Microsoft has announced a new version of its 50.5″ Surface Hub, the Surface Hub 2 which is quite different from the previous version and is more like the Samsung Flip. It is smaller and lighter and includes a pivot to easily switch from landscape to portrait mode. However, the new version will not be available until 2019 (although it will be tested with ‘select commercial customers’, and will be optimised for the Teams collaboration software.
The unit has a 50.5″ diagonal and is reported to be in a 3:2 aspect ratio and from the video (below) it looks like a full array backlight. The unit is described as “greater than 4K” so is, at least 3840 x 2560 resolution, although we couldn’t confirm that. There will be stands and trolleys available Four units can be connected together to make larger collaborative displays and the unit supports a 4K camera which connects via USB Type-C.
Analyst Comment
The team that built the first Surface Hub was scattered the breeze, we have previously heard. The original Hub had cameras on the side that gave good images of the presenter, but not of the room, so we have heard from channel partners that customers were adding additional Logitech cameras at the top of the display. We also heard that security concerns and problems stopped some corporates (we have a name of a big bank, but won’t publish it as we couldn’t confirm it!) from using the Hub at all, although Microsoft said that 5,000 organisations had bought the first one. (BR)
