9 Reasons Why You’ll Want to Ditch Your Mac and Take a Serious Look at the Surface Book

A post on Photography Talk:

Here’s nine reasons why I think you’ll be ditching your Mac soon in favor of the Surface Book.

I can list ten things I love about these types of posts1.

Sure, the Surface Book outweighs the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro by nearly 300 grams. Of course, that’s due in part to the innovative design of the Surface Book that makes it a laptop and a tablet in one.

So, the extra weight and thickness of the Surface Book aren’t all bad because the Surface Book is just simply more versatile than the MacBook.

I’m willing to bet that if the Surface Book was lighter than the MacBook Pro, it wouldn’t be listed under cons.

But in this case, it’s not just the larger size but also the number of pixels. The Surface Book i7 sports 3000×2000 resolution compared to the MacBook’s 2560×1600 resolution.

This is valid — the new 2016 MacBook Pros should have a 2800×1800 px panel, to support the new default resolution of 1400×900 pt.

Microsoft’s offering also achieved a better Adobe RGB score in testing, as well as a higher contrast ratio. That means you get a higher quality picture with the Surface Book i7 than you do with the MacBook Pro because it’s 67 percent brighter with 25 percent more colors.

No it hasn’t. It covers 100% of sRGB, but still has a way to go to cover Display P3.

Put simply, the Surface Book shines when it comes to storage space.

Ooh, does Microsoft now offer 2 TB of storage?!

The i7 models range from 256GB to 1TB, giving you plenty of options for your storage needs. If you opt for the less expensive i5 version, you can choose between 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB.

Hmm, no.

But on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, your only options are 256GB or 512GB. Even an upgrade to the 17-inch model still only gets you 256GB or 512GB. To get the same 1TB of storage offered by the Surface Book, you have to order the machine straight from Apple.

So… both offer a max of 1 TB, but since Apple’s MacBook comes from Apple it’s worse than Microsoft Surface Book which comes from Microsoft? I see no logic in this statement. None at all. And the 17-inch model (which doesn’t exist; I assume the author is referring to the 15-incher) goes up to 2 TB.

(…) the Surface Book wins in the battery life department.

The new MacBook can last about eight hours unplugged. The Surface Book offers about the same amount of time.

The Surface Book wins because it gets the same 8 hours as the MacBook Pro? Gotcha!

The fact that Apple removed the SD card slot won’t be a big deal for some people, but for a lot of photographers, it could be a deal breaker.

I do miss my SD card slot, but it’s not a deal breaker in real life. It’s not even a hassle.

Where the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro runs $1,499, the entry-level Surface Book is a mere $1,299.

First of all, the Surface Book is currently on sale. Its regular price is $1499. For that money, you get a 128 GB SSD, while the MacBook Pro has a 256 GB of flash storage. The i5 Surface Book with 256 GB of storage comes in at $1699.

A bump up to the entry-level Surface Book i7 will set you back $2,099. To get similar processing speed and storage capacity, you have to upgrade to the entry-level MacBook Pro, which runs a cool $2,399.

The i7 Surface Book is indeed $2099 and it includes a 256 GB SSD and 8 GB of RAM. For $1999 you can get a MacBook Pro with a Core i7, a 256 GB SSD, and 16 GB of RAM. So the Surface Book is more expensive in all regards, with the top model maxing out at $3199 (1 TB SSD, 16 GB of RAM, dGPU). The MacBook Pro (13” with Touch Bar) maxes out at $2899 with the same specs, although I have to note that it does not include discrete graphics. You could just get a 15” model for almost the same money. It comes in at $3199 for the Core i7 2.7 GHz (which is a quad-core CPU!), 1 TB of storage, a dGPU, and 16 GB of RAM.

I’m sure that the Surface Book is a great machine, but the author’s arguments unfortunately aren’t.

That’s sarcasm, yes. ↩