The Surface Studio is an all-in-one PC, designed and produced by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

as part of its Surface series of

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

-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 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

operating system with the

Anniversary Update Windows 10 Anniversary Update (also known as version 1607 and codenamed "Redstone 1") is the second major update to Windows 10 and the first in a series of updates under the Redstone codenames. It carries the build number 10.0.14393. This 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" display with 4500 x 3000 pixels, equivalent to 192

dpi A Daytona Prototype International (DPi) was a type of sports prototype racing car developed specifically for the International Motor Sports Association's WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, as their top class of car, acting as a direct replacemen ...

. 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 () is a Japanese company headquartered in Kazo, Saitama, Japan, that specializes in manufacturing graphics tablets and related products. Headquarters locations The main headquarters are located in Kazo, Saitama, Japan. Its office in the USA ...

. The bezel of the display contains a 5.0

megapixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the smal ...

camera and a

Windows Hello Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on Ju ...

-compatible backlit

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

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 Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

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 Double Data Rate 4 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR4 SDRAM) is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory with a high bandwidth ("double data rate") interface. Released to the market in 2014, it is a variant of dynamic rando ...

RAM and a 2 terabyte

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

. 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 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 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 ''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media' ...

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