 For 40 years, the desktop PC has been an uninspiring box that sits at your desk. Apple's iMacs showed that desktop computers could be beautiful too and there have been some Windows machines that have gotten close. But now Microsoft is trying its own hand at a desktop PC and it's the wildly different Surface Studio. This PC sits on a desk looking pretty, just like an iMac, but the Surface Studio doesn't just sit still. This beautiful 28-inch display transforms into a drawing board with just a push. It's all part of a fancy hinge that lets the display float. You can draw on it from any position or touch the display to interact with apps just like you do with a tablet. In fact, it really feels like a giant tablet that you can draw on and it's exactly what the Surface Studio is designed for. You could combine that natural drawing mode with a new accessory, the $99 Surface Dial. It's funky and it looks like a volume knob on an old school radio, but it's a useful tool to use while you're drawing. There's something really futuristic about it, but it really jumps into outer space when you stick it on the screen. You can tap on the top, crank the dial around or tap and hold to access menus and controls. In apps like Sketchable, the Surface Dial creates a radial menu. It's used to alter various inking controls. It feels oddly natural to use it while you're drawing and I found myself tweaking the brush size and colors a lot. The only disappointing part of the dial is the lack of app support. There's nearly 20 apps that support it right now, but the controls are really limited to just zoom functions in several of them. I'd also like to see Microsoft improve the base of the dial so it sticks to the display better. Even at the near flat angle, it slowly creeped down the display on the model I was testing. Aside from the studio's creative assets, it's a PC at heart. The stunning 28 inch display is truly one of the best monitors I've ever used, even though it's glossy and slightly reflective. It's just 13mm thin and it has a beyond 4K resolution that really makes what you see on the screen feel lifelike. There's even a 3 by 2 aspect ratio, just like the Surface Pro and Surface Book. And I love the vertical space to read articles or write documents. Overall, it just feels really good when you tilt and pull the display towards you. You can see every detail in photos, documents and videos. Underneath the display is where all the PC components are housed. On the model I was testing, there's a 6th generation quad core Intel Core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM, a 2TB Rapid Hybrid drive and an Nvidia GTX 980M graphics card. That's actually a lot of old tech for such a futuristic looking PC. It means Microsoft has opted for last years Intel chips, last years Nvidia chips and no full solid state disk. Despite this, it was still very capable. I found it coped well with games like Gears of War 4 or Forza Horizon 3. You're not going to be able to play either on the top settings, but they're perfectly playable on the studio if you don't care about maxing out all the details. Having all that power at the base means there's some compromises with the Surface Studio. All of the ports are at the rear, which means it's hard to access them if you have the studio placed against the wall. The PC aspects of this Surface Studio are exactly what you'd expect from a Windows All-in-One and there's very little to fault here. The questions I have around it are based on its price and use cases. At a starting price of $3000, it's up there with Wacom Cintec, but for that extra $200, you're getting a full PC and not just a monitor. For creatives, that's a tempting offer, but you're really buying the Surface Studio because of its display. It's stunning and there's nothing quite like it on the market right now that has the same aspect ratio, touch and pen all while being almost pixel perfect and super thin. It's an engineering marvel of a monitor, but I really wish Microsoft sold it separately because I want to dock my Surface Book to it. And if I'm investing in a desktop PC, I really want to be able to upgrade it and use it for gaming and more powerful work. I can't do either of those things with the Surface Studio. That doesn't discount what Microsoft has attempted to do here. It's truly something unique and a hint of exciting innovation we haven't seen for some years, but it has a small target market that will need to weigh up whether this beautiful set of floating pixels is worth the high price. Probably would be cooler if I wasn't getting that C stand in the shot too though. Max this is a sick shot dude, look at the camera. Get this stillmachine?