positioning the Surface Book 2 as a full upgrade.

The new 2-in-1 comes in 15-inch and 13-inch display variants and is capable of 17 hours of battery life, according to Microsoft — an incremental update over its predecessor’s promised 16 hours. The device’s processor has also been bumped up to Intel’s 8th-generation dual/quad-core silicon, depending on the selected configuration of the laptop.

Unlike the recently released Surface Pro revamp, Microsoft has also interestingly opted to include a USB-C port in the laptop, as well as standard USB ports — future-proofing the device, but also not forcing user’s to adopt the often frustrating ‘dongle life’ like Apple has with its MacBook Pro line.

Microsoft claims that the new Surface Book 2 has “five times” the power of the original Surface Book and double the power of the MacBook Pro. Graphics card wise, the new Surface Book comes equipped with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB of RAM, which could effectively make the new Surface Book 2 a decent, though still a very pricey gaming machine. Microsoft is positioning the detachable 2-in-1 as a laptop that’s capable of both gaming, as well as powering recently released Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Microsoft specifically says that the new Surface Book is capable of playing Gears of War 4 and Forza 7 at 1080p 60fps, which is an impressive feat for a somewhat compact, detachable laptop.

The 13.5-inch Surface Book 2 and 15-inch Surface Book 2 is set to launch in the U.S. on November 16th, while pre-orders will begin on November 9th. On the company’s Canadian website, it notes only that the 13.5-inch laptop is ‘Coming Soon.’

Canadian pricing is as follows:

• 8GB of RAM/256GB Intel i5 – $1979.00 
• 8GB of RAM/256GB Intel i7 – $2,649.00 
• 16GB of RAM/512GB Intel i7 – $3,249.00
• 16GB of RAM/1TB Intel i7 – $3,849.00  

Update 10/17/17: Added Canadian Surface Book 2 pricing.

Update 10/17/17 — 2: Added Canadian launch date.

Update 10/17/17 — 3: Microsoft Canada says the launch date is yet to be confirmed, and that the previous launch date was provided to MobileSyrup in error.