Here's the very long-winded detail of how I fell in love with a convertible, and why I’m now using it as my daily driver. On a recent trip to the US, however, I decided to get one to try it out and see if it lives up to the hype. When Microsoft introduced the larger 15-inch version in late 2017 with a 6GB GTX 1060 graphics card, my interest was piqued: could this be the Mac-quality alternative I was looking for? At the time, it wasn't available in Europe at the time so I went with the XPS 15. That was a laptop of the future, and it looked promising, but at the time only came in a 13-inch version. While a touch screen, ink-compatibility and other things weren't really on my list, the Surface Book came onto my radar when it was first released a few years back by just how sheer adaptable it is. It's a tall order, but should be feasible. I don't want a serious gaming monstrosity, I just desired something that can do the job well, had great build quality and could run the Unix-based tools I need to use to get through the day while offering reasonable battery life. I needed a machine that could offer enough power to get shit done, but is lightweight and flexible enough to do other things, like watch movies and do some light gaming. I'm a software developer and UX writer who spends my days either in a text editor or building and debugging PHP applications (including my own) in an IDE. I'm not your typical reviewer but rather a person who needs more out of their machines than most. I've used the Surface Book 2 as my daily computer for three months now and it's consistently blown me away with how well considered it is across the board, how great the software works and has completely converted me into the touchscreen laptop camp. That machine is the 15-inch Surface Book 2 and somehow Microsoft has made the 2-in-1 that Apple should've been building all along, to the same level of quality I'd expect from anyone other than Microsoft. I'm back to say I was wrong, and I've found a machine that not only matches Apple's standard of hardware quality, but goes far beyond it to demonstrate how a laptop of the future should work. These are fantastic machines that do the job well, but always left something wanting, which I figured I'd need to settle for. Over the past year I've spent time with the Razer Blade, Dell XPS 15 and the Eve V, which are all stellar machines, but I didn't quite feel at home yet. I've been hunting for a great MacBook Pro replacement since early 2017 and while I've been happy with my switch to a desktop machine at home, it's been an interesting journey trying to find something that's on the same all-around hardware and software experience on the laptop side.
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