It can cause spurts of audio glitches or sudden drops in power when a temperature threshold is reached and your plug-in heavy project collapses. This clocking or SpeedStepping can cause havoc with realtime audio playback. They clock down as soon as they’re able and only clock back up when the load increases. Mobile processors are designed to save power as much and as often as possible. The problem comes down to the way the processors work. What I am saying is that processor power is no guarantee of a glitch-free music-making experience. Buy a powerful laptop and you may well be able to run Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Studio One etc. It’s certainly true that processor speed is your friend in terms of plug-in counts and complex software instruments but that power does not determine the ability for any given laptop to successfully run music software at low, playable latencies. The reality is that laptops are not built with audio production in mind.

The assumption is that if you have a nicely powerful processor then you’ll be able to run masses of plug-ins and instruments and have a lovely time making music. Right, this is where assumptions and reality have a hard time matching up to one another. You can opt for 8, 16 or 32GB of memory and 256, 512 or 1TB of storage. The 13.5″ or 15″ screen is gorgeous at 3000 x 2000 or 3240 x 2160 resolution respectively running on a Nvidia GTX 1650 4GB or 1660Ti 6GB when attached to the base and drops to the Intel Iris Plus when you pull the screen off via the awesome detachment mechanism. The Surface Book has now reached its third generation and harbours a 10th generation Intel Quad-Core i5 or i7 processor. But the focus of this article are the two latest models which define the top and bottom of the range – the flagship Surface Book 3 and the entry-level Surface Go 2.

Regular laptops drive me nuts.Īlong with the Surface Pro we now have the Surface Laptop, Surface Pro X, Surface Studio, Surface Hub and the forthcoming Surface Duo and Surface Neo. With a Surface you can circle it, dodge in and out, walk past with a coffee and tap something, sit down and type, stand up and finger flick.

With any other laptop or MacBook I find I am confined to a chair and pushed into a singular way of working. I’ve been a Surface Pro user since version 3 (now on version 7) and I can tell you the ease of use and smoothness of transition between input protocols is superb. By the time the Surface Book arrived the Surface Pro had already worked out most of the kinks in the combined touch/keyboard/trackpad workflow. Microsoft’s laptop game has matured into an attractive lineup of touch-screen hybrids.

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