Bill Gates: Fear not, citizen! I’ll save you. I’ll buy your dying land for 10 cents on the dollar.
(Not saying that I do or do not believe in the theories behind his recent farmland purchases. It just instantly popped in my head when I saw your post in my feed.)
Did anyone take the plunge? Any war stories?
A part of me is still hoping to see an honest to God Surface Studio 3.
it feels like they’ve just given up on the line… or maybe We’ll have to wait till 2025 to see anything new.
I can relay what one person working for a german vendor specialising in Microsoft Surface products told me over the phone a couple of months ago re. the MS Surface Studio 2+: MS did indeed plan to let the Surface Studio die out, but then there was one dutch company who rang MS and told them their employees needed exactly that kind of machine in larger numbers.
That apparently was the moment when MS grudgingly decided to give the Surface Studio a half-assed life extension. But one should not expect another iteration of this machine because of that.
Again, that was what ONE person working for a specialised vendor, whom I do not know personally, and about whose reliability I cannot say anything, told me over the phone. Whether true or not, it´s an entertaining story, which, too, hints at the Surface Studio not going into a full blown 3rd generation, though.
Personally I, too, very much regret MS not turning the Surface Studio into the dream machine Apple could have made but decided against because they wanted to keep the MacOS and iPad OS worlds separate to make Apple addicts buy both…
This is the saddest like I have handed out. I’m so bummed. I desperately want a Studio 3.
Its hards to say
I will say all that initial interest I saw on it back in October has died down alot since then.
And Microsoft has not made it easy. In the commercial market there are ways to get bulk discounting and the threshold for the Studio 2+ to apply is ridiculous. Especially given its half the price of a Surface Hub 50, and Hubs have a significantly smaller threshold. Nor is the Studio 2+ ever on promo.
Its almost like Microsoft doesn’t want to see it sell well.
That does seem to go hand-in-hand with them not wanting to put effort into the Studio line. Nuts.
After my disappointment in the Studio 2+'s old CPU, I spent ~3500 USD purchasing components to build a desktop in line with what I wanted (with more CPU power, more memory, more robust cooling). It’s a decent system–and objectively, I can use it for more things than my old Studio, like gaming. But it’s not the Surface Studio. What I find myself missing most is its clear, vivid sharp screen. The 4k monitors that fit my needs are all matte, and I just don’t enjoy working with matte screens. I’ve held off on buying a large Wacom tablet for that reason. I want a glassy screen, dangit!!
So I’ve kept using my old machine as my daily driver. The SSD continues to cook itself to death. My current plan is to wait until the next Surface event, and then decide if I want to purchase a 2+ if there are no further Studio announcements.
I have reached the same conclusion with my Surface Studio 2. I am actively exploring the idea of a more modern “desktop” with a 30-something inch monitor and a second monitor like this for pen support:
ViewSonic ID2456 ID245624” Touch Monitor with MPP2.0 Active Pen - ViewSonic Global
I think I can get all of what I want with a current gen processor for less than the price of the Surface Studio 2+ - I just have to sacrifice that 3:2 screen ratio and the simplicity of it’s hardware.
Compromise, yes. Sacrifice, no. There is no way M$ couldn’t build what we need, and it would be useful to lots of folks, but M$ is just not a hardware team, and who knows what, where, and why they’ll be making new hardware. It’s just not a major component of the bottom line for them.
Purely subjective. I am not sure I could objectively quantify the psychological lift I feel working on that large 3:2 screen. Maybe it works well with my progressive lens prescription. Maybe it’s that I’m so conditioned to expect to watch a movie vs. work in front of a 16:9 screen.
Oooh, I hadn’t seen this monitor before. 24" is closer to what I’ve illustrated on prior to the Surface Studio. This is a great find, but I’ll admit to being a little nervous about them not listing a price for it on this page. It’s not a 4k panel, but it’s closer to what I’ve been looking for than most other things.
I think I can get all of what I want with a current gen processor for less than the price of the Surface Studio 2+ - I just have to sacrifice that 3:2 screen ratio and the simplicity of it’s hardware.
Yeah, basically it’s just the screen that doesn’t have a peer on the market. 28", 3:2 screen ratio, glass, MPP-enabled, and ideally factory color-calibrated for creative work (but I could do without this if the others features were there). One of the things I love about my Surface Studio 2 is that the monitor is color-accurate without calibration. I’ve had the best luck with getting files printed with my printing partners that didn’t require any additional tweaking after the hard proofing stage. It’s been glorious. It would be a bit of a bummer to lose that experience, but I just need something that’s LARGE and SHARP and DRAWABLE. And not matte. 
Here’s the Amazon page. It seems to bounce between $540 and $590
Nice! That’s entirely within my budget. I’ll think about the Surface Studio 2+ versus trying out one of these guys later this year.