So how's everyone feel about their Surface Book now?

[TLRtheory]

Finally will have the money for this. I've been watching reviews, reading up on this since the moment it dropped... and it seems that every original issue that this launched with has been squashed with updates.

I'm tired of my MacBook's constant restarting, and with it only being 3yrs old, paying for a $500 logic board just seems insane so this will likely be my main device for everything... but I do want to hear some real opinions from users that have been with this machine on a daily basis.

So... Surface Book owners, how has your Surface Book been treating you? Have updates really made into a 10-11 hour beast?

 

[ccpopham]

Except the latest updates broke windows hello. It works well. Still has its moments, but what Windows computers/laptops dont.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[olyar15]

I've resigned myself to the fact that the SB will remain a buggy, quirky machine. As long as I use it strictly as a laptop, it works pretty well. As soon as I try to take advantage of the convertible nature of the beast, it has it's moments where it will not work correctly. Of course, if I wanted just a laptop, there are other laptops that I would have rather purchased instead of the SB.

If I could go back in time and do it all over again, I wouldn't have purchased this machine. Oh well, live and learn.

 

[peter leung 10586]

Finally will have the money for this. I've been watching reviews, reading up on this since the moment it dropped... and it seems that every original issue that this launched with has been squashed with updates.

I'm tired of my MacBook's constant restarting, and with it only being 3yrs old, paying for a $500 logic board just seems insane so this will likely be my main device for everything... but I do want to hear some real opinions from users that have been with this machine on a daily basis.

So... Surface Book owners, how has your Surface Book been treating you? Have updates really made into a 10-11 hour beast?

battery life depends on both hardware and usage. mine, which doesn't have the gpu, lasts for more than 10 hours in normal usage.

 

[ytrewq]

If I'm using it for web, word processing, etc., and keep screen brightness low, the battery lasts as long as I want. I've never had to push it for 10-11 hours, but I'm guessing it would get close to that.

I do still have glitches. They are annoying. But the positive qualities of the device are strong enough that I am happy with the machine despite the glitches, and I would buy it again.

 

[robertopod1968]

I love mine now. After all the updayes it really has no more glitches than any other computer I've owned.

 

[peter leung 10586]

I love mine. I appreciate its build quality which is very noticeable especially you have just used another cheap laptops for comparison. its design is simple and elegant with no redundant elements such as stickers on it. other laptops have stickers. "intel i5 inside" or something on the keyboard and product key on the bottom. I don't like that. I think it is clumsy. I like the design style of surface book.

 

[worwig]

I thought I had made a mistake when I first got it last year. But eventually the updates have made it very reliable. So now, it works like a good tools should.
The screen dimensions make it much more useful to me then the typical 13" tablet.
I have the i7 with GPU. I run far too many background process too. I doubt I could get much over 9 hours.
I don't regret the purchase at all.

 

[Muessig]

Personally I love the design / thinking behind the Surface Book but I'll be waiting for a version 2 before I contemplate getting it. I can imagine that it could be quite useful to have in my situation over the next few years but I'll wait for the convertible nature of it and the Surface Pen etc., to be developed further.

 

[Yonic Boom]

It's my daily development machine. I take it in to work with me, hook up to two monitors through a dock and run a variety of CPU intensive software including Adobe Creative Suite, PHPStorm and virtual machines for development purposes.

It was a little frustrating at times early, but no that big a deal, and these days it's very reliable for me.

 

[Cruachan 11]

Working great for me, and everyone I know with a Macbook who has seen my SB now wants one. I still get the odd bit of minor graphics distortion (mostly in Firefox) but other than that, all good.

 

[marksasongko]

I have the i5 dgpu version but cannot seem to get past 10 hours. Battery life takes a significant hit (circa 6 hours) when doing web browsing, due to reasons unknown to me. Battery life gets better when used for watching movies. It can reach around 9-10 hours.

That said, I think there are a few things that people have not taken into account:
[1] Gorgeous 3000x2000 screen
[2] 3:2 aspect ratio, I miss the aspect ratio every time I have to use other screens
[3] Excellent keyboard
[4] Excellent touchpad

 

[Per Kjellqvist]

We have 2 SB's in the family and both love them. The only minor gripes I have is that the Windows Hello camera is still not consistent, and that the power switch can easily be activated by mistake when I have the SB in a bag. Other than that I would say it is the best laptop/computer I have ever had, and my first computer was an Apple IIc.

The screen is amazing, and I love the 3:2 format. The pen is great, and I find myself using it more each day. I make handwritten notes in Drawboard PDF, Word, and OneNote on a regular basis. I can for example write a letter and sign it with blue ink using the pen, save it as a .pdf and then send it on as an email attachment. Previously I would make a paper printout, sign, scan to .pdf and then send.

I have a subscription to a magazine service called Readly which is perfect for the SB. I detach the screen, turn it to portrait mode, choose a good magazine, lean back an relax.

I am trying to keep my SB clean in terms of staying away from unnecessary software bloat. I did install the Samsung NVM Express Driver which is said to speed up the SSD Memory. I also installed the Intel Beta Graphics Driver.

Two very happy SB owner here.

 

[marksasongko]

Curious, have you done a before-after benchmark after installing the NVM express driver?

 

[garak0410]

I've had mine for a few weeks now. It is my MAIN PC for sure, even sold my aging but still awesome AlienWare gaming laptop. I have the Core i7 with GPU and it games "good enough" for my needs, even the latest games. Battery life is good but not at what they rate it. Screen is amazing. I've encountered little to no glitches (Windows Hello sometimes is hit and miss). Best PC I've ever owned.

 

[rdockrey]

I love mine. I am using it a desktop replacement here at work and then use it at home to remote in if I need to and it works perfect. I got mine several months after they came out so a lot of the bugs had been worked out.

 

[Per Kjellqvist]

 

[Tim Stone]

I haven't used mine much but it does still have bugs. For example, often when it starts it freezes on "starting the camera" which it uses to sign me in. Eventually I can get to the log in screen and use a pin code. It works with the camera maybe 1/3 of the time.

The other day I was streaming a life feed, and I went to move it from one room to another. Granted it was switching from the dock with a cable connection to the router, to Wi-Fi. However, the screen went dark and it just appeared to be dead. Nothing brought it back until a 30 second power button press which resets the device.

I do find it often loses focus on the working window, and sometimes starts other programs all by itself. Apparently it is ( falsely ) sensing a cursor supposedly hovering over some other icon on the desktop. Of course the actual arrow is nowhere near there, but the book does it's thing.

It does best as a stand alone. If often is not a friendly neighbor on a network, and says it can't have access to other devices ( when it can ). A few minutes later it suddenly says "Gee whiz, I do have access".. Later, it doesn't see it again, and then again, it will. Nothing on the network or devices changes.

As I said, I haven't used it very much, but in that limited time, it is quirky. This may not be the experience of others. I actually do not regret buying it. I figure eventually it will all level out, and the additional features ( ie. the pen ) make it a wonderful device. It is light, readable, and has a comfortable keyboard.

 

[zerospace-net]

Like at least one other person here, I've begun to resign myself to the idea that the Surface Book will always be a buggy machine -- the buggiest machine I've owned since the Windows 98 PC-era. My biggest gripes currently are:

1) Windows Hello camera failure -- this is a repeatable "bug" that shows up every time I have plugged the SB in to charge while it is in hibernation. The camera will simply fail to turn on. Rebooting will fix or cold booting with "fast startup" disabled. Once it starts happening, it won't work again until the machine is rebooted.

2) For some reason, on wake from sleep, it will sometimes BSOD with an internal power error. This happens immediately when I see the "turning camera on" on the lockscreen. It was doing this consistently after the 2/17 firmware update, but after fixing some corruption with SFC and DISM, it went away. It returned after the most recent Win10 update, but I again seem to have squashed it by running DISM.

3) Crashes during sleep. These are inconsistent, but the SB will just shut down while it is sleeping (again, not hibernation). It isn't consistent -- I will sometimes go days without seeing this happen and then one day, it might happen each and every time I put the SB to sleep. I've also seen my SB 'hot bag' even since the firmware update that was supposed to fix that problem. Twice. The kicker? It did it after waking itself from hibernation without me touching it. I am not joking, my windows logs actually show it wake from hibernation in the middle of the night and then proceed to run hot until the morning when I found it warm to the touch and the charging brick hot.

4) Other issues on wake from hibernation. The detach sequence will be delayed and broken after waking from hibernation. I can press the button, wait close to 30 seconds for the clips to detach, and then the software doesn't even recognize that its been detached (which also means that auto-rotation of the screen won't work among other things). Rebooting with "fast startup" disabled will fix this.

I wish I felt as good as some of you guys do about my SB, but some days I really hate the thing. If I had to make the choice over again, I wouldn't buy it and I'd have stuck with my Surface Pro 3. Surface Book appears to be a crapshoot as to whether or not you get a good one, OR your use case happens to match up with what it does well. If you don't need it to sleep (full shut down when you're not using it), you'll likely do fine. If you need it to sleep reliably and not fail in the middle of something important, I'd pass. Too many people have had to exchange their SBs 3+ times to get a "good" one, and then many more have posted stories about having their machines BSOD in the middle of a presentation or something equally important/embarrassing.

For me, SB is pretty much a failure for everything I wanted it to do. I've moved on and SB is a toy that I hope lasts long enough to see a firmware update that actually fixes the problems. Until then, it's one seriously expensive dust collector that I use to surf the web, read email and play some games. A total waste of nearly $2k. So disappointing.

 

[savagelizards]

It's somewhat better with the updates, but by no means fixed entirely.

I was actually thinking that it had been become pretty reliable this last week and then it crashed on me twice today. It can be hard to tell what part of the issue is Windows 10 and what part is the Surface Book, but I have two other Windows 10 machines running insider builds and I don't have anywhere near the amount of issues I do with the Book. The irony is that Windows 10 runs flawlessly on my 1st gen Surface Pro, which was my every day computer until I moved up to the Surface Book.

Anyway, the fact that it seemed more reliable for a week or so and not rock solid six months after release would tell you that it's still got its glitches. I restart often and shut completely down most times before I put it in my bag for the night.

Still, the keyboard is a delight, the screen is sweet (although it gets discolored near the bottom when it heats up during use (and it does so a lot more often since the 2/17 firmware update) and it's a fantastic device to use on an airplane while traveling. At its best, it's as seductive as a beautiful woman. But she is both beautiful and temperamental.

The Surface Book will drive you crazy trying to fix its faults but when it's working as designed there's nothing like it.