Microsoft promises a lot with the new Surface Book 2. The 13.5-inch convertible is a really good device in some respects, but we are sometimes wondering why the manufacturer ignores known issues or waives modern standards.

Let us begin with the good things. Microsoft says the new device is twice as powerful as before. This is true as long as you focus on the CPU performance. The new ULV quad-core from Intel is much faster compared to the previous dual-core models. We can only praise Microsoft for the performance utilization, which is very decent, despite the passive cooling. Some laptops with actively cooled CPUs perform worse. However, not much has changed in terms of the graphics card. Yes, the GTX 1050 performs well, but it is not much faster than the previous GTX 965M. The new Surface Book 2 also lasts longer on battery, still uses an excellent display, and has a nice chassis with comfortable input devices.

The Surface Book 2 13.5" is once again almost unrivaled thanks to the good performance. However, there are some compromises (no Thunderbolt 3!), which are hard to swallow considering the high price.

The biggest problem is revealed when you stress the dedicated GeForce GPU, because the fan is really loud. We showed how you can easily bypass this issue with the new performance settings of Windows without sacrificing much performance.

A bigger issue, which seems to be acceptable for Microsoft, is the power delivery. The power adapter is not always sufficient during gaming, so the batteries are slightly discharged and charged again. This cannot be good for the battery health. It might be related to a limitation of the Surface Connector since the power adapter of our test model should be sufficient. This brings us to the next problem, the ports. Microsoft probably sticks to the Surface Connector to ensure compatibility with the old Surface Dock. This is unfortunately a big limitation. A modern Thunderbolt 3 port would be more practical and future-proof. An additional USB Type-C port on the tablet would have been nice as well.

The battery situation is not perfect either. There is a connector for the power adapter on the tablet, but it still takes almost 2.5 hours to charge the small battery. This can probably be fixed via a software update. An "empty" tablet can unfortunately not be charged by the battery in the keyboard unit either.

You can easily avoid the loud fan in this case and the power delivery should not be a big deal in practice as long as you avoid the Best Performance setting. The missing Thunderbolt 3 support is a bigger issue for a price tag of more than 2200 Euros ($1999) though. The Surface Pen is not included anymore and has to be purchased separately. The 13.5-inch convertible is still almost unrivaled on the market thanks to the high performance and leaves a positive overall impression.