Using both Microsoft’s Surface Book and 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina for the past month reveals that although both devices are good, the Surface Book has more bugs. However, when the 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina came out at the end of 2012, there were bugs with that device too.
Microsoft has fixed some of the bugs with firmware updates, but the trackpad is still somewhat inconsistent and the display driver still crashes. However, the device is more than usable. However, there are those who say that the device should be perfect when most buyers are paying $2000 or more for the device. Still, those who pay for the Surface Book get a lot of bang for their buck — a gorgeous 13.5-inch 3,000 x 2,000 pixel resolution screen, a solid keyboard that detaches from the screen, a fast Intel Core i7 processor, and a discreet NVIDIA GPU.
The 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina still has the best keyboard out of any device, but it’s only slightly better than the keyboard on Microsoft’s Surface Book, which has a noticeably better screen. The MacBook Pro is still stuck on a 2560 x 1600 screen, which looked amazing — three years ago. It’s quite possible that the 2016 MacBook Pro will increase the screen resolution, but that could lessen the amazing battery life.
The Surface Book (i7 NVIDIA version) will last up to 10 hours doing regular tasks, such as surfing the Internet, writing documents, photo editing, and minor streaming. However, if you do more, you aren’t safe leaving your charger at home. The same can’t be said about the 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina, which has a noticeably better battery life, even though Microsoft Claims the Surface Book has 12-hours of video playback. It’s obvious that Microsoft overstated this.
The one thing that differentiates the Surface Book from the MacBook Pro is the fact that the Surface Book is also a tablet. However, since the tablet part has a separate battery, one can only expect about three hours of battery life. Still, even though the tablet part is huge, it feels light, and writing on it feels like you are writing on a legal pad. The new Surface Pen feels more natural than previous certain pens, although the N-Trig stylus still doesn’t provide the perfectly smooth writing that the Wacom stylus used on the Surface Pro 1 and 2 did.
There are people who swear on OS X who will never use a Microsoft device, no matter how good the hardware is. Those people would be quite surprised when using the Surface Book with Windows 10 — it provides almost as good of a user experience as OS X does on the MacBook Pro. With future updates, Windows 10 could be just as good as OS X. Microsoft has improved its operating system so much that it has arrived at the point where there is no excuse not to buy a device just because it runs Windows.
So, which device is better? If you compare the Surface Book to the 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina, the Surface Book gives you slightly more bang for your buck. However, that may change with the 2016 MacBook Pro, which could arrive in stores as early as January or February. One things is for sure: both Apple and Microsoft have really set the standard with their latest laptops.
[Photo via Daryl Deino]
