Microsoft made a surprising announcement today launching their first laptop ever. And honestly, it's not just any laptop. The new Surface Book comes packing a punch with some of the fastest hardware you will find on a portable PC and shall I say, a drool-inducing design that appears as functional as it is beautiful.

The Surface Book sports a 13.5-inch display (227 DPI, 3000 x 2000 resolution), a 6th-gen Intel Core Core i5 or i7 processor, 8GB or 16GB RAM, a GeForce GPU featuring GDDR5 RAM, up to 1TB storage (we assume of the uber fast PCIe kind). The Book has a machined magnesium body, weighs 3.34 pounds, is 0.90" thick and is supposed to last for 12 hours, claiming that its battery won't lose any charge at all while in standby.

Microsoft claims the Surface Book is "pound-for-pound" the fastest 13-inch laptop ever made, making it twice as fast as the MacBook Pro.

Microsoft is calling it the "ultimate" laptop. But wait...

Although the Surface Book is meant to be used as a laptop first (strong hinge and all), it's also a convertible, so you can pull it off its base and act as a tablet. When detached, the OS seamlessly transitions while the dedicated GPU remains on the keyboard base. You can also flip the screen, attach it again and put it down, for using it as tablet + pen mode. The Surface Pen comes as part of the package.

Back to laptop mode, Microsoft was adamant in describing the backlit keyboard on the Surface Book as one of the best keyboards you'll ever type on, bringing back memories about how they've been making keyboard for 15 years in creating the MS Natural Keyboard. They said it's also very quiet – as if mechanical keyboard owners care. The trackpad is made of glass with five points of touch sensitivity, it better be good.

The keyboard base also houses two USB 3.0 ports and an SD card slot. Other standard connectivity includes a headset jack, Mini DisplayPort, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, a 5.0MP front-facing camera, 8.0MP rear-facing camera with autofocus capable of 1080p video recording and front-facing stereo speakers with Dolby audio.

The Surface Book will be up for pre-order starting tomorrow and will start shipping October 26 with prices starting at $1,499 (maxed out model is expected at $2,700).