Microsoft’s Surface Studio Failed to Understand the User It Was Selling To

On Friday, Microsoft confirmed it had discontinued the Surface Studio 2+, the company’s all-in-one desktop computer. This computer failed not because it wasn’t a good idea — it was a brilliant idea on paper — but because it was so poorly executed on all fronts.

“Customers can continue to purchase Surface Studio 2+ through retailers and partners with stock,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Windows Central. “For areas reaching out of stock, Surface Studio 2+ will no longer be available for new purchases.”

It is, unfortunately, not a new story when it comes to a discussion of Microsoft and hardware. While it has managed to make some very nice laptop computers, that is the exception, not the rule. Its mobile phones, folding phones, and now standalone desktop computers have been nothing but flops. And that’s not for lack of trying or from a dearth of good ideas: Microsoft products are typically really good ideas that are either left so unsupported after launch that they wither on the vine or are hamstrung by bad software implementation. Sometimes, they simply fail to get the small details that the niche target market for that product demands.

In the case of the Surface Studio — all iterations of it, really — it was all three.

The biggest problem with Microsoft’s Surface Studio is arguably the software — or lack thereof. Microsoft pitched the original as a mix of a drawing tablet a la Wacom Cintiq and a desktop computer and that was driven in large part by the Surface Dial, a puck-like control device, and the touchscreen/pen support.

In the original pitch for the Dial, Microsoft showed it being placed directly on the Surface Studio’s screen where, when pressed, a series of options would appear on screen, mixing the hardware and software in a really lovely way. From a user experience standpoint, actually placing the dial on the screen was not as functional as it sounds, but it was at least a good idea users could just tap the dial on their desk and the UI for it would still appear on screen, so physically placing it on the display was more of a gimmick than anything (but it was a cool gimmick).

Unfortunately, it never got the software support it needed. Microsoft had to know that it was going to be an uphill battle to get software developers to dedicate the time to making the Dial work seamlessly, so it should have anticipated this and set aside a budget to either develop it themselves or incentivize partners to get it done. Whatever strategy Microsoft enacted here (if they had one at all), it never developed into anything and the Dial, which you can still buy today if you want to part with $100, just never got the support it needed to succeed. It was eventually not even included in marketing for the Surface Studio 2+.

Microsoft’s pen was pretty good but compared to the experience that retouchers and graphic designers were used to on something like a Wacom Cintiq, it didn’t quite measure up. While nice, it only ever felt like a downgrade from existing hardware and when the price of the Surface Studio was taken into account, it was hard to rationalize picking that up instead of just continuing to use existing hardware that worked great.

That brings up another problem with the Surface Studio series: the price. The original Surface Studio was priced at $3,000, the follow-up started at $4,199, and the final Surface Studio 2+ went up again to $4,500 — and that’s not with the highest-end build. That’s a lot, especially when you consider that the hardware didn’t exactly feel premium.

The Surface Studio 2+ (even Microsoft knew that the middling upgrade versus the Surface Studio 2 wasn’t enough to earn the “3” moniker) launched in 2022 with laptop-level hardware: an 11th generation Intel Core H-35 processor, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of onboard SSD storage, and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 laptop GPU that features 6GB of GDDR6 GPU memory. Laptop versions of NVIDIA’s GPUs are notably not as powerful as desktop versions and the H-35 wasn’t a high-performance chip either. Sure, the display was nice (a 4,500 by 3,000-pixel resolution 28-inch display on a very nice hinge), but unchanged from previous versions. In 2022, the hardware was best described as “mid” but Microsoft was asking a premium price for it. The Dial wasn’t even included, either.

For some reason, Microsoft chose to launch an extremely expensive computer outfitted with aging tech that was already on its way out. It’s as if the company believed creative professionals wouldn’t notice and would be happy paying a premium for lesser performance.

At the time, we begged Microsoft to give creative professionals a high-end, powerful Surface Studio option because the market was ripe for it. Apple had made it clear that the iMac was going to be an entry-level product and there was room for a powerful all-in-one computer to clean up in this space. But that didn’t happen and given the exorbitant price Microsoft was asking for mid-range performance, there was no reason a creative professional was going to pick up a Surface Studio.

Microsoft created a fantastic-looking all-in-one desktop computer with excellent design and usability but doomed it to failure by hampering it with mid-level components, failing to support the software, and charging far too much. It shows a distinct lack of understanding for whom this computer was designed for.

And so we say goodbye to the Surface Studio, a computer that had so much unrealized potential. Microsoft had dreams of killing the iMac and yet one lives on and the other does not.

Image credits: Microsoft