The Duo 2 is in for review, and in timely fashion this year. Expect a few review parts and at least one imaging comparison (given the triple camera upgrade from last year's potato), but in the meantime here's our traditional image gallery, covering the unboxing and first impressions.
Last year's Surface Duo didn't venture much outside the USA, so we never got our hands on it, but this year the Duo 2 being pushed to many international outlets, including the UK, at the somewhat eye-gouging price of £1349 (for the lowest storage variant). Happily though a good friend of the All About sites has sent the device over for full coverage.
With the trademark ultra-thin displays, super-smooth hinge, and now faster internals and a half decent camera setup, there's quite a bit to recommend the Duo 2, even if the original vision for a full 360° hinge and fold flat concept has been slightly dented.
As usual with our galleries, click images to expand them and scroll down a little if needed (on shallower or lower-res displays) to see any comments:
The Duo 2 box contents: just the phone/tablet, plus a Type C charging cable and some instructions. Notably there's no mains brick, though that's kind of expected in 2021...
First impressions are that the closed device is just beautiful, though the gloss black finish is also an utter fingerprint magnet and you'll be forever getting a tissue out to clean it. Maybe Microsoft should have gone 'matt'?
Ditto on the back, though you do get to see the prominent and slightly angled camera island...
New for the Duo 2 is a proper camera system, though their sheer Z-depth couldn't fit at all into the thin Duo body. The island is angled slightly so that it fits flush against the wrapped around display in one-handed mode...
The Nokia E90-like double hinge allows for almost full 360 degree rotation, geared so that the displays open in sync...
Volume and power buttons, the latter with integral capacitive fingerprint sensor...
SIM slot (no microSD support), plus Type C data/charging, hopefully stronger than last year's, around which the plastic kept cracking...
The first startup, getting going on two screens!
All set-up, at least with the default app loadout and homescreens, before I start changing things...
The first of two gaps to show you. This is the right hand screen, kept off a surface when the Duo 2 is 'flat' by the camera island...
When closed round in one-screen mode, there's this gap between the two halves of the Duo 2...
With the second display wrapped around to create a (wide) single screen smartphone...
Sending a SMS in one-screen mode, the keyboard is swipeable and pretty useable...
In Microsoft's own OneNote, showing two-screen use...
And in what I call 'laptop mode', with on-screen full width keyboard. It could be larger though, and doesn't seem very optimised. At least, not yet!...
Media watching is surprisingly good, with excellent stereo speakers that stay stereo whichever mode you're in. The obvious caveat is the 'gap' in the middle. Which will annoy on some content, I suspect. Here's a bit of Bond...
The Glance Bar is the edge of one of the main curve screen edges, typically showing time for a few seconds when the power button is pressed or a SMS notification comes in...
