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Microsoft turns its tablet into its first ever laptop: Surface Book is 'most powerful on the planet' (and you can still just use the screen)

Surface Book has 13.5inch screen and 12 hours battery life
Lumia 950 and 950XL prices starting at $549 and $649
Can plug into a dock to transform them into desktop PCs
$899 Surface Pro 4 has larger 12.3inch screen and new digital pen
New Surface keyboard has fingerprint sensor built in
HoloLens will be available to developers early next year for $3000

Published: 10:24 EST, 6 October 2015 | Updated: 18:08 EST, 6 October 2015

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Microsoft has unveiled a raft of new products at an event in New York including a new convertible laptop, two 'superphones' that can double as a PC when plugged into a TV and keyboard, a new fitness band and a new version of its surface Pro tablet.

The new laptop, the Surface Book, has a 13.5inch screen and will start at $1,499, and be and will be available from Oct. 26, with preorders starting on Wednesday.

Microaoft also revealed that its augmented reality system, HoloLens, will go on sale in a developers edition next near - but will cost $3,000.

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Microsoft's new Surface Book is the firm's first laptop, and boasts 13.5inch screen and 12 hours of battery life. It can be operated using a keyboard, touch or even a new digital pen.

SURFACEBOOK SPECS

The laptop has a 13.5-inch display with 267 pixels per inch

Intel Core i7 PC and optional NVIDIA GeForce GPU

Features track pad made of glass

Screen is actually fully removable so that it can be used as a tablet.

Screen can be flipped to use like a convertible, with the keyboard propping it up.

It also showed off a new version of its Surface tablet, called the Surface Pro 4, which has a larger 12.3inch screen and a fingerprint sensor, and can have up to 1TB of storage, with Microsoft boasting 'it will replace your laptop'

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said: 'Holograms in your living room, and band that work with all your phones, a tablet that replaces your tablet and an all new digital clipboard that turns into the ultimate laptop.

'We're making great progress in moving form people needing windows to choosing windows to loving Windows.

'This is a new chapter for Windows 10.'

It surprised the audience with a new laptop, called the SurfaceBook - that also doubles as a tablet when the screen is taken off.

It uses a hinge called a fulcrum hinge to allow the screen to be unclipped

'It's the first laptop we've built, it redefines everything,' Panos Panay of Microsoft said.

'It's the most powerful laptop on the planet.

'It has touch, it has pen, and it does this,' he said, pulling the screen off.

'It's the ultimate laptop'

The laptop has a 13.5-inch display with 267 pixels per inch and features a track pad made of glass.

Microsoft surprised the audience with a new laptop, called the SurfaceBook - that also doubles as a tablet when the screen is taken off.

Microsoft, whose shares were up 0.9 percent at $47.06 in late morning trading, said there were now 110 million devices running Windows 10.

'Our approach to hardware is to create and reinvent categories – like we did with Xbox and Xbox Live, with Surface being the tablet that can replace your laptop, with Lumia and Continuum, with Surface Hub, and of course with HoloLens being the only platform enabling you to mix holograms into your world,' said the firm's Terry Myserson.

Microsoft says the Surface Book is for someone who wants a bigger screen and 'the perfect typing experience' of a laptop.

The Surface Book has a 13.5inch screen, 12 hours battery life and Microsoft boasts if it powerful enough to play games and do everything a desktop machine can do.

The key to the device is a special hingle allowing it to be flipped or the screen removed

The Surface Book has a 13.5inch screen, 12 hours battery life and Microsoft boasts if it powerful enough to play games and do everything a desktop machine can do.

'Ounce for ounce, pound for pound, this is the fastest 13-inch laptop ever made, anywhere, on any planet,' Panay said.

'This is for the gamer who plays League of Legends; this is for the architect who's building a building right now, or designing a bridge and needs to compile and press the system; it's for the scientist who's thinking about the cure for cancer and needs to push the machine as far as they can; it's for the coder using the latest Visual Studio where they can compile using the GPU and CPU at the same time and not lose a minute.'

'Ounce for ounce Surface Book is the fastest 13' laptop in its class, combining amazing performance with unprecedented versatility,' it claims.

'Detach the stunning 13.5-inch PixelSense screen to transform it into the thinnest Core i7 PC ever made for the flexibility to take it anywhere

When detached it can be used as lightweight clipboard that feels natural to write on and can still run full desktop apps

The optional NVIDIA GeForce GPU brings together serious graphics horsepower with pen and touch to create in completely new ways

Microsoft unveiled two phones, the Lumia 950 and 950XL, with prices starting at $549 and $649 respectively staring in November.

Users can pull the screen off the machine entirely to convert it into a laptop, or flip it over.

'Ounce for ounce Surface Book is the fastest 13' laptop in its class, combining amazing performance with unprecedented versatility,' Panay claims.

The firm boasted its new pen even has an eraser on the end, unlike Apple's Pencil

The Lumia 950 includes a 5.2-inch display and a hexacore processor, while the larger Lumia 950 XL has a 5.7-inch display with an octacore chip.

Both handsets also feature a 20-megapixel rear camera, have up to 32GB of storage, 4K video and use liquid cooling technology.

The company said storage on the phones could be extended to up to 2 terabytes using a memory card.

Microsoft unveiled two phones, the Lumia 950 and 950XL, with prices starting at $549 and $649 respectively staring in November.

The handsets can plug into a special dock to become fully featured Windows 10 PCs

The Microsoft Band 2, which allows users to monitor their fitness and exercise regime, will be priced at $249 when it becomes available on Oct. 30.

Unlike its predecessor, Microsoft's entry product in the wearable technology market a year ago, the new Band has a curved display, which uses the Corning Gorilla glass 3, and has a barometer sensor to track elevation.

The new surface Pro 4 has a 12.inch screen, and shows 5 million pixels

The Surface Pro 4, has a larger 12.3inch screen and a fingerprint sensor, and can have up to 1TB of storage.

The new Surface Pro 4 tablet - a larger but thinner and lighter version of the Surface Pro 3 - is priced at $899 and will be available from Oct. 26 with pre-orders starting on Wednesday.

The firm also unveiled the Surface Pro 4, hitting out at Apple's iPad Pro.

'Competitors are chasing it - it's pretty cool,' he said, before revealing the new tablet is 50%

'The momentum we saw with Surface Pro 3 has been off the charts.'

Microsoft's new surface range - the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book

The new Surface Pro 4 tablet - a larger but thinner and lighter version of the Surface Pro 3 - is priced at $899 and will be available from Oct. 26 with pre-orders starting on Wednesday.

Launched nearly a year and a half after its predecessor, the Surface Pro 4 features a 12.3-inch screen with 267 pixels per inch. It runs on 6th-generation Intel Core processor and has 16GB of RAM and 1TBB storage.

The developer edition of the HoloLens will go on sale to developera early next year for $3000

Surface Pro 4 is 50 percent faster than Apple's MacBook Air, Panos Panay, the corporate vice president for Surface Computing at Microsoft, said at the event.

Microsoft also said its new tablet and smartphones will come with Windows Hello, an automatic biometric sign-in option introduced earlier this year.

The feature allows users to scan their face, iris or fingerprints to verify their identity and give them access to Windows phones, laptops and personal computers.

Microsoft also introduced a Surface Pen, which has year-long battery life, 1,024 pressure points and comes in five colors with inter-changeable pen tips.

MICROSOFT'S FITNESS TRACKER

Microsoft has unveiled on a new version of its wearable fitness tracker,Microsoft Band, that will run on Windows 10, its latest operating system.

The company was also expected to launch new versions of its Surface Pro tablet and a new line of Lumia smartphones.

The new Microsoft Band, which allows users to monitor their fitness and exercise regime, will be priced at $249 when it becomes available on Oct. 30.

Windows 10, launched in July, is part of Microsoft's push to win a bigger share of the market for tablets and smartphones, now dominated by Apple Inc and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Microsoft also said its Hololens will be available early next year to developers.

'The event was solid and showed Microsoft has stepped up its game on the consumer device front. Now the question is will consumers buy the products,' said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets, who attended the event.

'...It is clear from presentations as well as speaking with the Microsoft team that Redmond feels that Windows 10 will help finally vault Microsoft into relevance on the smartphone landscape,' Ives said.

'That said, this is going to be a long road for Nadella as Microsoft plays major catchup on this key market.'

With the new lineup, Microsoft appears to be targeting professionals, people more likely to have Windows already in their office computers.

The Redmond, Washington, company is hoping to build on a successful summer launch of Windows 10, which Microsoft says is now in more than 110 million devices.

'It's not about the mass market. It's about the high end of the market,' said Carolina Milanesi, who heads U.S. operations for the Kantar Worldpanel ComTech research group.