We’ve known Microsoft had something new and Surfacey up its sleeve for this week. Turns out the company’s finally ready to unveil the long promised Surface 2S. The successor to 2015’s Windows 10-based interactive whiteboard is all about making things more portable.
It’s a bit of a counterintuitive product category that brings nothing to more to mind than a stationary wall mount, but at the price these things tend to run, versatility is key. In fact, the company brought Steelcase on as a partner, specifically to design a mobile, wheeled stand for the product.
The 2S is 60 percent slimmer and 40 percent lighter than the earlier model. Key to portability is also the option to add a mobile battery from APC to the Hub, which lets team members unplug the system without losing all of their work. That’s seemingly a no brainer for collaborative devices like these. No doubt these were all highly requested features after gen one.
In addition to the new-found portability, the specs have also been bumped up across the board. The 50 inch display is “4K+,” at 3840 x 2560. The speakers, mic and camera have all been improved, powered by an 8th gen Intel Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and Intel UHD Graphics 620, which the company promises are 50 percent faster than the last time around.
It starts shipping in June, priced at $9,000.
Microsoft also plans to deliver the standard Surface Hub 2 later this year, bringing a pen and touch enabled display. And next year it will start testing an 85 inch version of the 2S, with “select customers.”
