The Surface Book is one of the coolest hybrids of technology that we’ve seen in years, bringing together all of the best parts of laptops in tablet in a way that takes the initial dream of the Surface Pro and pushes it to its limit. When it was first announced in October of last year, the Surface Book astonished us all with how unique and clever its design was – which means it was just a matter of time before someone came along and completely ripped it off.
Enter “Onda,” a Chinese manufacturer that is the first to make a carbon-copy clone of the Surface Book. This new 2-in-1, called the oBook 11 Pro, has some fairly underwhelming hardware in comparison to the original, having a 11.6-inch HD display, just 4GB of RAM, and an Intel Core m3 processor. Visually, the Ondo only differentiates itself from its progenitor by having the keyboard and touchpad be black, instead of the Surface Book’s white equivalents. Beyond that, everything is pretty much the same – from the fulcrum hinge to the logo placed smack dab in the middle of the bottom border of the monitor.
The oBook 11 pro doesn’t look all that good, nor does it have the hardware to be a terribly efficient device. That being said, the fact that it’s being copied by other manufacturers means that Microsoft must be doing something right. In order to inspire anyone to make knock-offs of this caliber, Microsoft needed to create something that was not only unique but was actually a device that manufacturers could be confident in selling. If Onda’s decision to copy the Surface Book is anything to go by, we may be seeing a whole legion of manufacturers trying to get in on the exact same business – creating a two-in-one that can be anywhere near as effective as the Surface Book.
