ZBrushCentral

Advices needed : Surface Pro 4 vs Mobile Studio Pro 13

Hi guys, this is my first time posting here. Glad to join Zbrush Central
I have been a 3D student for the past 4 years ( made a college degree and now I’m halfway through a bachelor degree ) and I’ve worked since then on a Intuos Pro Small. yes the small one.

Now the thing is, I wanted to upgrade to a display tablet for some time and since I don’t own a laptop to work outside of home or school, I decided that Id rather go with something portable that would accommodate both of my needs and would allow me to sculpt and draw on the go.
I’ve always wanted a cintiq companion but now the current one that wacom makes is the Mobile Studio (which looks so fun) so I’m torn between a that or a Surface Pro

So far I see that the Surface Pro 4 is

  • more compact and portable
  • way less expensive ( currently 1800 CAD$ vs 3300 CAD$ for the mobilesurface i want )

But the Wacom MobileSurface offers :

  • the Express Keys ( which is big deal since they allow me to work without a keyboard )
  • the Pen ( honestly, I just love the feel of their pen )
  • The possibility to use it as a display tablet for my desktop pc ( I don’t know if you can with surface pro but I have doubts on how well it would work )

Id go without any doubts for the mobilestudio 13" screen, i7, 256Gb SSD, 16Gb RAM… if it wasn’t for the insane price of 3300 CAD$.
So I wondered if any of you guys uses a more ‘affordable’ model, like the i5 8Gb of Ram?
Because it would dramatically lower the price but at the same time, I have my doubts on using zbrush and photoshop on a daily basis on the ‘entry’ level model.
And does any of you guys has the surface pro? what are your thoughts? it looked like it gets the job done but is less ‘‘artist friendly’’ and more aimed at the large audience.

thanks, it’s a big amount of money so your opinions will be greatly appreciated

I bought a Cintiq Companion when they were first released and didn’t regret it. Having the Wacom function keys on the side was really nice, you still needed a keyboard but it made it so you could get along for quite sometime without having to hit the keyboard much. It was great for getting up and going somewhere just to sculpt. Mainly used it for Zbrush but did use it for Photoshop/Illustrator and some other applications as well. It was great for Made with Mischief for sketching. However, its a personal preference of mine to use Adobe stuff on my desktop (mainly because my muscle memory with those applications flows a lot smoother).

I just upgraded tot he MobileStudio Pro 16 with i7 because my Companion just bricked on its battery, so far its really nice and you get 4 more sets of function keys to program. My one big gripe about it though is the lack of USB 2.0/3.0 ports. While it’s not that big of a deal it did complicate things a bit for me as I was planning on loading software/add ons etc. from a jump drive. Had to rethink that and dump everything into Google and grab from there.

I highly suggest NOT going with their blue tooth keyboard if you do go with a Mobilestudio. It’s too tiny. Nice to log in with but extended use on that thing is cramped and cumbersome.