Microsoft Surface Book 2 (15-inch) vs Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

The 15-inch version of the Surface Book 2 comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. This is a powerful, VR-ready card that handles intensive gaming tasks.

As for real-world performance, Hitman (1920 x 1080, ultra) runs at 71.9 frames per second, Grand Theft Auto V runs at 45 fps.

It should also be mentioned that you need to be using the dock in order to do graphic-intensive tasks since that's where the GPU is located; using the laptop in tablet-mode will yield poor results in this regard.

Equiped with an Intel Core i7-8650U CPU, 8GB (or 16GB) of RAM and an SSD that goes up to 1TB, the Surface Book 2 certainly packs a punch. It handles multitasking perfectly; you can open dozens of Chrome tags, stream video, and draw using the built-in software without experiencing any lag even once.

As far as benchmarks go, on the Geekbench 4 overall performance benchmark, the Surface Book 2 got a score of 12,505, better than the 15-inch laptop average (11,004) coming third after the Dell XPS 15 (13,911) and the MacBook Pro (15,170).

The new fulcrum hinge that Microsoft used for the Surface Book 2 is much more stable than the one found on the previous Surface Book or even other 2-in-1 laptops for that matter.

This laptop's display is bright and vivid, making it perfect for people who do a lot of drawing, design, or video editing work. The display offers an excellent coverage of 131% of the sRGB colour gamut (the average for this price range is 101%). The colour coverage and the bright display which measures an average of 417 nits really makes colours truly pop out and offers lifelike pictures.

The Surface Book 2 lasts on average 12 hours on a single charge. This should be more than enough to get anyone to the end of their workday on a single charge.

Even though the keyboard is rather shallow (just 1.2mm of travel), the typing experience is excellent. Keys have a great amount of feedback when clicking and you rarely (if ever) bottom out when typing.

The Carbon X1 is a very light and durable laptop. It has the characteristic raven-black finishing of other Thinkpads on top of a carbon-fiber reinforced chassis. The carbon fiber increases the overall durability of the laptop, making it a great fit for people who travel a lot since it can withstand a lot of physical damages.

The battery supports over 10 hours of light activity like web browsing, watching videos and editing documents. This can be doubled to 20 hours by swapping in the extended, 6-cell battery, which can be hot swapped without turning off the laptop since it also has an internal 4-cell battery.

At around 2lbs this is a very light laptop. Especially when you compare it to other Thinkpads. It's light enough to carry in one hand and when it's carried in a backpack it's easy to forget that you are carrying a laptop because of how light it is.

The X1 Carbon comes in two different versions. With a 1080p or a 1440p display, with the latter being $70 more. Both displays are excellent. The image is sharp and the colors are very noticeable. Although, understandably, the 1440p display has images that are a bit sharper than its 1080p counterpart.

According to colorimeter tests, both versions of the display can produce 104 and 103 percent of the sRGB color gamut, respectively. That's very impressive when compared to the average for 14" displays (83%).

The 1080p screen is noticeably brighter than the 1440p screen (292nits vs 257nits) and the colors generally start fading only at about 45 degrees viewing angle.

Like most Thinkpads, the X1 Carbon has an excellent keyboard as well. The keys have about 1.8mm of travel and provide great tactile feedback. Their gently curved keys also make it very easy to target without looking at them. The keyboard also has optional backlighting which can be turned on or off with a simple key press.

The 2018 model of the X1 Carbon has far-field microphones built-in to work with Amazon Alexa. This will allow you to give commands to Alexa from across the room.

The 2018 model of the X1 Carbon has far-field microphones built-in to work with Amazon Alexa. This will allow you to give commands to Alexa from across the room.

The X1 Carbon has bottom-mounted speakers which provide excellent audio output. The sound is loud enough to fill a large room and there's clear separation of sound coming from the speakers, making them great for any sorts of recreational activity involving audio be it listening to music, watching movies or playing videogames.