Which Surface Book should I buy?

[Windows Central Question]

I can get either the Surface Book 1 i7 16gb ram with the Nvidia chip refurbished or the Surface Book 2 i7 with 8gb of ram for roughly the same price.

Which should I go with.

I am an animator and will be doing a lot of photoshop and premiere pro work.

 

[Ryujingt3]

For me I would go for the one with the most RAM, but it's entirely up to you.

 

[ochhanz]

I can get either the Surface Book 1 i7 16gb ram with the Nvidia chip refurbished or the Surface Book 2 i7 with 8gb of ram for roughly the same price.

Which should I go with.

I am an animator and will be doing a lot of photoshop and premiere pro work.

, like Ryujingt3 said ram can be important if you use large files/photos or use several ram-heavy programs at the same time. That being said, SB 1 has more teething problems than SB 2 (or had at least).

Storage can easily be added with a microsd card (a bit slower but good enough if you use a fast card).

The battery is probably better with the SB 2 since it is most likely less used.

The nvidia chip is the one that similar to the 940m and not the 965m i guess. The 940m one is ok (a bit faster than intel igpu) but the 965m is twice as fast as the 940m. Whether this is relevant I am not sure, according to adobe's site they do recommend good gpu's for Adobe Premiere Pro.

Than finally the cpu with the SB 2 is quite a bit faster.
All in all I personally would go with the SB 2 and not use Chrome but instead Edge or Firefox to save ram. And not to much tabs. And not to much programs at the same time to prevent lags. Big however, if you use large files in photoshop or premiere and/or the gpu is important and the SB 1 one has the 965m, i would go with the SB 1 or buy an other (2-1) laptop. Hope that helps.

 

[ochhanz]

...

, did a test today on my current laptop with 8gb ram. I opened ~15 tabs in Firefox, opened a tab in Edge, opened 5 random apps, opened some 4000x3000 photos in a photoshop-like program & made a new 8000x3000 file and had Visual Studio opened with a project. I had no lag yet.
So I would say it will depend on how heavy premiere pro is on the ram/memory, but I think as long you use Edge or Firefox instead of Chrome you and open to many things it will be enough.

 

[Ryujingt3]

, did a test today on my current laptop with 8gb ram. I opened ~15 tabs in Firefox, opened a tab in Edge, opened 5 random apps, opened some 4000x3000 photos in a photoshop-like program & made a new 8000x3000 file and had Visual Studio opened with a project. I had no lag yet.
So I would say it will depend on how heavy premiere pro is on the ram/memory, but I think as long you use Edge or Firefox instead of Chrome you and open to many things it will be enough.

That's really impressive! I don't use that much stuff but I will always pick more RAM in a configuration every time.

 

[ochhanz]

That's really impressive! I don't use that much stuff but I will always pick more RAM in a configuration every time.

, yeah I kindy was impressed by it. I was thinking of upgrading ram in my laptop but i think i will just save myself ~40 bucks. :grin:

 

[Ryujingt3]

One day I'd love to get a Surface Book, enjoy it!

 

[ochhanz]

One day I'd love to get a Surface Book, enjoy it!

, just to be clear, I don't personally have a Surface Book, but Envy x360 laptop with 8gb ram. The specs are similar though which is why I did the test.

 

[Ryujingt3]

, just to be clear, I don't personally have a Surface Book, but Envy x360 laptop with 8gb ram. The specs are similar though which is why I did the test.

Ah! That makes sense. I thought you had a Surface Book.