Surface Book vs. Retina MacBook Pro – Comparison Of Specs and Features

Microsoft has unveiled its latest hybrid laptop which competes against Apple’s Retina MacBook Pro laptop. The Surface Book looks very stylish and has a detachable keyboard, but in the same time, it’s very powerful.

Designs and Dimensions

The Surface Book features a magnesium casing and it looks pretty much the same as the Retina MacBook Pro, which has an aluminum casing. However, the Surface Book measures 212.1×312.3×13.0-22.8mm and it weights 1515 grams, being slimmer and lighter than the MacBook Pro, which measures 219x314x18 mm and weights 1580grams.

The price of the Surface Book starts from $1,499, while the Retina MacBook Pro is 200 dollars cheaper.

Displays

The Surface Book has a larger screen that has a diagonal of 13.5-inch which supports a resolution of 3,000-by-2,000 pixels, while the Retina MacBook Pro has a smaller screen of 13-inch with a resolution of 2,560-by-1,600 pixels.

Hardware

The MacBook Pro is powered by a dual-core Intel Core i5 which is clocked at 2,7 GHz and has 128 GB or 256GB of storage, but there is also a third variant which is clocked at 2.9GHz and has 512 GB of storage. However, the device supports 8 GB LPDDR3 running at 1866 MHz.

The Surface Book comes with the sixth-generation Intel Skylake processor and the configuration options include a Core i5 with 8GB of memory, or a Core i7 with Nvidia GPU, and up to 1TB of storage.

Batteries

The Surface Book lasts 12 hours when playing videos, while the MacBook Pro can withstand 11 hours and 10 minutes in the same conditions.

Connectivity

Both devices come with two USB 3.0 ports, SD card slots to expand the internal memory and support Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac WiFi. The Surface Book has in addition a Mini DisplayPort and a SurfaceConnect port, while the MacBook Pro has two Thunderbolt ports.