Microsoft reveals Surface Pro 4 and Macbook Pro-baiting Surface Book

The tablet that can replace the tablet that can replace your laptop

Microsoft has revealed two new Surface hybrid tablet devices today, building on the brand with the Surface Pro 4 and a new, deluxe Surface model cheekily dubbed the Surface Book.

The Surface Pro 4 contains all the expected upgrades (thinner, lighter, faster) beyond the year-and-a-half old Surface Pro 3.

Surface VP Panos Panay was quick to reference Apple's recent launch of the familiar-looking iPad Pro, with its detachable keyboard cover and stylus pen, not to mention Google's Pixel C last week.

"We have competitors, they're chasing it. It's pretty cool," he reflected, before asking:

"Do you double down, and bring the thunder? Or do you reinvent the category again?"

The answer, it seemed, is that Microsoft wishes to "bring the thunder", resulting in a Surface Pro with the same size fingerprint but a 12.3in screen as opposed to the Surface Pro 3's 12in, a slightly thinner profile and, as well as an Intel Skylake processor running things, Microsoft's bespoke G5 graphics chipset employed specially to run the device's new optical stack. The version with 1TB of storage comes with 16GB of memory.

It launches on 26 October 2015 and starts at $899 in the US.

Panay called the Surface Pro 4 the "thinnest, most powerful core PC ever shipped", then immediately undermined his own claim by announcing something even better.

Well, technically the Surface Book isn't thinner, but if Panos Panay was turned up to 11, he'd probably say it was "bringing the fight back to Cupertino", or words to that effect.

What Panay actually said of the Surface Book is that it's "the ultimate laptop", but then when he immediately went on to comparing it blow by blow with the Apple MacBook Pro, it's clear what Microsoft is thinking.

A high-end laptop with a robust, bendy hinge and a removable tablet screen that feels more like a begrudging afterthought than a feature, the Surface Book is a product born into war, and an attempt by Microsoft to prove it knows how to build a laptop - having never done so before.

Starting at the princely sum of $1499, the Surface Book also sports Intel Skylakes of the Core i5 and i7 variety, with an Nvidia GeForce GPU running GDDR5.

Cleverly, Microsoft's put the GPU in the keyboard, meaning the tablet portion remains light and functional.

It remains to be seen what may happen if you rip the keyboard off in the middle of a fevered session of Gears of War, however.

Panay, whose presentation style is reminiscent of a particularly enthusiastic Billy Graham flogging used cars ("You type, and it's quiet, but it feels so powerful"), let his bluster slip for a second and described the Surface Book as a "digital clipboard", but that's actually a neat summary of what the Surface has also been shooting for - something you can make notes on in the field, then retire to a corner and stick it all in PowerPoint, Tableau or Teradata.

Surface Book, if you have the need for that sort of power, looks like it'll do all that better than anything that came before it.