Microsoft's Surface Studio 2 released among other Surface devices in black with updated internals

Photo by Microsoft

At a Tuesday press event, Microsoft revealed three new computers in its touch-capable Surface line, among them the brand new Surface Studio 2, the next iteration of their all-in-one desktop aiming to reach designer professionals with a big budget. Two years after releasing the original Surface Studio it is getting a bit of a refresh.

On the outside, the updated Surface Studio 2 looks largely similar to the original model, but now it features NVIDIA's next-generation Pascal graphics (Microsoft promises 50 percent more graphics power) and can be upgraded with up to 2TB SSD. Its display is supposedly 38 percent brighter than the first Surface Studio with 22 percent more contrast, which is made possible by new LCD and oxide transistor technology. All of this is powered by 13.5 million pixels on the Surface Studio 2 display and support for 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity on the Surface Pen.

Microsoft is also supporting tilt functionality on the Surface Pen with the Surface Studio 2. Furthermore, Microsoft's all-in-one now offers USB-C support and Surface Dial integration, and it comes with the latest Surface Pen. Unfortunately, the price is still fairly high, with the upgraded version starting at $3,499 for a 1TB hard drive and 16GB of RAM. The top tier, which includes the 2TB drive and 32 GB of RAM, will cost you $4,799.

Microsoft isn’t revealing exactly when this new Surface Studio 2 will launch, only that it’s “coming soon” alongside the company’s new Surface Headphones. It's available for preorder in select markets starting today and will ship November 15th. Engadget was lucky to have a quick hands-on with the new machine and they noticed that the Surface pen seems to draw a lot smoother now, wich hopefully addresses one of the biggest complaints graphic designers had when using the older Studio.