The SSD impacts every single aspect of computer performance - from startup times, to application start times, to swap space speed, to reducing times when the computer is locked up loading from disk.
And these days, a 1 TB SSD can be had for around $300 USD - at which point, there is no obvious need for shuffling for space. Of course, if you are needing the 3 TB drives for video editing, that's fine. The surface studio specs say 1TB or 2TB - so even at such a high price, I find it really disappointing that it's not offering the 1 TB SSD (which is probably the first aftermarket change I would make if I bought one). For many 3D graphics pros, you would run the OS on a 512G SSD, and load the assets onto a larger 3TB hybrid drive or even better, a 10TB RAID array, for example, but you can't discount how much performance that SSD drive brings just for loading the OS and the software (Maya, or Adobe suite, etc)
Face it - any new machine today without an ssd is one where the manufacture is trying to claw back some profit.
This device has some pretty intense performance requirements for the form factor. Could we wait a bit for some hands-on with reviewers before saying MS botched it?
And yes the SSD's are not as fast as the latest m.2 drives, but are still miles ahead of any spinning drive. I'm not really sure what you are trying to say ... like a Ferrari is faster than a Tesla in Ludicrous mode, so ... go for an electric hybrid like a Toyota Prius? I know that the car analogy doesn't always work, but can you think about your reasoning? That a true M.2 SSD (which can be thousands of dollars) is faster than a last gen 1TB SSD in the 2.5 inch form factor, so therefore MS should use a spinning hybrid drive???
You can wait for a teardown, or you can use logic and common sense.
The only other choice is for MS to use a non standard size spinning platter, maybe around the old Compact Flash drive size - but in that case, there is absolutely no point - they should have just gone straight to M.2, especially for something in that form factor.
To be honest, current generation hybrid drives pair up a really slow 5400 rpm drive with some flash. Now it can still get good performance, but in the end, you're dealing with a hard drive from a few generations ago. Seagate had 7200rpm hybrid drives last generation, but they recently changed to 5400 rpm drives, which makes the drive kinda slow, even with the flash addition.
Microsoft may certainly have gone custom with custom parts, but I don't think they have the volume, even in the wildest expectations, to go against the now popular ssd juggernaunt that is overtaking all of the slim laptop (Apple, Lenovo, Dell, Razer, etc), small form factor embedded pc, and high performance pc space - for good reason. It just makes sense, the parts are really widely available, and people are expecting that type of performance.
Microsoft has a lot of money, but I'm not sure that's where they should spend their money. An SSD in m.2 size is expensive, but less expensive than getting all custom gear.
This is about thinking things through ....
The logical thing is to have a 512G M.2 nvme paired up with a 2TB regular spinning drive (at 2.5") and calling it a day.
That's I would go with for a deluxe, small form factor, graphics pro oriented machine. That's the sweet spot. And it's really easy to build with off the shelf parts like the Intel NUC as a base.
I am no longer a professional (as in, primary income) photographer, but I was and trying to keep all my work on the "right" drive was about as fun as weddings.
Btw sorry I said 2.5gb but that was mobile correcting 2.5in.
I'm not arguing for abstract systems, but for that specific build that Microsoft has put together - in that form factor, a hybrid drive takes up too much space and they are not offering 3TB+ versions where the hybrid drive would excel.
I'm criticizing that specific assembly of parts.
It's not. It's really not. There is no damn room.
It's the same with the MBA, it's the same with the Surface 4 and Surface. Hell, it's the same with every all-in-one now.
I'm trying to take you seriously here but you keep repeating this line that makes it sound like you have some deep and clever insight into a machine the press has barely touched, let alone teardown specialists. You're mad because it's not a full SSD on principle but you have no idea what the hot set size of the hybrid is. You've got a bone to pick with performance but Surface devices have always been forced to use custom configurations of hardware (e.g., every Surface Book has an unusual configuration of their video card that gives substantially better performance).
I think you're arguing based on theoretical specs and without knowing the domain. Unless you're an ex-Surface engineer with special insight, I don't see why anyone here should trust you about this given how you insist this is all stock parts and it's trivially verifiable that that's not the case.
SSDs (and preferably PCIe or NVMe) should be table stakes at a $2k price.
A lot of people here are talking as if they've actually tested these hybrid drives and found them wanting. Hybrid drives have an SSD-like component so as long as your working set fits in those and is relatively predictable, the performance difference is not noticeable.
This looks like an amazing experience, I'm just worried about performance in my workflow. That said, the future is bright.
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/storag...
Hybrids are totally fine in a great majority of use cases. For this price I agree you might as well have thrown one in, but still, performance difference will be neglible.
As a dev I run an ssd because ides are shitty bloated awful pieces of crap (all of them tbh) they don't know how to run in memory and always spend time on file io.
Adobe CS suite ... that's a load of hot steaming garbage when you try to load it up.
They are one of the really bad culprits causing designers and graphics pro's to need fast SSD's.
Think having multiple copes of IntelliJ IDEA AND Eclipse running at the same time, and being saddled with poorly optimized code paths. (Because designers often need to run Photoshop and Illustrator, and sometimes Premiere as well for example, simultaneously)
In fact, I think photoshop on a code quality level (loading, optimizations) is worse than Eclipse by a factor of 2. Designers have been getting around this by throwing brute force processing power, gpu, and SSD's at it.
The image processing algorithms are top notch, that's why people buy it - but everything around it ... the ui, widgets, update framework, a ton of it is creaking old and really poorly maintained.
Pure SSDs only shine for gaming and compiling, and much more for the former than the later.
A machine where you're constantly shuffling for space is no fun.