The keyboard contains a second battery, a number of ports and an optional discrete graphics card used when the screen part, also dubbed as the clipboard by Microsoft, is docked to it.

[8][9] In October 2016, Microsoft announced an updated Surface Book with a new Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M GPU and additional battery life over the original model.

[14][15] The Surface Book's keyboard utilizes a dynamic fulcrum hinge, which compresses when closed, and expands outwards when opened.

[17] During the presentation it was stated that the models with Nvidia GPU can comfortably run games with a performance footprint of League of Legends.

[18] The Surface Book is able to connect and disconnect the discrete GPU automatically, on-the-fly and without an OS reboot needed, when user attaches and detaches the keyboard part.

The base of this updated Surface Book is also thicker than the original in order to incorporate an additional cooling fan for the new GPU and more internal batteries, allowing for an additional 4 hours of video playback - upping the total claimed runtime of the device to 16 hours.

[6] Surface Book models ship with a pre-installed 64-bit version of Windows 10 Pro and a 30-day trial Microsoft Office suite.

Upon release the Surface Book received critical acclaim for its design and functionality, as well as its integration of a secondary GPU into the keyboard.

However, the lack of certain features, such as LTE connectivity and USB-C ports, was noted along with the price of the highest-specs model (US$3,200 for one with 1 TB of storage and a Core i7).

[1][24] In addition, many reviewers had pre-release issues with the hinge undocking mechanism and graphics display drivers, both of which Microsoft resolved at a later date through a Windows software update.

[26][19] The "teardown" site iFixit scored the Surface Book 1/10 for repairability mainly due to the use of glue instead of screws to hold the unit together and the impossibility of upgrading things such as the CPU and RAM that are both soldered to the motherboard.

Other reported problems included power management issues in which sleep and standby modes resulted in the unexpected continual drain of the battery.