Today, October 6, Microsoft somewhat surprised the tech community with its brand-new Surface Book, which it announced at its #Windows10devices event. While almost all other aspects of the event were either leaked or fully expected, the Surface Book was not. Many had speculated that Microsoft might enter this market, but no one actually had any legitimate information on the subject.

Anyways, the Surface Book is a beast of a device. It includes all the perks of the Surface Pro 4, and then some. The Book has a 13.5″ 3000×2000 display, coming in with a pixel density of 267ppi. That is insane for a laptop. It also features 6th Generation Core i5 and i7 processors, with 8 or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, much like the higher-end models of the Surface Pro 4. The Surface Book can take advantage of the capabilities of the new Surface Pen, which is included in the package. But after these few similarities, things start to get a little wonky.

First and foremost, Microsoft is marketing this as a laptop, which it (kind of) is. It has a full metal keyboard, but the top half of the device, which Microsoft refers to as a “Clipboard”, is actually detachable. It’s a really strange concept, as the top half houses most of the devices internals, but that’s about it. All of the ports are back down in the keyboard dock. I think there are limited use cases for this feature, as I don’t think you could charge just the tablet part, but it is nice to have that extra ability. Due to the limited application of the detachable screen, you will most likely use the device in laptop mode most of the time. And why wouldn’t you? While the “Clipboard” part has the Core processors and battery inside, the keyboard has hidden inside an Nvidia GeForce GPU inside (We don’t know what specific model yet, but I would guess a GTX 960M). This is where the Surface Book really shines, as the Surface Pro 4 form factor could not possibly hold a dedicated GPU.

The Surface Book is a fantastically beautiful device, with a fantastically high starting price of $1499. However, this price is only around $300 more than a similarly specced Surface Pro 4 with the $129 keyboard attachment, and you get the benefit of a bigger, better screen, an amazing keyboard that you can actually use on your lap, infinitely improved graphical performance, and stunning looks that will guarantee no poor, un-informed souls will mistake your beast of an Ultrabook for “the new iPad.” Will you be picking up the new Surface Book?