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Microsoft launches new Surface Studio 2 as the ‘fastest Surface ever’

Microsoft launches new Surface Studio 2 as the ‘fastest Surface ever’

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An SSD inside and better Nvidia graphics support

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Microsoft first unveiled its all-in-one Surface Studio PC almost two years ago at a press event in New York City. Today, Microsoft is returning to New York to unveil the second generation of the Surface Studio. The Surface Studio 2 has the same 28-inch display as the original, but Microsoft has tweaked the display and boosted the internals to make this the “fastest Surface ever.”

The new display is 38 percent brighter than the previous model, and it has 22 percent more contrast. All of this is powered by 13.5 million pixels on the Surface Studio 2 display and support for 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity on the Surface Pen. Microsoft is also supporting tilt functionality on the Surface Pen with the Surface Studio 2.

Inside, there’s 50 percent more graphics power, thanks to a new Nvidia chip based on the Pascal architecture. This should make it a lot more capable of video rendering and even gaming. Like the original, there’s built-in Xbox Wireless support for connecting any Xbox One controller and the device can be paired with the company’s neat paint palette-style Surface Dial for digital animation, photo editing, and illustration work.

Microsoft is overhauling the specs elsewhere, too. There’s a 2TB SSD inside, instead of the slower hybrid drive on the original Surface Studio. That should immediately make this machine far faster and more capable, but Microsoft has strangely decided to stick with a 7th Generation Intel Core i7 processor inside. While the GPU and storage will be a lot faster, the processor won’t be as fast as you can get on other all-in-one PCs in 2018.

Microsoft isn’t revealing exactly when this new Surface Studio 2 will launch, only that it’s “coming soon” alongside the company’s new Surface Headphones. The base model comes with an Intel Kaby Lake-based i7 processor and 16GB RAM, and the price will start at $3,499.