This article was published on October 2, 2018

Microsoft’s new Surface Studio 2 brings faster performance and a brighter display

It's the expected spec bump


Microsoft’s new Surface Studio 2 brings faster performance and a brighter display

Following the announcement of the new Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop, Microsoft also unveiled the Surface Studio 2. As expected, it’s the most powerful device in the Surface family yet.

The company was a little vague about specifications during its announcement but claims the new Surface Studio is overall 35 percent faster than its predecessor.  Curiously, it uses a 7th Gen Kaby Lake processor, as opposed to the far more powerful 8th gen processors with two additional cores. Things look a bit better in the graphic department, where an upgrade to GTX 1060 and 1070 graphics that can push “close to 6 teraflops” and brings a 50 percent improvement over the Maxwell chip on the original model. Sorry, no Nvidia RTX quite yet.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is abandoning the hybrid storage used in the original model for pure SSD, available in up to 2TB sizes; RAM is available up to 32 GB. The screen is better too: It’s 38 percent brighter – reaching past 500 nits – and has 22 percent higher contrast. It comes with wireless support for the Xbox controller built in, and finally adopts USB-C. Still no Thunderbolt 3 though.

The Surface Studio is slated to begin shipping on November 15 but will be available for pre-order today. Unfortunately, it’ll still burn a hole in your wallet: pricing starts at $3,499.

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You can read our hands on with this device, as well as the Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 here.

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