Got this the second day it becomes available at Best Buy. I bought this for my girlfriend, who is currently pursuing an architecture degree. Main use: Office, autoCAD, SketchUp, Photoshop, ArcGIS, etc.
The set up was a breeze. Ported everything from her Microsoft account. After installation of a few essential softwares this bad boy is good to go.
Looking at the form factor and the build quality of the Surface Book, it is by far the closest laptop on the market compared with a Mac. I am using a Macbook Pro myself so I am able to compare them side-by-syde. Surface book is just as beautiful, and feels just as premium, if not better. The hinge makes it look a little bit thicker than expected, but still very portable. The screen is crystal-clear, but keep in mind it has quite some glare.
I haven't tested much on the performance side, but so far everything runs blazing fast including booting and opening - closing apps. Sepcs-wise, it shouldn't disappoint. 6th gen i7 CPU, discrete Nvidia Graphics card, 16G of RAM, and especially the format of solid state drive is NVMe, the latest and fastest on the market. I have installed all the aforementioned softwares so hopefully after my girlfriend gives it some road test I will be able to update on the performance.
Regarding the features, I love its 2-in-1 capability, and its laptop-first mentality. By that I mean, if you use it under laptop mode (screen and keyboard together), you will never notice that it can be a tablet. A solid, all-round laptop. The detachable screen gives the Surface Book its unique versatility: it functions by itself as a tablet. Has 1024 pressure sensitive stylus. You can write notes, draw, doodle, do other creative works, read, etc, on the tablet. The writing experience is very very close to true pen-and-paper. If you own a Surface Pro, you probably understand what I'm talking about. What's more, you can even turn the screen around, facing outwards, and still plug it back into the keyboard base, to make it a kiosk. Fold it all the way down, you got a clipboard. Versatility at its finest.
There are some Cons that I have noticed, however, that need some attention. But maybe some of them are just personal preference. I will leave you to be the judge.
1, The CPU is ULV, not the normal wattage processor that you see in most high-configuration devices. The 6-gen ULV i7 in the Surface Book only has two cores, whereas a previous generation non ULV i7 has four cores and higher TDP. This means, although Surface Book is fast, it probably won't be up to highly demanding tasks, compared with those workstations.
2, It gets moderately warm, even under light work. I think that's because the i7 cpu is fit in the ultra-thin screen. So if you run CPU intensive tasks, the screen can get hot; if you run GPU intensive tasks, the keyboard gets hot. Normally if a PC runs very hot, it will slow itself down, causing a lot of unresponsiveness and lags. I hope this device won't be too bad on thermal handling. I will update on that.
3, The Graphics card is not the gaming chip that a gamer would expect. From early reviews and tests of this laptop, it shows that the Nvidia custom GPU is close to a GTX 940M in performance. So Don't expect to play a lot of games with high settings with the Surface Book. However, mainstream games with med-to-low settings are most likely to cut it.
4, The hinge does make the Surface Book look a little bit weird. One end is thicker than the other end, and the laptop cannot completely be closed. But aesthetics mainly depend on personal preference. Personally I don't see it as a big deal.
5, The battery life of the tablet alone is short. So you cannot unplug the screen, take only the screen with you and expect it to last all day. The screen has no port except a headphone jack (so no charging). I would say, this laptop is designed to spend only about 25% of the time as a tablet.
All in all, it's still a well-designed and great-looking laptop, with mostly all of the latest bells and whistles. I hope this Surface Book can give my girlfriend a good 3 years (or more) of usage.