Skip to main content

We tested it: The Surface Book 2’s 15-hour battery easily outlasts your workday

Surface Book 2
Daven Mathies/Digital Trends
What’s a typical work day look like for you? Eight hours? Nine? 10? Perhaps even 12?

If so, we’re sorry. That’s a long, long time to work. Yet there is one PC that can keep up with you and may, in fact, even outlast your marathon work ethic — Microsoft’s new Surface Book 2 15-inch.

Recommended Videos

We test laptop battery life with a scripted, automated web browsing loop that rotates through several real websites, pausing between each. Most modern laptops do well in the test, scoring at least five to six hours of life. The best laptops can exceed eight hours.

And then there’s the Surface Book 2 15-inch. It turned in an incredible 15 hours and 33 minutes, smashing previous records with ease. Here’s how it stacks up next to five other recently tested laptops that impressed us with their endurance.

[infogram-responsive id="b04a15c9-7848-42a2-a96a-221fa50685e5" title="Surface Book 2 Battery Life"]

It’s not even close, is it? The Surface Book 2 kept on chugging four hours after the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, an increase of 35 percent. The Book 2 also lasts around twice as long as the Microsoft Surface Laptop.

How’s that possible? It’s half raw power, half magic. The power is the sheer size of the battery which, at 90 watt-hours combined between tablet and base, easily exceeds the competition. Yet Microsoft is also putting some secret sauce into its systems. Our reviews of both the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop noted they lasted longer than battery size alone might suggest.

Combine a big battery with a miserly design and, well, the results speak for themselves.

What’s the catch? Well, the battery is split between the detachable tablet and the base, so the tablet alone won’t last nearly as long. You can always re-attach it to the base to recharge, though, so we doubt it’ll be a problem for most.

Battery life isn’t the only benchmark that gave us a shock, either. Check out our Surface Book 2 full review for all the details.

Matthew S. Smith
Matthew S. Smith is the former Lead Editor, Reviews at Digital Trends. He previously guided the Products Team, which dives…
Microsoft is finally refreshing the Surface Studio 2 (four years later)
Microsoft Surface Studio 2+ sitting flat on a table.

Almost four years ago to the day, Microsoft released the Surface Studio 2, which we called "a true Mac killer" in our Surface Studio 2 review. It has fallen our of favor as Apple switching to the M1 iMac over the past couple of years, but Microsoft is finally answering back with the aptly named Surface Studio 2+, announced during Microsoft's fall hardware event.

It's a revision to the model released a few years back, at least based on the name. But under the hood, the Surface Studio 2+ is an all-new machine. You're now getting an 11th-gen Intel mobile processor, which Microsoft says is "50% faster" than the previous Surface Studio. Even that's an understatement. The previous version was stuck with a 7th-gen Intel processor that was dated when it was released.

Read more
We just got our first look of the Surface Studio 3’s new accessories
Microsoft Surface Studio 2 is a great art station.

Rumors suggest Microsoft's Surface Studio 3 might be coming soon, and recently leaked photos suggest it might not be long now. Nothing has been officially announced yet but photos have leaked of what appears to be a new Surface Pen, Keyboard, and Mouse.

The leaked photo appeared in a tweet from Zac Bowden, revealing high-resolution photos that show accessories that look both old and new at the same time. The new Surface Pen's style is quite reminiscent of the stylus Microsoft introduced alongside the Surface Pro 3, including a shirt clip made of a wire loop. Microsoft has a soft spot for Clippy, the iconic paperclip mascot, perhaps inspiring the look of the pen clip.

Read more
M2 MacBook Air struggles with heat, and we now know why
The torn-down M2 MacBook Air rests on a wooden floor.

Apple's new M2 MacBook Air is now available, and true to form, iFixit tore it down in order to peek inside and take a better look at the hardware.

The teardown revealed a few interesting design choices, but most of all, it showed that Apple must have a lot of faith in the new MacBook Air, seeing as it didn't even equip it with a heat spreader. Another potential issue was also unearthed.

Read more