Apple has always been the king of computers for the creative class but Microsoft is making a serious play for artists, animators, illustrators and more with it's growing Surface line now anchored by the flagship Surface Studio and it's inventive dial controller.
The Surface studio combines a bunch of ideas we've seen before but puts them together in a new context.
It's a 28 inch, all in one, touch screen Windows PC, with a display that folds all the way down to a very low angle of 20 degrees.
The hinge mechanism is very smooth and you end up with something that looks like an artist's drafting table.
The [UNKNOWN] screen has an insane 4500 by 3000 pixel resolution and it works with the same Surface Pen that comes with the Surface Book and the Surface Pro.
But it's the new optional Surface Dial that really makes the Surface Studio feel different.
It's a wireless Bluetooth control wheel made of aluminum On the larger screen of the studio, you can actually mount the dial on the display for additional options, such as visually scrolling through a color wheel, or selecting brush sizes.
The combination of Surface Dial and Surface Studio is very cool, but right now it's also limited to a small group of supported apps, such as Sketchable, an art program.
It also works with Spotify, which is kinda cool But Photoshop and other [UNKNOWN] programs will have to wait for support.
We set some actual artists loose with the Surface Studio and its pen and dial, and while they were impressed, they liked the big bright screen and the stylus pen more than the dial itself, which still feels like a work in progress.
I find this thing a little clunky.
Just the menu system is really ornate.
There are so many options to this that I kind of And unintentionally selecting things that I did not mean to select.
Like that, I just selected, went back to the main menu.
I'm sure after a couple weeks of working in it, I'd get the hang of it.
[MUSIC]
This is nice, to have all this space.
I guess it feels more like a smaller drafting table in itself, which is cool.
[MUSIC]
For an artist, it's never good to work flat completely, you always want to have it at an angle.
So it's cool that this is able to do that.
[MUSIC]
One nice bonus for the $3,000 and up Surface Studio, it includes a high end laptop gaming graphics card from Invidea
So not only can it handle high res animation and video editing, you can play games on the awesome looking giant screen too.
