It's hard to say if this hinge is really better than any other convertible laptop's hinge - those, after all, perform the same functions without placing a gap between the keyboard and display. During its presentation, Surface VP Panos Panay briefly dangled the Surface Book by both its dock and display. Those locks need to be seriously strong so that the Surface Book doesn't fall apart when it's being used as a laptop, and Microsoft says the machine will hold together. The Surface Book uses a GPU built into the keyboard when it's docked, so the tablet won't become detachable until Windows finishes up whatever it's working on and switches over to the tablet's dedicated GPU. Pressing a button on the dock will release it from what Microsoft calls "muscle wire locks." It's a neat mechanism: rather than pulling down a lever that unlocks the display, the keyboard sends a signal to start the unlocking process.
The display and tablet portion of the Surface Book locks into the dock through a series of clips on its base. The flipside of this is that, when fully closed, the hinge wraps itself tighter, so there's less of a gap. As it opens up, the hinge sort of rolls outward, pushing the display slightly farther back from the keyboard dock. Part of doing that, it seems, is extending the hinge. The hinge has to be able to support the display and internals of the Surface Book. In practice, it just means that the Surface Book's hinge seems to flex as it opens and closes the display. Microsoft is referring to this as a " dynamic fulcrum hinge," which is probably the coolest of all branded hinge names.
There's a lot to be impressed with on the new device, but perhaps the most interesting hardware feature - both visually and functionally - is the Surface Book's hinge. Microsoft pretty thoroughly wowed us this morning with its introduction of the Surface Book, a new laptop that can transform into a typical Surface tablet.