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Comment by atourgates | Hacker News Reader

The value proposition is the responsive touch-screen.

The closest responsive touch screen you can buy today is a 27" Wacom Cintiq, which is $2,299 without a computer, and both lower-resolution (2560x1440 vs 4500x3000) and smaller (27" vs 28") than the Surface Studio.

So if you assume that about $2,300 of the device's costs go to the display and touch screen, you're paying ~$700 for the actual machine driving that display, which isn't a great value, but isn't bad at all.

A terrible value for people who aren't interested in the display, but not bad for people who are.

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> "you're paying ~$700 for the actual machine driving that display"

~$700 gets you a pretty basic computer with 965m, you can build a desktop with gtx 1070 for 700$ to power a wacom display. And you will be able to upgrade it in the future, with Studio you are stuck with a 965m for $3000. And if you are getting a 980m for $4200 that leaves you with a $1900 to build a computer for Wacom, which can be way more powerful than 980m...

I think Microsoft should have sell that monitor by itself, but I guess this way they could not shovel win10 updates down your throat so it is not a good option for them...

So (449) dollar graphics card, the 1070 + (200) dollar cpu + Case (100) + memory (150) + psupply (70) + mobo (150) + hdd/ssd (150) + Wacom cintiq with Digitizer which is what 2500? + an sRGB monitor at 4k 800?

= 4-5000, with a shitty box and shitty experience and you get none of the engineering that went into the product.

Plz continue dreaming up dev boxes that only devs could love. Feel free to throw in some glowing cold cathode lights, too.

Wacom Cintiq 27QHD 27": $2300 [1]

Core i7 PC with Gtx 1080: ~$1750 [2]

= $4050 for a much more powerful machine and $150 cheaper + upgradable

[1] - https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1113...

[2] - https://pcpartpicker.com/b/f2qkcf

That monitor is just under 3.69 billion pixels compared to 13.5 billion on the Surface Studio. It doesn't include the dial interface, the real-life scaling, the pivot mechanism, the color profiles, a lot more. It's probably the closest you can get, but not in the same league.

Just noticed I said billion, meant million. Looking forward to VR displays with that kind of resolution though.

> Looking forward to VR displays with that kind of resolution though.

In before Google releases the "Google Cardboard Surface Studio edition" xD

I agree, that's why Microsoft had to sell this monitor on its own, without that PC attached.

Also I did not see any mention of pressure sensitivity on that Studio panel, if it does not have it - it's a major point to still choose Wacom.

The Wacom has the pressure level advantage: 2048 vs 1024 levels on the Surface. But with well-calibrated software, it should be enough. I'm not sure if people can discern 2048 levels of pressure, and I'm sure this device was tested on a lot of artists. Can't comment from experience but I would think the delay would be a bigger issue than levels (MS say they optimized for delay.)

That is a number beyond meaning for feedback to humans, like arguing for a 3000dpi screen vs a 6000dpi screen, they're both far beyond human levels of perception. From my experience of trying to eek out every variation in pressure with a wacom, 32 levels is enough. I'm not able to create 64 levels of varing pressure strokes, let alone 1024.

(It's "eke". Unless you've just seen a big spider!)

> Wacom Cintiq 27QHD 27": $2300 [1]

This is non touch version. Pen + Touch is $2800 which is a better comparison. That Cintiq is 2560x1440 compared to 4500x3000 in Surface Studio.

and here is what someone who actually used both thinks about it:

"Tycho asked me to compare it to my Cintiq, and I told him that drawing on the Cintiq now felt like drawing on a piece of dirty plexiglass hovering over a CRT monitor from 1997"

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surfac...

> "engineering that went into a product"?

I have no idea what do you mean - I've been assembling my own workstation for last 20 years now thank you there is no magic involved in building a nice system. And I don't enjoy glow lights in my case. If you think people will buy 4k$ system just for looks you have to be kidding me.

The form and function aren't replicable. When you work on a cintiq, the cintiq is on your table and you often have to keep looking up and down at the screen on your monitor. It's not the optimal way to work. The engineering is in the hinge and the form factor. You're not the target market if you want a beastly computer that can run a bunch of games. It's the same people who use a cintiq and an iMac that they're targeting. It's not just looks. It's having the thinnest panel with high color accuracy. It's having novel interaction paradigms with a dial. This isn't a desktop built for someone who builds their own computers. It's for the person who uses illustrator and photoshop daily and works on an iMac and a cintiq.

>The form and function aren't replicable. When you work on a cintiq, the cintiq is on your table and you often have to keep looking up and down at the screen on your monitor. It's not the optimal way to work

I'm kind of confused here. You specifically don't have to look at your (other) monitor when using the cintiq, because the cintiq is also a monitor.

I can buy a cintiq for my workstation - hell I would love to buy the screen from this separately.

Funny, really interesting why i got downvoted - cintiq tablets/monitors were sold separately unless something changed recently.

I think he means putting it in a mobile platform that is hidden behind a gorgeous display. Of course you can build your own for cheaper, but by the time your done sintering aluminum parts and building a custom mainboard to fit the housing, I'm sure yours would be more than $700

I agree that Microsoft should sell the monitor by itself, or at least allow an eGPU accessory, but it seems they're going to 'Apple route' where they fully control hardware and software.

At least on mac you can install Windows, OSx or Linux, with this machine you are stuck with Win10 or Linux

> with this machine

Isn't that also true for pretty much every computer except Apple's?

If the pc components happen to be compatible (current or previously used components in Apple hardware), it's possible to install OSX/macOS on it, hackintosh style[1].

[1]https://www.tonymacx86.com/

I've never had a good experience trying to install Linux on a Mac. Maybe it's better these days.

Unless something has changed, it's annoying as hell to actually install Linux or Windows over the entire hard drive. They want some specific bits at the front of the hard drive.

That's thanks to Windows and Linux being designed for portability, rather than any engineering feat by Apple.

> you can build a desktop with gtx 1070 for 700$

I'm not familiar with latest prices in the US but I would say $700 gets you more something like an i5 + GTX1060 (and it has a much larger form-factor and you have to build it yourself, so probably it's not a fair comparison), but yeah the 1060 or even the new (and cheap) 1050 are still much better than the 965m

EDIT: NewEgg has this one that is prebuilt, 1060+i5, but it's a bit more than $700 (normal price $829, now on sale at $749) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883230... so yeah, to get it within a $700 budget you would probably have to self-build.

Does wacom support HDR yet in any Cintiq? For a professional that might be enough to tip them towards this even if otherwise overpriced.

Even if your numbers were right (as others said, $700 is more like i5+1060), I have one word for you: formfactor. The Studio's base is to be compared to the likes of mac mini and intel NUC I think.

As someone owning a full tower I don't think it's wise to cram all that desktop power in a stupidly small box, it's really adding cost and heat for the sake of looking good at the expense of performance, but that's what MS chose to do so comparisons should be kept fair. (I wouldn't buy the Studio for this very reason though, only the display itself).

> I think Microsoft should have sell that monitor by itself, but I guess this way they could not shovel win10 updates down your throat so it is not a good option for them...

I'd buy that monitor.

The easy way to shovel Windows 10 updates would be to make the product only compatible with Windows 10.

I wish the Surface Pro was just the screen hardware that you can plug into a proper desktop.

Have you tried/considered the screen extension feature in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update?

Huh, I never even knew about this. I guess you mean this under the title "How to Mirror Your Windows 10 Screen to Another Windows 10 Device": http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/turn-windows-10-pc-into-wi... I wasn't able to get it working yet, though.

I haven't used it myself (no second Windows 10 PC), but that sounds correct.

I believe it's designed to let you use your Surface as an external monitor with pen/touch support for another Windows 10 PC.

Do you know if MS have improved the stylus? As far as I know surface's pen technology is inferior than Cintiq's pen.

Sadly no, I'm consistently reverting back to my 21ux, the jitter of slow stylus movement drives me nuts on the surface pro 4

Could you elaborate just a bit? I was about to recommend some Surface flavor to a designer friend, I don't know about the jitter you mention.

This video shows it perfectly, while this is an SP3, the SP4 is based on the same tech : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA4iF00YHoA

On slow strokes, you can the tracking between key points looses accuracy as if the signal between points becomes weak.

I have tried everything I can to correct the issue like changing the stylus battery, 100 point calibration and driver updates. I'm pretty much convinced that N-trig just cannot be compared with Wacom (even the iPad Pro does a better job)

However, there are programs (ClipPaint and Mischief are my prime examples) have built-in mouse smoothing which greatly reduces the jitter but means the drawing action lags behind by a second or so.

The Cintiq also isn't HDR and has a different aspect ratio, making the square inch size difference much greater than just a 1 inch diagonal increase would imply.

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