Microsoft has been obsessed with giant touchscreen displays for years and when we moved office we went with these in our meeting rooms. Where everyone can work collaboratively on huge displays mounted on walls. It seems really far out there, but that future is now starting to arrive with the Surface Hub and now the Surface Hub 2.
At the most basic level, it’s a giant conference room display that will ship in both 50- and 85-inch versions, but Microsoft is really pitching this as something far more. It’s really designed for meeting rooms of the future, where people are expected to collaborate using the screen, rather than just sit and watch a presentation. It certainly doesn’t look like your typical boring conference room TV that you’d see in a meeting room today. We did have a Cisco telepresence room which was good but the cost to set this up was something else.
“The unique thing about the Hub, in comparison with the rest of the Surface line, is that it’s not a personal computer,” explains Microsoft’s hardware design chief Ralf Groene, in an interview with The Verge. “It’s really a computer that belongs to a space.”
The Surface Hub 2, all of its optional extras, and the special modular processor cartridge that Microsoft has created to upgrade its hardware in the coming years. The Surface Hub 2S will be available in June for $8,999.99, and if you want all the optional extras then it’ll run to nearly $12,000.
The future doesn’t come cheap but well worth it.
Surface Hub 2S specification
• 50-inch 3:2 IPS 60Hz PixelSense display (3840 x 2560)
• Intel 8th Gen Core i5 processor
• Front-facing three-way stereo speakers
• 8GB DDR4 RAM
• 128GB M.2 solid state drive (SSD)
• Wi-Fi / Ethernet port
• Weighs 61.6 pounds (28 kg)
• Measures 29.2 x 43.2 x 3.0 inches
Microsoft has opted for a 50-inch display (3840 x 2560 pixels) with the typical 3:2 Surface aspect ratio, compared to the 55-inch 16:9 panel that the company used on the original Surface Hub. The new aspect ratio means you’ll eventually be able to rotate this display for a portrait mode that’s ideal for conference calls, and it also gives you more vertical space for drawing, presenting, or viewing documents.
Compared to the original, the bezels are a lot thinner 15.5mm to be precise and Microsoft has done some work to improve the screen bonding for the stylus input and to improve the glare you might find on typical conference room displays.
Microsoft has also built a dedicated 4K camera for the Surface Hub 2. It’s powered by USB-C, and it can be detached from the top to mount it with magnets to the side of the display. Because the Surface Hub 2 is designed to be wheeled around, Microsoft has even created a special snapback mechanism for the camera so if you crash it into a doorway, the camera won’t get sheared off.
Microsoft has a whole host of hardware inside. There’s an Intel 8th Gen Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB M.2 SSD, and Intel’s UHD Graphics 620 integrated GPU. That means there’s a bunch of PC ports, too: a single standard USB-A port, a USB-C port, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI video in, and Mini DisplayPort out. You’ll be able to connect devices up to this to use it as a monitor, and Microsoft is even planning to sell it separately as just a monitor without all the PC hardware inside, but the company isn’t announcing pricing for that model just yet.
If your business is all-in on Office 365, like many are, then this feels like a natural companion. The Surface Hub 2 feels like a fast PC, but it’s optimized for touch and stylus input on a bigger display. Being able to wheel it around an office could make for some more interesting meetings than you’re probably used to. But the really impressive parts of the Surface Hub 2 aren’t coming until later.
