Microsoft’s Surface Book touches down in New Zealand

Microsoft's first ever laptop, the Surface Book, will be available in retail stores around the country from today.

The Surface Book starts at a price of $2,749, and customers are being directed to the Microsoft Store website and retail stores Noel Leeming, Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.

Commercial customers should talk to their authorised commercial resellers, Microsoft says.

Carol Glidden, Microsoft New Zealand windows and surface business group lead, says the Surface Book is 'the ultimate laptop' and will pioneer a new device category.

"Designed for people who need maximum performance - people doing photo and video editing or engineers and architects rendering 3D models and schematics - Surface Book harnesses the power of a full desktop workstation in a sleek device that is among the fastest 13-inch laptops ever made," she says.

Surface Book is a high-performance laptop with pen and touch support. The Surface Pen has been redesigned and now includes 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity.

The device is powered by 6th Generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors with up to 12 hours of battery life.

The 13.5-inch optically bonded PixelSense Display delivers a high-contrast 267 dpi display with improved latency and parallax.

The screen also detaches, so it can be used like a clipboard to sketch, take notes and benefit from Windows programs like Microsoft Edge.

An optional discrete GPU allows Surface Book to harness the full power of hardware-accelerated graphics, particularly for video editing and rendering.