Microsoft Confirms That Surface Book Has Twice the Power of a MacBook Pro

When companies release new products, they always come with bold statements that this new thing is so many more times powerful than this other device, but it is a sentence that’s usually followed by an asterisk that explains a very limited test scenario or old comparison product.

When Microsoft announced the Surface Book, they claimed that it was twice as powerful as the MacBook Pro and that it “ounce for ounce, pound for pound,” was the fastest 13-inch laptop anywhere on the planet. That is a very bold statement and one that left users wondering if it could be true as Microsoft didn’t reveal how it compared the two. A lot of people suspected that the Surface Book had been compared to a low-end MacBook Pro.

Now Microsoft clarified that statement to Microsoft-News, at least a little bit. The tests were performed on a Surface Book and MacBook Pro that both feature an Intel Core i7 CPU and 16GB RAM. Microsoft used third-party benchmarks to test these two, the best Surface Book and the best MacBook Pro.

That does clarify the scenario a bit, but it still doesn’t tell us what kind of benchmarks that were used. Are they talking 3D performance, workstation performance, or something else? Maybe even everything, we don’t know. Still, there is no doubt that the Surface Book is an awesome little machine, but also one that comes at a hefty price. If you want the best, you have to pay for it.