The Surface Book 2 may be slightly long in the tooth now, but it’s still a uniquely versatile solution for people looking for a powerful laptop, tablet and sketch pad in one. And while it used to start at an eyebrow-raising £1,500, Microsoft has slashed the price across the range, meaning you can get one from as little as £919 .
That entry-level price will get you a 13.5in model with a seventh-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. But play around and you can get more for your money. The same model with the eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor, for example, will set you back £1,199.
The discounts get bigger the more beefed up you go. Opt for a 13.5in eighth-generation i8 processor with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage and you’re looking at £1,869 – a lot of money, no doubt, but substantially less than its £2,499 asking price.
Pleasingly, the discounts also seem to apply to the 15in models, but cover the ears of sensitive wallets at this point. For £1,749, you can get the 15in Surface Book 2 with an eighth-generation Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage – a saving of £600 off its original £2,349 asking price.
Given the Surface Book 2 supports SD card expansion, you probably don’t need more onboard storage than that, but for completeness, if you want to go all-in on the fully specced top-end Surface Book 2 with 1TB storage, you’re looking at £2,360 – a big saving on its £3,149 RRP.
Again, this is all very expensive, but the Surface Book 2 is a unique hybrid, as Nathan wrote in his review on release. “It’s fast and powerful enough to game on, you can comfortably run any application you care to think of on it and the display is good enough for professional-level photo editing, illustration and video editing,” he wrote. “You can even sketch and take notes on the screen if you really want to.
“If you need all these things, the 13.5in Surface Book 2 is currently unmatched. It’s essentially all the power of a desktop PC squeezed into a package you can comfortably carry around with you and even the £1,999 model gives you more for your money than the equivalent MacBook Pro 13.”
That £1,999 model, by the way, refers to the 13.5in Surface Book 2 with an i7 processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. That’s currently £500 off at £1,499.
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