Customer Ratings & Reviews

I have heard amazing things and I am waiting to understand why.

Everthing I've done with has worked perfectly. I set up my VPN to connect to my PC at work. The screen is beautful and it's fast. I did have an issue connecting my 2 printers where they wouldn't install drivers by just doing add printer but when I went to printer sites and downloaded and installed they now work fine. I purchased the Microsoft Wireless display adapter also and it connects fine to my TV and I couldn't get my Aliewware and/or Acer to find the device. I went into the store look at the Surface Pro 4 but whan i factored add the keyboard also made the price closer to the Surface Book so I jumped on the SB. It does have one issue as the Intel Graphics driver crashes and a message pops up and some users have downloaded the Beta on the new Intel driver and the problem goes away. I will wait until the real driver comes out.

I purchased a Mac Book Tablet which wasn't in stock at the time to be used when I travel for business. When it was delivered the touch pad wasn't working properly. I wasn't sure if it was me or the tablet so I had my son try it who felt it was defective. By time I got back to the store and had it checked out it was out of the 15 day warranty. The staff was very matter of fact that they couldn't help me, so I had to go to a Microsoft store and purchase a 2 year warranty to get a replacement. REDICULOUS!!!!

within a year of purchasing this the back light on the keyboard stopped working, every text field has a delay when you start to type, I constantly have to restart because one thing or another stops working (mic does not hear my voice, cursor wont move, keyboard does not register keystrokes). Over all a terrible laptop that I regret buying

I found you can not have it plugged charging & use it at the same time,, When plugged in & using the computer it got so Hot it bubbled up a some in the middle on the backside.. You have 14 days on Best buy to return it with no questions asked.. I returned 2 in a month bc I was doing both at same time, Love it as long as it doesn't set the house a Blaze..

Gets too hot ,when not even in use,and does not wants to turn on.

I bought one on day one from Best Buy. First, let me say that the laptop COULD be great and it probably will be but it's not as of now. There are just too many bugs and build issues. My unit had a faulty muscle wire release mechanism to where it would release from one side only. I updated it to the most current MS release and still no dice. I was planning on exchanging it for another but the rarity of this laptop didn't allow that so I had to return it. My local Microsoft Store had the i7 with DGPU in stock ~a little more $$$ but given the availability of the device I was willing to try it out. That unit had some build quality issues that should not be present in a $2000 plus laptop. The screen bezel displayed lumps and the detach mechanism was inconsistent (again, even after updating# The Microsoft tech agreed that the unit was faulty. In addition to the physical and build issues my the unit also was plagued by all the mentioned software glitches mentioned by users online #ie: the flickering screen, WiFi issues, screen color temp changes while scrolling web pages, random crashes, video driver crashes, etc...) In the end, it was too much for me to stomach. That said, I still love the idea and I will revisit this purchase in the coming months and most likely be re-purchasing a unit once all the bugs are squashed.

The Surface Book is not like the Surface Pro. It is like a throwback laptop from ten years ago. The detached tablet is thick and awkward. The worst thing was my network adaptor failed fatally in the first two weeks.

I'd like to start of by saying that I pre-ordered it the moment it was available after the BUILD conference. It was refreshing to see a product appear to be light years ahead of any other in the field. Upon receiving it, the build quality was gorgeous and the screen impeccable. That's about where my compliments end. Now there are three methods of interaction, but you'll find that you start to forgo changing the input method in order to avoid dealing with the release hinge. It's a few seconds that interrupt your workflow in the unique way. Being that this product at the end of the day is a laptop I was abysmally disappointed with the quality of the trackpad. Navigating and scrolling through webpages was horrendous. More so, the screen is so top heavy that even placing it on your lap results in the risk of the whole thing crashing to the floor. Thankfully each time this happened it was on carpet. Battery life was nowhere near what was advertised. I was lucky if I got a good 5 hours out this thing. What's more is that by the next morning the machine would be dead. I looked through forums to find a fix, some said it was the "Hello" log-in process draining the battery, and others pointed to the drivers. In my mind it was clear that here I would go again constantly trying to fix a windows product to make it just work. I had enough. After 5 years of Windows I'm back to Apple.

Purchased June 17, has been repaired twice, just stops turning on. I am so happy I dropped in the water today!! I will buy a Dell!

The keyboard broke weeks out of the warranty and I received no help in getting it back to operational

This laptop is what I replaced my 15" macbook pro with. The build quality and performance is right on par with the MBP, unfortunately cost wish as well. Altogether I'm very satisfied, mine is the i5, 256, dGPU. I had the i7, 16gb, 512 at first but had second thoughts on the price. I have to say in general I can't see much difference in speed between the i5 and i7. There are a few times I think the i7 may have been faster doing things, but for what I use it for I couldn't justify the $800 price difference. Hard drive may be smaller but I can buy a lot of externals for $800 bucks.

I just don't like windows 10. I tried this computer for a few days and took it back.

Computers are all the same, don't buy this expensive computer

I purchased one of these Surface Books the first week they were released. I loved the look and feel of the device; it certainly was different than anything else on the market and felt like a premium device. But then I turned it on and began using it and ran into issues. In fact, it was so frustrating to use, I exchanged it for a trusty Surface Pro 4. My thanks to Best Buy for being so easy to work with on the exchange. As a laptop, it feels a bit bulky because the hinge adds unnecessary depth. It's still a good size, but hinge design just makes it feel bigger than it is, especially compared with the hinges on other competitors. The hinge also allows too much wobble, IMO, when using the touchscreen in laptop mode. As a tablet, it feels even more bulky and unwieldy. You can't exactly keep the tablet portion in a case to make handling easier, since it normally sits mounted to the keyboard. It doesn't have a fold-out stand like the SP4 does, which makes it easier to hold and balance in tablet mode. Further, the screen would routinely lock up when either removed or returned to the keyboard. It was incredibly frustrating. Basic specs: Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-6300U (dual-core, 3MB cache, up to 3GHz with Turbo Boost) Graphics: Intel HD graphics 520; Nvidia GeForce graphics (1GB GDDR5 high-speed memory) RAM: 8GB Screen: 13.5-inch, 3,000 x 2,000 (267 ppi) PixelSense Display Storage: 256GB PCIe3.0 SSD Ports: 2 x USB 3.0, mini DisplayPort, SD card reader, mini headphone/mic combo jack Connectivity: 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE Camera: Windows 8MP rear-facing auto-focus camera (1080p HD), 5MP front-facing Hello face-authentication camera (1080p HD) Weight: 3.48 pounds (1.58kg) Size: 12.3 x 9.14 x 0.51-0.90 (W x D x H) (312 x 232 x 13-22.8 mm) I blame most of the problems with the SBook on the fact W10 was not ready for prime time when the device was released. I presume most of the problems have since been corrected, but I can only review based on my experience. In terms of positives, the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I have ever used, and I absolutely loved the trackpad. The screen is large and displays a gorgeous picture. The SBook is very fast and chewed easily through any program - as long as it didn't freeze up. I wanted to love the SBook. But the fact is, it was so frustrating that I had to return it. I hope it's better now.

If you're looking for a 2-in-1 laptop, the Surface Book is a great choice! I had mine for a few weeks now and haven't had any issues that I've seen others reporting (screen flickering, color issues, etc.). I have seen a few windows 10 apps having some minor issues, but nothing that can't be corrected through software updates/patches. The only real downside is the tablet's battery, but the fact that you can connect the charger to the tablet itself really helps solve that. Really, if you're going to use this as a tablet for more than 3 hours at a time, you should have bought a Surface Pro instead. This truly is a laptop first, with a great tablet included.

I was able to pick up the one and only Surface Book at Best Buy on the release date. I wanted to replace my Surface Pro 3 and 12” MacBook Retina. In the first week I was really pleased with the hardware and the experience as a whole with the detachable “clipboard”. It worked well. Screen is great, battery life is outstanding, I was so happy I sold both the for mentioned devices on eBay. Now I expected a few bugs with a first gen device, but it seems with every update one bug was fixed and then another occurred. One bug that recently occurred is there is no ambient light sensor in the keyboard, so you need to manually turn on and off the backlit keyboard. Doesn’t sound like a big deal except you really need to turn the backlight off in the daylight because the keys become impossible to read as they are lit clear white on silver. The recent update has turned the backlit keys into alt tab keys that move your cursor around instead of controlling the keyboard light. The next issue is when the “clipboard” is taken off and you palm hits the side of the screen it seems to bug out and freeze. The only way to get out of it is a hard reset. I found myself hard resetting this device very often for various freezes. The main reason I bought this is I need a windows environment for work and running bootcamp just does not work for me. So I now am writing this review from a new Infinity XPS 15 that I was able to pick up from Best Buy as well. It is a little bit more expensive, but you are getting so much more. Many reviews state that the Surface Book trackpad is very similar to the MacBook trackpad. It is good, but I think the XPS 15 trackpad is better than the Surface Book trackpad. Unless you really need the pen I would pass on the Surface Book or get a Surface Pro 4. Most of my complaints are software related and may be fixed, but there have been too many other user issues on the Internet relating to the detaching band that makes me question the longevity of this product past 1-2 years. It’s funny that I need to test so many windows machine to find the one that works well. With a MacBook I know what to expect and have had very little issues. I still have a 15” MacBook Pro, but I don’t regret selling my 12” MacBook retina and Surface Pro 3. The 12” retina has an outstanding battery and screen, but I found it hard to get any real work done with that screen size and the lack of adaptors for the type-c connector is mid blowing after it being out this long. I still can’t hook up my Cinema display. The Surface Pro 3 is also too small of screen to get real work done. Using it on a lap is not ideal and the battery life was not great. Is there the perfect windows machine, no. However, I would be cautious on a Surface Book purchase and wait for generation 2 when you are planning to spend a good sum of money on a laptop.

“This is not a toy.” That was my first impression of the Surface Book. After a less-than-satisfactory experience with an HP Spectre x360 that suffered from “loose trackpad” issues and subsequently a Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 that emitted “coil whine,” I was in search of a laptop without serious issues. Connor at Best Buy told me about one of his customers who had tried several laptops and wasn’t satisfied until buying the Surface Book. I had originally overlooked the Surface Book because of its higher price point. But after my disappointing experiences with HP and Dell, I took a closer look. Truly the design and workmanship of the Surface Book is at a much higher level than its competitors. Having never owned a Mac, I think I now understand why people say they love their MacBooks. It’s more than the operating system, it’s the keyboard and trackpad and screen that all do what they’re supposed to do. Looking back at the Dell and HP, their trackpads were a joke compared to the smooth and accurate trackpad of the Surface Book. The keyboard on the Surface Book is a real joy to type on. Not too loud, not too mushy, not too stiff, but like Goldiocks, “just right.” The screen on this machine is astounding. It’s the first laptop where I can actually turn down the screen brightness a little from maximum in well-lit environments, it’s that bright. The color accuracy is very good and the backlighting even. But a really important point is that it’s a 3:2 aspect ratio unlike the more common 16:9 aspect ratio nowadays. This taller format in laptop mode means you can see a few more lines of text on every page which is a much bigger plus than I ever imagined. I’m very impressed with the usefulness of the detachable screen. When detached it doesn’t feel like a second-class tablet, but a huge tablet that’s of high quality, great for viewing lots of content or reading sheet music like I do. Fan noise is often a concern for me and I never hear the fan on this during typical low-intensity CPU usage. It feels like a fanless design except when you really need the power, and then you have a fan to help things keep up. Drawbacks of this machine would be that it’s expensive, the keyboard it silver which means the keyboard backlighting can actually make the numbers difficult to see during the daytime against the silver color, there’s no USB-C ports, and it’s a little but chunkier than other 13” 2-in-1s. But I’d much rather have the heft than lower quality, and there’s nothing low-quality feeling about this thing. Also the silver-colored finish on this thing gets marked pretty easily, but that’s okay, it will look like a working computer in a couple of years. I’ve not had any ‘sleep of death’ issues on this, I think they solved that known issue in a firmware update earlier this year. It’s cool having a machine built by the maker of the operating system where they automatically install all the drivers and updates you need at all times. You may wish to wait and see if there is a Surface Book update this fall, but I had waited long enough for an update and I’m happy with the current model. I hope to get a good number of years of use out of the Surface Book.

I absolutely love my new Surface book. I've been a big computer guy for the majority of my life. For the past 5 years I have only used MacBook's because I felt that they were just the way to go. Now that I have made the switch to Microsoft I'm so much happier. The surface book is a masterpiece in itself. I can, with the tap of a button, take the top off of the keyboard and its super mobile. I am a college student so the fact that I can be professional in class and take excellent notes with it, makes it a blessing rather than a mac that's just unnatural to use and for the money they cost, not worth it... With that being said this computer is also VERY easy to move portably. I can detach the screen and lay around and watch TV, Netflix and all that jazz very easily. Now for the price of a surface book, yes it is a more expensive laptop than your average hp or dell, but IT IS WORTH THE MONEY, Especially if you take care of it I don't see why it won't last 10-12 years, and for the money, you cant beat it.

Primary uses for me: photo processing, MS office, web browsing, all at the same time. This machine is fast! The start-up time is in seconds. The load time for excel, capture one, itunes, and web browsing is the fastest I have ever experienced. The dedicated graphics card really helps support the speed of the machine. In the past, I had to build the patience and extra 2 hours because loading photo editing programs, transferring files, syncing with my phone all took so much time. Now, I can transfer 1,000 photos from my professional camera directly to the computer in a matter of seconds, process them RAW, and sync them with my phone or ipad in a matter of minutes. The flexibility to be able to turn the screen around and draw, watch movies, and use as a tablet is an additional feature that I love to use. I used to only travel with my ipad, but now I can use this as my primary travel device. The price for this mid-level model is high, but I would recommend purchasing this over the entry level. The use of the dedicated graphics card makes the upgrade worth every penny. Getting this model with a good sale (hit $1,400 on Black Friday) will make you feel even better about it.