The original Surface Book practically perfected the convertible laptop design, offering a great tablet experience while making sure the machine wasn't limited when you used it as a standard computer, so it comes as no surprise that the design hasn't really changed in the years since.

The Performance Base revision a year ago added some-much needed graphical grunt, and now the Surface Book 2 offers yet another under-the-hood upgrade, making the best laptop on the market even better and providing more power than most users will know what to do with, even if its core concept hasn't changed much.

The solid, beautiful metal unibody returns with its comfortable keys, glass trackpad and quirky retro-future hinge design. In fact at a glance this is machine could easily be mistaken for any prior Surface Book.

The transition between laptop and tablet works as it always has, with a mechanism inside that distinctive, rounded hinge holding everything together until you hit the disconnect key on the keyboard. An audible thunk lets you know the display is ready to be lifted off and used independently.

That 13.5-inch, 3000 x 2000 display, by the way, is amazing and bright, although unfortunately in Australia we don't have the option to move up to the bigger 15-inch mode.

At a little more than 1.5 kilograms, this isn't the lightest transforming laptop you can get, but it strikes an awesome balance between weight and capabilities given its solid build and killer specs.

The Book 2 rocks an eight generation core i7 processor and an Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 graphics memory, both big upgrades over the previous model. Paired with up to 16GB of system RAM, this makes the machine a graphics processing beast suitable for 3D work, gaming, or Windows' much-touted "mixed reality" and VR.

Microsoft says you'll get 17 hours of battery from the Book 2, and that's probably true if all you're doing is watching videos. I've been getting around 14 hours, which is still excellent.

This all comes at a price, of course, with the i7 Surface Book 2 starting at $2999 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Doubling both RAM and storage takes you to $3799, while the top of the line machine packs a full 1TB of storage and 16GB RAM for $4499.

Microsoft offers a cheaper version with an i5 processor and without the GTX, but that's a significant downgrade. If you can justify the high price, I've found that the mix of processing power and flexible design make the i7 versions of this machine the ideal laptops for work and play.

Whether using it as a laptop or jacked into my keyboard and monitor, the machine is easily gutsy enough for video production work and of course your standard multitasking. The strong hinge means it's one of the only transforming laptops you can comfortably use on the go or on your lap, with minimal screen jiggling and no chance of accidental separation. The performance of the keyboard and trackpad remains my favourite of any laptop on the market.

In terms of games the Book 2 handled everything from Minecraft to Destiny 2 at decent settings without breaking a sweat. The machine is now compatible with Xbox Wireless, meaning an easy, stable connection to Xbox One controllers without the need for fiddly Bluetooth.

I love using the screen on its own as a tablet, which is much bigger than a standard iPad, but still light. You lose some longevity and graphics power in tablet mode — since the Nvidia chip and one of the batteries live in the keyboard — but the screen on its own is perfect for comics and ebooks, video games that work with touch control (or mouse control, as Windows does a good job of translating touch inputs here) or simply continuing to work as you move around the house or office.

For watching videos or streaming gameplay from my PC tower or game consoles I usually rotate the Book's screen and put it backwards on the keyboard, for a stable base and more battery life. If you like you can even fold it flat in this mode, making for a very heavy tablet with the power of a full computer.

The Book 2 drops the Mini DisplayPort and adds a single USB-C connector, which is a good exchange in theory and opens up your options for hubs that can connect your laptop to all your desktop gear at once, but it means you'll probably need a dongle if you want to plug the machine straight into a monitor. The Book 2 keeps the full-sized SD slot, which is rare these days, and standard USB 3.1.

The machine also retains its proprietary Surface Connect ports, which function a bit like USB-C but only work on Surface devices. You can use this to charge the machine in laptop or tablet form, or connect to Microsoft's Surface Hub to control your whole desktop. It would have been nice to replace Surface Connect entirely with USB-C for compatibility's sake, but having them both as options is a good compromise.

The two design niggles I had with previous versions of the Surface Book still apply here. The non-standard 3:2 display size works great in both modes and most Windows apps scale just fine. But movies and any other fixed aspect content will display with black bars. The problem is that no external monitors will support this shape, or the resolution of 3000x2000, meaning if you switch to a desktop you might need to log out to reset the scaling.

The other niggle is with the keyboard. As it's light gray, you'll want the white backlight turned off in well-lit surrounds so you can read the keys. In a dark situation you need those keys lit up, but you'll have to remember which function key handles that. An automatic backlight adjust would be be perfect here.

Like its predecessor this is an expensive and arguably over-engineered device compared to more down-to-Earth Microsoft machines like the Surface Laptop, and it's clearly meant to ply the creative professional crowd from Apple's comparatively staid MacBook Pro.

The bent towards creativity only increases if you add the sold-separately Surface Pen or Surface Dial, and while these are both excellent devices it sucks that neither is included with the Book 2. The price is already high compared to Apple's MacBook Pro line, so at least having a Pen in the box would help make that a bit easier to swallow.

Still, the Book 2 compares well to the MacBook in terms of raw power, it features a more comfortable design and its touch screen, detachable display and optional extra input devices offer much more functionality than the Touch Bar. Considering this one device can be used as your daily driver laptop, a tablet for light use and the heart of a full desktop rig, it's a seductive option even for those of us not in a creative profession.