Skip the Surface Book—At Least for Now

I got the Microsoft Surface Book (not the Surface tablet) two weeks ago, and it’s going back to Microsoft this week. It’s an expensive laptop that has great potential, but it’s not worth the extra money. Here are my thoughts.

The potential is there:

• Beautiful and stylish
• Powerful
• Excellent tablet functionality with a great Bluetooth pen
• Webcam quality is superb

The reality is:

• Setup—I had to manually reset my Surface Book and download a ton of updates. It was a bad first impression. I know what I’m doing, and it was difficult to navigate through.
• Price—I can get more power from a Lenovo Yoga for $500 less.
• Keyboard—It takes getting used to, and I missed several keys that are available on my Yoga.
• Stylus pen—It connects via a magnet, and for someone who travels like me, it will be lost. It should be more secure.
• Screen flexibility—The hinge is clever in that you can disconnect the tablet, but it limits the ability to push the screen back as far as I'd like sometimes. The Yoga folds all the way back on itself to become a tablet, and that functionality provides more usability for me.
• Mini HDMI—I will have to get over this because Mini HDMI is great, but it still caught me by surprise to need a mini HDMI cable. Mini HDMI is the future though, so this is more on me.
• Power cable—The length of the power cord is shorter than it should be. If you plug it in, you can cover the mini HDMI port.
• Glitches—I didn’t experience any major glitches, although other users are. I just didn’t experience anything great either.

I remain a Lenovo Yoga fan, and even if the Surface Book gets better, I think I’m going to stick with the Yoga given how reliable it is.

On the other hand, the Surface tablet is well received from almost everyone I know who uses it. It’s light, inexpensive and useful. I do not care for the keyboard but it’s a great option for people who are considering a tablet but need the power of a PC.