This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the Surface Studio ‘Gravity Hinge’ doesn’t need any improvements. The increased brightness can bring out enhanced detail, while the boosted contrast will drive deeper blacks and lighter whites, and in turn offer more color depth.īeyond these points – and USB-C in lieu of a DisplayPort – there are no major design upgrades. The improvements to brightness and contrast don’t exactly blow our mind, personally, but we’re sure they can make content more visible and workable for creatives. The screen has been given quite a boost in the brightness and contrast departments by 38% (515 nits) and 22% (1,200:1), respectively. That said, Microsoft did take the chance to upgrade the Surface Studio display with this revision. Even the included wireless peripherals haven’t really changed since the first Surface Studio was released. Hopefully, Microsoft fixes this shortcoming in the Surface Studio 3.Īll in all, it’s hard to say what price should be put on such a niche product with such a specific use case, but this is an expensive piece of hardware no matter how you slice it.Ībsolutely nothing has changed in the Surface Studio 2’s physical design over the original – this may be either a disappointment or music to your ears, depending on your perspective. However, the asking price has been bumped up by $500 in the US for innards that, while definitely better than the Surface Studio, are arguably outdated by today’s standards. It’s hard to compare this desktop against competing all-in-one PCs for creatives and otherwise, since it is designed for a very specific audience: digital artists and other creators. This doubles the memory of the starting model and upgrades to the GTX 1070 GPU. The configuration you see listed here – one of only three available in the US – will set you back $4,199 (AU$6,599, about £3,319).

Unfortunately, you’re still stuck with the 7th generation Intel Core i7 CPU. If you want to upgrade the Surface Studio 2, you may do so by switching the GPU to Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5), the RAM to 32GB and as much as 2TB of SSD space. This all sits beneath a 28-inch, 4,500 x 3,000 resolution PixelSense touch display that’s now 38% brighter (515 nits) and offers a 22% higher contrast ratio (1,200:1).

Case studio 2