Re: NVDA on touch screens, does it work OK?
I got the 13-inch surfacebook 2 a couple months ago. First of all If I'm being honest there are definitely computers with better specs to price rayshows out there. I picked it up partially because I got it along with a new braille display because I can just take the tablet portion and leave the base, and it works really well for this. It has a camera which can do Windows hello, which is essentially face ID for windows and in my experience it just works. If you're sitting in-front of the computer and have your head at screen level it'll pick you up just fine though it's quite sensitive to lighting changes. I set it up in ambient lighting in my bedroom, and in indoor areas it picks me up fine. But if I go outside with sunlight I usually have to enter my password. Other positives, the batterylife is great. Microsoft claims 11, 12 hours. I don't know if I ever got that much but I'd say 8 9 ish is definitely doable with basic computing stuff. It's also absolutely quiet. The 13-inch version doesn't have a CPU fan, there's only a fan in the base for the GPU which comes on only if the discrete GPU is in use. And because the CPU is on the tablet portion if you're using it as a laptop, the keyboard and bottom never heat up. On the topic of the keyboard, typing experience is very comparable to an old-school (pre-butterfly) macbook. The keys look and feel very similar, though the layout of the FN keys is a little weird. They put Mute on F4, and the FN key acts like capslock. So if you press it, it just toggles FN lock on and off or you can hold it down in conjunction with a function key. Microsoft actually fixed this with the latest Surface laptop 3 by moving mute to a different key and they also added API's so that screen readers will be able to figure out the state of the FN lock, but for the moment I find myself muting my audio while trying to close out of apps more than I want to admit
Finally, briefly about the audio. You have stereo microphones, and they sound great for both voice chat or even just making recordings. The speakers are on the 2 sides of the screen. Maybe they don't have as much bass as Mac speakers, but have really decent mids and highs and project sound toward you very well and you can definitely tell the stereo spread, to the point I gamed on the internal speakers before with great success. There's sometimes a bug with the sound channel closing too quickly with some more responsive synthesizers like Eloquence and NVDA, but it only happens if there's no other sound playing and restarting NVDA fixes it so it's not too big of an issue.
Over all, I'm really happy with it, especially about the portability and quietness. But if you don't care about the ability to detach the 2 sides there are cheaper options with better specs, even from Microsoft themselves like the Surface Laptop 3
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