The Surface Studio is an all-in-one PC, designed and produced by Microsoft as part of its Surface series of Windows-based personal computing devices. It was announced at the Windows 10 Devices Event on October 26, 2016, with pre-orders beginning that day. The first desktop computer to be manufactured entirely by Microsoft, the Surface Studio uses the Windows 10 operating system with the Anniversary Update preinstalled. However, it is optimized for the Windows 10 Creators Update, which was released on April 11, 2017. The product, starting at $2,999, is aimed primarily at people in creative professions such as

graphic artist A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, p ...

s and designers. Two years later, in October 2018, Microsoft announced its successor, the

Surface Studio 2 The Surface Studio 2 is an all-in-one PC, designed and produced by Microsoft as part of its Surface series of Windows-based personal computing devices. It was announced at the Windows 10 Devices Event on October 2, 2018, two years after the ...

Features

Hardware

The Surface Studio has a 28-inch 4.5K "

PixelSense Microsoft PixelSense (formerly called Microsoft Surface) was an interactive surface computing platform that allowed one or more people to use and touch real-world objects, and share digital content at the same time. The PixelSense platform consist ...

" display with 4500 x 3000 pixels, equivalent to 192 dpi. The screen, the thinnest ever built for an all-in-one PC at 12.5 millimetres thick, is capable of being used in both the DCI-P3 and

sRGB sRGB is a standard RGB (red, green, blue) color space that HP and Microsoft created cooperatively in 1996 to use on monitors, printers, and the World Wide Web. It was subsequently standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission ( ...

color spaces, and features a unique

hinge A hinge is a mechanical bearing that connects two solid objects, typically allowing only a limited angle of rotation between them. Two objects connected by an ideal hinge rotate relative to each other about a fixed axis of rotation: all other ...

design that allows it be tilted to a flat position, in a manner similar to the Wacom Cintiq. The

bezel Bezel may refer to: Object * Bezel (jewellery), the rim which encompasses and fastens a jewel, watch crystal, lens or other object * Bezel, the sloping facets of the crown of a cut gem after gem cutting * Screen bezel, a space or frame around a d ...

of the display contains a 5.0 megapixel camera and a Windows Hello-compatible backlit infrared camera. The

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

is located in the base. Its compact design contains a 6th generation (codename "

Skylake Skylake or Sky Lake may refer to: * Skylake (microarchitecture), the codename for a processor microarchitecture developed by Intel as the successor to Broadwell * Skylake (Mysia), a town of ancient Mysia, now in Turkey * Sky Lake, Florida Sky La ...

") Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor and either a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M or GeForce GTX 980M graphics processor (both dependent on configuration). The system can be configured with up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and a 2 terabyte hard drive. It also features four USB 3.0 ports, a Mini DisplayPort, an SDXC card reader and a headset connection. Unlike many desktop PCs, the Surface Studio supports Microsoft's Modern Standby (formerly known as InstantGo) specification, enabling background tasks to operate while the computer is sleeping. A firmware update was released in April 2017 that enabled

Cortana Cortana may refer to: * ''Cortana'' (gastropod), a gastropod genus * Cortana (''Halo''), character in the ''Halo'' franchise *Cortana (virtual assistant), virtual assistant from Microsoft *Cortana, or Curtana, a ceremonial sword used in the coronat ...

to be summoned via a "Hey, Cortana" voice command from sleep, provided the Studio is running the Creators Update.

Accessories

Microsoft specially designed its Surface Mouse and Surface Keyboard to work with the Surface Studio. It is also compatible with the

Surface Pen The Surface Pen is an active stylus and digital pen developed by Microsoft for its series of Surface computing devices. It is designed to showcase the pen computing capabilities of Microsoft's Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 operating systems. Fir ...

and a newly created accessory, the

Surface Dial The Microsoft Surface touchscreen Microsoft Windows, Windows Personal computer, computers and interactive whiteboards designed and developed by Microsoft. Since its release in 2012, there have been various Surface accessories over the years. Mos ...

. The latter consists of a round disk that can be placed on the display and rotated to perform various actions, such as scrolling, zooming, adjusting the volume, among others, with precision. Developers can utilize its

APIs Apis or APIS may refer to: * Apis (deity), an ancient Egyptian god * Apis (Greek mythology), several different figures in Greek mythology * Apis (city), an ancient seaport town on the northern coast of Africa **Kom el-Hisn, a different Egyptian ci ...

to integrate its functionality into their own products.

Reception

The Surface Studio received generally positive reviews from technology critics. Many praised the large high resolution display, with Tom Warren of The Verge calling it "truly one of the best desktop monitors I’ve ever used". There was also praise for the design and build quality. Criticisms included the high entry price of the device, the all rear-facing I/O ports and the use of last generation Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.

Timeline

References

External links

* * {{Microsoft, state=collapsed Microsoft Surface All-in-one desktop computers