If you have deep pockets and have been dying to edit your high-res photos on a ginormous touchscreen, you may want to take a look at the 85-inch Microsoft Surface Hub 2S, which will begin shipping in January 2021. It’s a $22,000 display that can run Adobe Photoshop.
Microsoft first unveiled the Surface Hub 2S in April of last year before revealing more details this week.
The original Surface Hub unveiled in 2015 was extremely limited in what it could run — it was essentially an ultra-expensive whiteboard and videoconferencing solution.
What’s neat about the new Surface Hub 2S is that it will run Windows 10 Pro, allowing you to have the full Windows desktop experience on the giant display.
What this means is that all the apps you use to work with photos on Windows 10 will be supported — software like Photoshop, Lightroom, GIMP, Capture One Pro, Luminar, ON1 Photo RAW, Affinity Photo, etc.
The Surface Hub 2S supports multiple modes of input, from using the Surface Hub 2 Pen to touch to a standard mouse/keyboard combo.
“The Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise configuration on Surface Hub 2S gives people a truly personalized Windows experience on a brilliant large screen with all of the familiar features in Windows they enjoy on their PC, like the taskbar, Start menu and the window management customization,” Microsoft says. “Also included are features like browser favorites, the ability to run any app like they would on their PC, and task view that can be synched across other PCs for continuity no matter the device people are working on.”
Compared to the original Surface Hub, the 85-inch Surface Hub 2S features bezels has 45% smaller bezels and is 20% thinner and 30% lighter.
The 85-inch 16:9 IPS LCD display measures 44.5×62.8×3.4 inches (1130x1595x85.6mm), weighs 185 pounds (84kg), and has a resolution of 3840×2160. With a PixelSense Display, it features 10-bit color, anti-glare viewing, and support for 20 simultaneous touch points.
Inside the computer is a quad-core 8th Generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD. Graphics are powered by Intel UHD Graphics 620.
While photographers can now take advantage of the new Windows 10 Pro support, the Surface Hub 2S is designed for team collaboration in today’s hybrid physical/digital workspaces, so you’ll still find the same whiteboard and videoconferencing capabilities offered by the display’s predecessor.
Microsoft has opened up pre-sale reservations in the US, but currently only to commercial customers. It’ll be offered to additional markets in the coming months, and it should be available to customers around January 2021.