Bottom line: Samsung's new Galaxy Book 2 looks to be a viable alternative to Microsoft's Surface Pro 6 and HP's Spectre Folio. One has to wonder, however, how big of a bottleneck the 4GB of RAM will be.

Samsung on Thursday announced its second generation Galaxy Book, a Windows-powered 2-in-1 that looks an awful lot like Microsoft's latest Surface device.

Samsung's Galaxy Book 2 features a 12.0-inch sAMOLED FHD+ (2,160 x 1,440) display powered by Qualcomm's octa-core Snapdragon 850 SoC, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of on-device storage. Only 4GB of RAM is a bit suspect on a 2-in-1, especially considering some of today's flagship smartphones have twice as much memory.

The Galaxy Book 2 ships with both a keyboard dock and an S Pen. Wireless connectivity options include Gigabit LTE via the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem and 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual-band Wi-Fi. You also get two USB Type-C connectors, a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 5-megapixel webcam and up to 20 hours of battery life in S Mode.

The sleek system measures 11.32 inches x 7.89 inches x .30 inches and weighs only 1.75 pounds.

Word of the Galaxy Book 2 arrives just a little over two weeks after Microsoft announced its Surface Pro 6. That system, which starts at $899, went on sale two days ago. A day earlier, HP unveiled the Spectre Folio, the world's first leather convertible PC, which starts at $1,299.99 and ships on October 29.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 launches on November 2 starting at $999.99.