Several months ago I got a brand new Macbook Pro 15″. It was my first Mac computer and it was great. It was great for doing many of the basic things like browsing and presenting PowerPoint and a few other things. But creating documents were a bit frustrating. I’ve used MS Office on a Windows PC for so long and it’s the only way I’ve done it. It’s nothing against the Macbook Pro or MacOS its actually the MS Office Suite for Mac was just different. Basic templates for it weren’t available and the ability to embed web videos isn’t available as it is on the Windows version, just to name a few.
I got VMWare Fusion 10 to enable my Macbook Pro to run Windows, but the slight sluggish performance was annoying. It was annoying when browsing, working on MS office suite apps, and other software I can only use in Windows. I switched to Bootcamp, Apple’s tool to run Windows natively on their hardware. This solved the Windows performance issue. But that solution led to another problem. Since the Macbook Pro has a discrete video card, a dedicated high performance video card, it was the primary video driver for Bootcamp. Instead of using the Intel integrated video chip it used the discrete video card 100% of the time which dramatically decrease the battery life, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Unable to live with those annoyances I sold the Macbook Pro and got the Surface Book 2, 15″ model. The Surface Book 2 is an amazing device it does everything that I need it to do and the battery life is awesome. It’s just as good as the Macbook Pro, with MacOS, if not, better.
There are a few things that’ll I’ll miss from the Macbook Pro. First being the amazing trackpad. The smoothness and all the gestures built into MacOS makes it a joy to use. The trackpad on the Surface Book 2 is also great. Windows 10 has a lot of great trackpad gestures but overall performance and smoothness the Macbook Pro edges it. Secondly, the Macbook Pro’s build quality is top notch. Almost everything about it makes it feels and looks premium. The Surface Book 2 looks just as premium. The build quality is also great. Again, the Macbook Pro has a slight edge against the Surface Book 2. I think its the Surface Book 2’s magnesium case. Maybe its just me, but it feels plasticky (is that a word?). I know its all metal. I guess I’m not use the magnesium feel of it. If I had to give it a score for build quality the Macbook Pro gets a 10 and the Surface Book 2 gets a 9.5. And Lastly, I will miss the Thunderbolt 3 ports. The ability to charge the laptop from any port and use any of them to connect to a monitor or a Thunderbolt 3 hub makes it so flexible and future proof. The Surface Book 2 doesn’t have a TB3 port. But it does have one USB-C port. You can charge the SB2 with it and output to a monitor, but not at the same time.
There are some trade offs between the two laptops, but overall the Surface Book 2 is the ultimate laptop. I didn’t mention it yet, but the SB2 is a 2-in-1 device as it has a touch screen and the screen is detachable and it can be used with a Surface pen things the Macbook Pro can’t do.