Microsoft’s new Surface Book 2 finally made the leap that Surface fans were hoping for. It elevates the Surface Book form factor from just interesting to something truly unique — a 2-in-1 notebook that’s both amazingly flexible and truly high-performance. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. The power supply on the 15-inch Surface Book 2 holds it back from being the dedicated gaming system it seemed to be at first glance.
The situation is really pretty simple. As it ships today, the Surface Book 2 15-inch comes with a 95-watt power supply. The notebook’s components, however, can consume more power than that when they’re running at full speed. The Intel Core i7-8550U CPU, for example, can use 25 watts (or even more, at times) all by itself, and the GeForce GTX 1060 GPU can draw up to 80 watts. Simple math puts those two components alone at 105 watts or more, and that’s not accounting for the display, RAM, solid-state drive (SSD), and other electronics.
What this means in practice is that if a user is really pushing the Surface Book 2’s CPU and GPU, then the power draw can exceed the power supply’s capacity. In those instances, the machine taps and drains the battery to make up the difference and eventually throttles performance, potentially leaving users with depleted batteries for mobile productivity or creating poor gaming experiences. And it’s during the most intense gaming sessions with today’s most demanding gaming titles when this scenario is likely to occur.
We asked about the situation while we were completing our review, and a Microsoft spokesperson sent us this reply:
“Surface Book 2 was designed to deliver unmatched power and performance for anyone who needs a powerful machine to work and create, making it a great option for STEM professionals (designers, developers, engineers). The Surface Book 2 Power Mode Slider is provided as a means to give the user control over the range of performance and battery life. In some intense, prolonged gaming scenarios with Power Mode Slider set to ‘best performance,’ the battery may discharge while connected to the power supply provided in-box with Surface Book 2. However, through power management design, the battery will never drain entirely, ensuring that users are able to keep working, creating, or gaming.”
In layman’s terms, this means that if you crank the machine up to its highest performance setting and play Destiny 2, for example, at 1080p and at a high graphics setting, then you’re going to start depleting the battery. Do it long enough, and the machine is going to throttle the CPU and GPU to stop the battery drain. In no case will the battery deplete completely, though.
The question then becomes: Just how big of a deal is this? In our opinion, it’s not that big of a deal at all. That is, it’s not a big deal if you accept the premise that the Surface Book 2 is many great things — the most powerful 2-in-1 on the market, the most flexible and feature-laden notebook you can buy, and a portable dream machine for creative professionals. But at the same time, it’s simply not a hardcore, dedicated gaming machine.
Yes, the battery will drain if you game on the Surface Book 2 for too long. And you won’t want to do that, because after a certain amount of time, the machine will throttle back and significantly limit your gaming experience. Just how long before that happens depends on the game, the room temperature and display brightness, what other peripherals are plugged in, and myriad other factors. Our unscientific guess puts it at somewhere between a couple of hours and all day.
In the end, this doesn’t change our impression of the Surface Book 2 at all. As we noted in our review, the machine is a creative powerhouse that can provide a very good gaming experience. You can run AutoCAD, Sketchup, and other demanding creative applications all day long, but if you want to engage in 24-hour gaming competitions, then you’ll want to buy a dedicated gaming machine instead.
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