Surface Book 2 Discussion Thread (13.5" and 15" models)

I was going to say I have a drawer full of those things, but this one does look shorter

 

<<... this one does look shorter ...>>

...It is; check the other product images to see the flush fit.

 

Wow, they've been able to reduce weight to half a gram? Wonder how they accomplished that?

 

Lol
Took me some time to get.

 

Yep, this thing is great! It's been in my SB1 up until the day I bought the SB2, which it now is in.... works great on original SB1 and both 13" & 15" SB2 machines, perfectly reliable, and is completely flush. Would totally buy again.

Do have a question for those that know these things. After picking up a 13" SB2 last week, I liked it so much I decided to go swap up to the 15", which is absolutely fantastic. Swear it's the same weight in practical use of the 13" but significantly more powerful performance wise and what a gorgeous screen!

Any who, I'm liking it so much as it's the first Surface that's actually got "enough" performance that I'm trying to see if I can use it as my one machine and sell off my desktop parts. I picked up the Surface Dock to accomplish this, and currently have my Dell 34" Ultrawide, keyboard, mouse, powered USB hub and wired Ethernet all hooked up to dock. All attached devices are working fine.

My question is will the Dock provide enough power to the SB2? Is it "officially" supported by MS or are they releasing an updated model of it with a bigger power supply? Isn't the dock 95W where as the SB2 is actually 102W but in reality should have been 120W I've read? Reason I ask, while downloading/updating/indexing etc last night the battery was at 88% and just said "plugged in/not charging" and it would show the batteries randomly saying "in use". Wasn't sure if that was normal behavior or a lack of power from the Dock. My SB1 by comparison never did that, but I never plugged it up to the dock.

I'll watch it more throughout the day today. Thanks for any thoughts!

 

I don't have the answer, but it's an interesting question! During my brief moment of actually considering a SB2 I was dreaming of buying a couple of Surface docks for work and at home, and being able to dock my current SP4 or SB2 tablet portion whenever needed. If the current dock causes trouble, that scenario no longer sounds as appealing.

 

Yeah, it was part of my starry eyed appeal as well! To actually go down to one machine just had me thrilled ha... I've been running SP1/2/3 and a SB1 over the years along side either a powerful laptop or an overkill desktop since they first came out. The 15" is simply the first that could be capable of doing it all.

But, that's only if I can reliably power and dock it when well, on my desk with all my peripheral devices.

I've been tinkering some more, and it just seems like it's not getting the power it should. I'm randomly seeing "Plugged in, Discharging" with simple office work and background activities. I haven't noticed that at all when using the supplied power adapter by comparison, even when playing something like Forza 7 in all it's glory. Problem with using the supplied power adapter though is how do I connect all my devices?

Will continue to use like this throughout the day for work and see how things fair.

By no means is this a knock, and it could all be part of MS' power management plan, just trying to determine so I can plan long term usage. Everything is working and stable, no actual issues.

 

Can't remember where I saw it, but I had read the Surface Dock was under powered for the SB2. The brick with the SB2 is 102W, and the Surface Dock is only 90W, so no way to power the USB ports and the device if it is being in the least bit pushed.

Which brings me to the big question again - WHY NOT GO THUNDERBOLT 3? You can buy a 240W TB dock from Dell to light the whole neighborhood!

Oh yeah - forgot - no TB3 from MS -

 

I googled and bing'd and couldn't find anything on this so finally caved and bought the Dock after a couple days research... my gut says it's underpowered though based on usage. Which leads me to the question of how does MS create such a killer device yet no way to properly power it in a professional desktop setting with other devices attached?

I could give a hoot about TB3, don't have a device that supports it so of zero use to me, but dang it MS let me at least use the ports properly that you gave us!

 

I think I read, but don't quote me on it, because all the PCIE-E lanes in the CPU were used.. The i7 has 12 PCI-E lanes
https://ark.intel.com/products/124968/Intel-Core-i7-8650U-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz

Thunderbolt 3 can be done with 2 or 4 PCI-E lanes, but the design of the dock and such used up all the PCI-E lanes.

Also I don't think a 240W dock matters if it's Thunderbolt 3 or not. The power delivery for Thunderbolt 3 is 100W
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/tech/faq - "Thunderbolt 3 data transfer, support for two 4K 60 Hz displays, and quick notebook charging up to 100W with a single cable"

So I think that extra watts is powering the rest of the peripherals, which in theory, I would think Microsoft could do with a dock that had a bigger power supply. You don't NEED Thunderbolt 3 for that.