Normally, we’d be looking at Microsoft this time of year to launch some new hardware at its Surface Event, but this year the tech giant shifted priorities. During the Microsoft Fall 2023 Event, its focus was largely on AI and the new features it was going to enable with the company’s Copilot tool and through Bing Chat.
Microsoft just announced the latest laptop in its Studio lineup, the Microsoft Laptop Studio.
Illustration: Forbes / Photo: Retailers
Fortunately, hardware lovers weren’t entirely left out in the cold. Microsoft had a pair of new Surface devices to announce, with updates in both the Surface Laptop Go and Surface Laptop Studio lines. And while you might have to wait a few days to actually get your hands on either of them, pre-orders opened up today, so you can buy them right now. Here’s what was announced.
The new Surface Laptop Studio 2 provides a 14.4-inch touchscreen display with a 2,400 x 1,600 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and a hinge that lets it reposition behind or in front of the keyboard and lie flat. To support professional work, the system includes a microSD card reader, a USB-A port and two Thunderbolt 4 ports and Microsoft’s Surface Connect port. The system also has a new touchpad aimed at being more consistent across its surface and providing a more accessible input tool.
Microsoft suggests that the new laptop has more performance than the M2 Max MacBook Pro and has double the performance of its predecessor, which ran on 11th Gen Intel Core processors and either integrated graphics or an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti at the most. The new model delivers its power by way of a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700H 14-core processor paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 or 4060 consumer graphics processor, an RTX Ada 2000 professional GPU or simply integrated graphics. The laptop will also include an Intel Gen3 Movidius 3700 VPU AI Accelerator, which will presumably come into play with the new Copilot AI features Microsoft also announced at this event. You’ll get 16 to 64GB of LPDDR5x memory and 512GB to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, too. This all comes in a package that weighs just over 4 pounds.
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 will cost $1,999 without a discrete GPU or $2,399 and up for models with dedicated GPUs. It’s available for pre-order today and ships October 3.
The update to the Surface Laptop Go line, called the Surface Laptop Go 3, continues to be a compact and affordable laptop. It offers just a 12.4-inch touchscreen display, albeit with a 3:2 aspect ratio as opposed to the more common 16:9 and 16:10. Resolution may also come up lacking with a 1,536 x 1,024, which is slightly short of Full HD, but it’s still great for getting your work done. It features 10-point multitouch and a Gorilla Glass 3 cover, t00. Ultimately, it’s a portability- and affordability-first product, as it will weigh just 2.49 pounds and measure only just over a half an inch thick.
The new Surface Laptop Go 3 will come running on a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U, and it won’t feature a discrete GPU or dedicated AI accelerator like the Surface Laptop Studio 2, either. All the same, this new model is faster than its predecessors and will offer a great 15-hour battery life.
The Surface Laptop Go 3 comes in four colors and starts at $799. It’s available October 3 with pre-orders starting today.
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