Microsoft Surface Book 2 - What a Disappointment

[AManWithPlan]

Hello LTT,

 

Like many of you, I look to Linus' reviews of products to help decide my future purchases in tech (along with other review websites I trust, of course). Linus was the reason I bought Sennheiser IE80's (what a difference they make, even though I thought earbuds at that price were ridiculous), a Galaxy S8+, Noctua fans, the list goes on.

 

I was in the market for a new work laptop that I can double as a light gaming machine while I'm away from my home (for things like Heroes of the Storm, maybe catch up on a Telltale Games series, nothing crazy) but I have been disappointed with the overall 2017 and early 2018 line ups. There was always some sort of trade off that I didn't want, great specs but too heavy/bulky, thin and light but throttled, or just too much RGB/gamer-y crap that I don't want to show around the office/clients.

 

After Linus' Microsoft Surface Book 2 review, I thought I had found my new laptop. I heard Linus' complaints about lack of Thunderbolt 3 (a port I have never used), it being non-lappable (though I didn't really have any issue with that), and how the power brick was not enough to power it at max load (never ran it hard enough to achieve this, except synthetically). I can live with these drawbacks for a slick machine I can do work on then double as a gaming device. Nowhere in the review did Linus mention how this laptop is an absolute waste of engineering time.

 

As of this writing, I am processing a return after already exchanging my initial unit at a Microsoft Store thinking, "something HAS to be wrong with my unit, there is no way this left an assembly line like this." Boy was I wrong.

 

I bought the highest end version, only the best for me, I work hard, I deserve it; 16GB RAM, 15" screen, 1TB drive, the works, $3.3k. If you go with the 256GB version of the product, the individual parts/software cost are actually close to 1-to-1 if you were to build a PC with the same specs, which essentially solidified my purchase (I can PM you my cost spreadsheet if you're curious). This is a late 2017 product, I expected for it to AT MINIMUM outperform my existing Asus Zenbook (UX51V) from 5 years ago. It could not even do so in basic Windows functionality.

 

Opening an application takes longer as the i7-8650U tries to decide whether it should Turbo or not, and once the application is open, forget hardware acceleration. Even if you force it at the software level in the Nvidia panel, the 1060 in the base is barely utilized. Sometimes it will turn on, with little to no difference, other times it won't and the fans in the screen rev up because you're doing something exhausting to the computer, ie scrolling down using PgDn in an excel spreadsheet with 7,000 rows. The screen will become hot quite often when you are processing some Excel calculations while downloading email. I have stress tested in AIDA64, at no point did the PC throttle in 30 minutes. This is not a heat issue, it is the inability to properly split tasks between the eGPU and iGPU.

 

If you resize a window, you will get a black box in the space you are resizing to. The computer does not have enough power to draw what should appear in that space, not even for a simple window like Excel, or even a folder. Dragging a window expresses the same issue. The whole experience is sluggish. It was as such on the first unit I received, as well as the new, sealed-in-box replacement I got from a Microsoft Store. I even tested the display unit they had at the store, and questioned staff about it. They were as perplexed as I was. How does Microsoft not understand they are selling this unit for over $3,000?

 

The 9+ hour battery life, I wasn't able to achieve in either unit I had. The first unit went from 95% to 5% in 2 hours of watching 720P YouTube at night at less than 1/2 brightness and the Battery Slider set to battery life (furthest left). The second unit lasted just 2.5 hours in the same type of test, this time from 100% charge in both screen and base. Who is getting 6-7 hours on these review sites? I even turned off GPU acceleration to make sure I wasn't going nuts. This unit is not even enough to watch a decent length film on a plane.

 

Today was the final straw. I awoke the unit from sleep, go into my CEO's office to discuss analytics, and the entire computer is softlocked with an hour glass. Inputting commands, mouse hovering/clicking, CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing. I let it "process" like this for over 20 minutes, while on a back up laptop (the one I'm trying to replace), ultimately I just held down the power button when presto, the CTRL-ALT-DEL input from 20 minutes ago brings up the lock screen and I resume control over the laptop.

 

I have no idea how the LTT team missed these glaring issues while reviewing the unit. How did they not see that the performance on the laptop (beyond synthetic benchmarking) simply isn't there; it behaves like a bargain bin $400 machine. Either way, buyer beware.

 

If anyone has a recommendation on a good dual purpose laptop, please let me know; I'm thinking 1440P, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia 1060+, i7-7700+, no throttling, FULL keyboard (I need PgUp, PgDn, and my F keys), and something fairly light and easy.

[Sauron]

Rule of thumb: if they're asking for over 3k$ in exchange for a laptop with 16gb of non expandable ram, don't even consider it - clearly the focus is not on making a good computer, nor on making a value product, which means they're making jewelry. If it's ugly too, then it's not jewelry but overpriced trash.

19 minutes ago, AManWithPlan said:

If you go with the 256GB version of the product, the individual parts/software cost are actually close to 1-to-1 if you were to build a PC with the same specs

I strongly doubt that, even with gpu prices being what they are right now. I'd like to see the spreadsheet though.

20 minutes ago, AManWithPlan said:

Opening an application takes longer as the i7-8650U tries to decide whether it should Turbo or not

Wow, that's worse engineering than even I was crediting them for. Unless Intel is doing some weird stuff with their new chips this is absurd, especially with the supposed high end ssd.

24 minutes ago, AManWithPlan said:

 it behaves like a bargain bin $400 machine.

You can buy old refurbished thinkpads for less than that and those will never give you this sort of issue unless they're broken.

[AManWithPlan]

11 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Wow, that's worse engineering than even I was crediting them for. Unless Intel is doing some weird stuff with their new chips this is absurd, especially with the supposed high end ssd.

This is the one that surprised me the most. It would idle sometimes at 0.8GHz, sometimes at 3.7GHz. It would handle a high load with sometimes 2.4GHz (entire UI lags during this, nowhere near 100% utilization of processors) and other times 4.1GHz (with the screen becoming hot, around 70-75 degrees centigrade).

 

Either way, the whole Windows UI would lag. How on Earth this got past quality testing, I will never know.

[DocSwag]

Are you 100% sure your unit is OK? I've been using my 13" GTX 1050 + 8GB RAM model for about 4 months now and it's been perfectly fine the whole time, no real issues whatsoever. I know someone with a 15" 256 GB model as well and it's been perfectly fine.

2 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

Opening an application takes longer as the i7-8650U tries to decide whether it should Turbo or not, and once the application is open, forget hardware acceleration. Even if you force it at the software level in the Nvidia panel, the 1060 in the base is barely utilized. Sometimes it will turn on, with little to no difference, other times it won't and the fans in the screen rev up because you're doing something exhausting to the computer, ie scrolling down using PgDn in an excel spreadsheet with 7,000 rows. The screen will become hot quite often when you are processing some Excel calculations while downloading email. I have stress tested in AIDA64, at no point did the PC throttle in 30 minutes. This is not a heat issue, it is the inability to properly split tasks between the eGPU and iGPU.

What if you set it to max performance? I've found that doing so makes the GPU turbo up a lot more when gaming, at the very least. Maybe it's different with professional stuff, though...

2 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

If you resize a window, you will get a black box in the space you are resizing to. The computer does not have enough power to draw what should appear in that space, not even for a simple window like Excel, or even a folder. Dragging a window expresses the same issue. The whole experience is sluggish. It was as such on the first unit I received, as well as the new, sealed-in-box replacement I got from a Microsoft Store. I even tested the display unit they had at the store, and questioned staff about it. They were as perplexed as I was. How does Microsoft not understand they are selling this unit for over $3,000?

I think it's more of some parts expanding at faster rates. Is it really a huge issue though? For me at least, I don't really resize stuff that much but rather use Windows Aero for reading two things at once, for example.

2 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

The 9+ hour battery life, I wasn't able to achieve in either unit I had. The first unit went from 95% to 5% in 2 hours of watching 720P YouTube at night at less than 1/2 brightness and the Battery Slider set to battery life (furthest left). The second unit lasted just 2.5 hours in the same type of test, this time from 100% charge in both screen and base. Who is getting 6-7 hours on these review sites? I even turned off GPU acceleration to make sure I wasn't going nuts. This unit is not even enough to watch a decent length film on a plane.

I've gotten hours and hours of battery life from watching youtube, so that's odd for sure... is it something with the 15" model? Did you have stuff in the background?

2 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

Today was the final straw. I awoke the unit from sleep, go into my CEO's office to discuss analytics, and the entire computer is softlocked with an hour glass. Inputting commands, mouse hovering/clicking, CTRL-ALT-DEL does nothing. I let it "process" like this for over 20 minutes, while on a back up laptop (the one I'm trying to replace), ultimately I just held down the power button when presto, the CTRL-ALT-DEL input from 20 minutes ago brings up the lock screen and I resume control over the laptop.

Do you restart it a lot? I've honestly never had something like this happen. The biggest issue I ever had was one bluescreen from detaching the tablet section.

2 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

If anyone has a recommendation on a good dual purpose laptop, please let me know; I'm thinking 1440P, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia 1060+, i7-7700+, no throttling, FULL keyboard (I need PgUp, PgDn, and my F keys), and something fairly light and easy.

@ZM Fong

[AManWithPlan]

54 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Are you 100% sure your unit is OK?

I returned the first unit to a Microsoft Store after testing for 2 days and getting what you read above. They gave me a sealed, new-in-box replacement with same issues in my next 2 days of testing. I also briefly played with the display unit they had at the Microsoft Store which had the same exact issues as mine. That's 3 units worth, the odds that its a "bad batch" are dwindling.

 

54 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

What if you set it to max performance? I've found that doing so makes the GPU turbo up a lot more when gaming, at the very least. Maybe it's different with professional stuff, though...

One of the first things I do with any new laptop is set up my own power profile which maximizes performance when it's plugged in. Yes, the slide was all the way to the right for max performance, and I even forced the eGPU in Nvidia's contol panel. This was all to no avail for decent Aero performance even in basic applications.

 

54 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

I think it's more of some parts expanding at faster rates. Is it really a huge issue though? Did you have stuff in the background?

I resize windows all the time, I use the Windows Snap feature all the time. I have to look through multiple spreadsheets at the same time. Every second or two I lose to resizing a window (or having to readjust it) adds up to hours of overtime at the office at the end of the year, which I am not compensated for. This is why I paid $3k+ for a personal machine, to save on time.

 

The only thing in the background during testing was my email (after I already uploaded gigabytes of it onto the machine, so it wasn't processing any archive during unplugged testing).

54 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Do you restart it a lot?

I restart it when it asks me to, otherwise it Sleeps. My 5 year old Asus Zenbook has been sleeping daily for its past 5 years. It's been restarted maybe 20 times due to mandatory updates. It outperforms the Surface Book 2 in nearly every way, just not synthetically on benchmarks.

 

I used the Surface Book 2 in the same way I would use any other computer, and saw huge differences (for the worse) in performance. Something immediately noticeable, which compounded my lack of understanding why Linus' review didn't mention it.

[genexis_x]

3 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

a good dual purpose laptop

What do you mean by dual purpose?

 

You can't have the most portability+power together, choose between more portability or more power.

[AManWithPlan]

12 hours ago, ZM Fong said:

What do you mean by dual purpose?

 

You can't have the most portability+power together, choose between more portability or more power.

I need it to be powerful when plugged in (just a power connector, not a Thunderbolt-GFX addon) and long-lasting when unplugged, kind of like every Macbook out there except they are overpriced, have an OS I don't want to learn, and use only AMD-based acceleration.

[genexis_x]

1 hour ago, AManWithPlan said:

snip

OK. So a few things first. Do you need more power or more portability? Is battery life important to you? Can you accept eGPU solution?

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

I need it to be powerful when plugged in (just a power connector, not a Thunderbolt-GFX addon) and long-lasting when unplugged, kind of like every Macbook out there except they are overpriced, have an OS I don't want to learn, and use only AMD-based acceleration.

Have you considered buying a Macbook pro and then using Boot Camp to install Windows onto it? You might consider them overpriced, but you did just buy a $3000+ Surface Book.

 

Granted, I don't know how well the newer models play with Boot Camp, but historically they've been pretty good Windows machines.

 

You could also check out something like a Dell XPS 15? You can configure them with i7 7700HQ quad cores, up to 32GB of RAM, and a GTX 1050. Battery life, I have no idea about though.

[DocSwag]

17 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

I returned the first unit to a Microsoft Store after testing for 2 days and getting what you read above. They gave me a sealed, new-in-box replacement with same issues in my next 2 days of testing. I also briefly played with the display unit they had at the Microsoft Store which had the same exact issues as mine. That's 3 units worth, the odds that its a "bad batch" are dwindling.

Interesting. That's still odd, for sure, since I've had much better results on my unit...

17 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

One of the first things I do with any new laptop is set up my own power profile which maximizes performance when it's plugged in. Yes, the slide was all the way to the right for max performance, and I even forced the eGPU in Nvidia's contol panel. This was all to no avail for decent Aero performance even in basic applications.

Perhaps it's some weird thing with professional applications.

17 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

I resize windows all the time, I use the Windows Snap feature all the time. I have to look through multiple spreadsheets at the same time. Every second or two I lose to resizing a window (or having to readjust it) adds up to hours of overtime at the office at the end of the year, which I am not compensated for. This is why I paid $3k+ for a personal machine, to save on time.

 

The only thing in the background during testing was my email (after I already uploaded gigabytes of it onto the machine, so it wasn't processing any archive during unplugged testing).

I'm still not 100% sure that we're seeing the same issue. When resizing windows it seems to me that different elements resize at different FPSes or something, but it doesn't actually slow anything down.

 

Also, as a side note, I didn't see the issue at all with folders.

17 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

I restart it when it asks me to, otherwise it Sleeps. My 5 year old Asus Zenbook has been sleeping daily for its past 5 years. It's been restarted maybe 20 times due to mandatory updates. It outperforms the Surface Book 2 in nearly every way, just not synthetically on benchmarks.

 

I used the Surface Book 2 in the same way I would use any other computer, and saw huge differences (for the worse) in performance. Something immediately noticeable, which compounded my lack of understanding why Linus' review didn't mention it.

I think you should restart it more. Every computer I've ever owned (including my desktop) has issues with not shutting the computer down once in a while.

[genexis_x]

13 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

You could also check out something like a Dell XPS 15? You can configure them with i7 7700HQ quad cores, up to 32GB of RAM, and a GTX 1050. Battery life, I have no idea about though.

They are getting refreshed with CFL-H CPU and 1050TI GPU. FHD gets 56Wh battery while the 4K model gets 97Wh battery (sacrificing 2.5 inch bay). Despite 4K panel, the 4K model lasts longer in battery test. No idea whether you can configure the FHD model with 97Wh battery or not.

[AManWithPlan]

20 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Interesting. That's still odd, for sure, since I've had much better results on my unit...

Try this simple test. Open any excel window and fill about 2,000 rows of it with whatever data you like in maybe 6 columns. Scroll to the top and hold PgDn. Do you see the data or is it just white cells?

 

On my old Zenbook, I clearly see the data scroll. On my former Surface Book 2 I saw all white with some cell borders.

[dalekphalm]

4 minutes ago, AManWithPlan said:

Try this simple test. Open any excel window and fill about 2,000 rows of it with whatever data you like in maybe 6 columns. Scroll to the top and hold PgDn. Do you see the data or is it just white cells?

 

On my old Zenbook, I clearly see the data scroll. On my former Surface Book 2 I saw all white with some cell borders.

I can say that on a Desktop using an i7-6700 (non-K) with decent thermals and no throttling, doing what you suggest as a test results in "mostly" scrolling with occasional patches of cells turning white while the page refreshes. CPU usage went to around 20% as reported by task manager, with the turbo boosting into the 3+ GHz range.

 

And this was just 27 columns of gibberish text, repeated in 2000 rows. No formatting, no colour, no equations.

 

So for a Surface Book 2 processor doing more advanced excel formulas, I could certainly believe it lagging.

[AManWithPlan]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

So for a Surface Book 2 processor doing more advanced excel formulas, I could certainly believe it lagging.

I never used the "more advanced excel formulas" in my testing of the Surface Book 2, it was just text and it would lag. My 5 year old laptop with a weaker CPU and GPU outperforms it, this is the crux of my issue. Hell, my 5 year old laptop can even scroll through "advanced excel formulas" with no issue.

 

I'm thinking of just getting a new Asus Zenbook with just a 1060 in it, or something similar. I am definitely not a fan of Dell and Razer products break too soon.

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, AManWithPlan said:

I never used the "more advanced excel formulas" in my testing of the Surface Book 2, it was just text and it would lag. My 5 year old laptop with a weaker CPU and GPU outperforms it, this is the crux of my issue. Hell, my 5 year old laptop can even scroll through "advanced excel formulas" with no issue.

 

I'm thinking of just getting a new Asus Zenbook with just a 1060 in it, or something similar. I am definitely not a fan of Dell and Razer products break too soon.

My experience with Dell products is pretty much "you get what you pay for".

 

If you buy a piece of shit $400 Inspiron, yeah it's gonna suck and not last. But the XPS and the Latitude business models both seem to be well constructed.

 

Nothing wrong with getting another Zenbook also of course.

 

I'm interested to see how wide spread this is, since there are other users here reporting no issues. Could be a series of bad batches. Could just be really bad luck. Could be an actual defect with the 15" model.

[genexis_x]

22 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

I'm thinking of just getting a new Asus Zenbook with just a 1060 in it, or something similar. I am definitely not a fan of Dell and Razer products break too soon.

Asus don't offer Zenbook with 1060 GPU. Hell their FX/GL series laptops with 1060 has mediocre cooling.

 

Buy model not brand. Dell has good and bad models. Same goes to other brands. Razer is exception, their laptops have terrible quality.

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, ZM Fong said:

Asus don't offer Zenbook with 1060 GPU. Hell their FX/GL series laptops with 1060 has mediocre cooling.

 

Buy model not brand. Dell has good and bad models. Same goes to other brands. Razer is exception, their laptops have terrible quality.

Agreed - brand loyalty is an odd beast. Every brand - EVERY brand, makes bad models now and then. Dell makes a lot of absolutely kickass devices.

 

We use Dell a lot at work, and trust me, we put them through the meat grinder. We have a lot of non-techy users that treat them poorly, and they still hold up pretty well.

 

Granted, these are typically Latitude business class laptops, but it just shows you cannot make blanket statements.

[AManWithPlan]

23 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Agreed - brand loyalty is an odd beast. Every brand - EVERY brand, makes bad models now and then. Dell makes a lot of absolutely kickass devices.

 

We use Dell a lot at work, and trust me, we put them through the meat grinder. We have a lot of non-techy users that treat them poorly, and they still hold up pretty well.

 

Granted, these are typically Latitude business class laptops, but it just shows you cannot make blanket statements.

I suppose my dislike of Dell is brand-centric from the late 90's to mid-2000's when they made garbage PCs with marketing terms like, "Will never go obsolete!" I have no real experience with them anymore outside of the crap Inspirons at my company.

I'm going to be posting a sort of contest soon, I'll offer $50 to whatever user finds me the next laptop I buy. Here is the contest: 

 

[DocSwag]

On 4/11/2018 at 7:31 AM, AManWithPlan said:

Try this simple test. Open any excel window and fill about 2,000 rows of it with whatever data you like in maybe 6 columns. Scroll to the top and hold PgDn. Do you see the data or is it just white cells?

 

On my old Zenbook, I clearly see the data scroll. On my former Surface Book 2 I saw all white with some cell borders.

I tried it, filling it all with 1s. It scrolled pretty fine. Some grey blocks flashed on the side here and there but not on the data itself. It was only occasionally that grey blocks would flash on the data itself and that would only last less than half a second.

 

[AManWithPlan]

On 4/14/2018 at 8:17 PM, DocSwag said:

I tried it, filling it all with 1s. It scrolled pretty fine. Some grey blocks flashed on the side here and there but not on the data itself. It was only occasionally that grey blocks would flash on the data itself and that would only last less than half a second.

Do you have the 13" or 15"?

Also, i5 model or i7 model if you're the 13"?

[DocSwag]

3 hours ago, AManWithPlan said:

Do you have the 13" or 15"?

Also, i5 model or i7 model if you're the 13"?

i7 model of the 13"

[PervySage79]

My Surface book 1, is pretty decent. it wont win any speed awards but its great for meetings and presentations. I haven't had any issues with it. It's sad to hear that the Surface book 2 seems so under powered.