When Microsoft announced new Surface devices earlier this week, we noted that there wasn't a lot of daylight between the starting prices of the new but lower-end devices ($799 for the 12-inch Surface Pro, $899 for the 13-inch Surface Laptop) and the starting prices of the older-but-higher-end Surfaces from last spring ($999 for both).

It appears Microsoft has quietly solved this problem by discontinuing the 256GB versions of the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 and the 13-inch Surface Pro 11. Microsoft's retail pages for both devices list only 512GB and 1TB configurations, with regular prices starting at $1,199. Though not technically a price hike—the 512GB versions of both devices also cost $1,199 before—it does amount to an effective price increase for last year's Surface hardware, especially given that both devices have user-replaceable storage that can easily be upgraded for less than the $200 that Microsoft charged for the 256GB-to-512GB upgrade.

The upshot is that the new Surface PCs make more sense now than they did on Tuesday in relative terms, but it's only because you'll pay more to buy a Surface Pro 11 or Surface Laptop 7 than you would before. The 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop 7 still lists a 256GB configuration and a $1,299 starting price, but the 256GB models are currently out of stock.

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R.I.P. Surface Connect port (2014-2025). Death by USB-C.

Microsoft is introducing a pair of new Surface devices today, both aimed slightly down-market from the 11th-generation Surface Pro tablet and 7th-generation Surface Laptop that the company released last spring. One is a 13-inch Surface Laptop, which we've covered in more detail here. The second (and more notably changed) device is a new 12-inch Surface Pro tablet, which is the first significant design change we've seen in the Surface Pro lineup since the first ARM-based Surface Pro X was released in 2019.

Preorders for both new Surface devices begin today, and they begin shipping on May 20. The 12-inch Surface Pro starts at $799, and the keyboard cover remains a separate purchase, available for $149.

The 12-inch Surface Pro is a cheaper alternative to the $939-and-up 13-inch Surface Pro (which Microsoft is continuing to sell), and the smallest Surface Microsoft has tried since the 10.5-inch underspecced Surface Go series. In addition to the smaller screen, the base model includes a bunch of other minor downgrades from the flagship 13-inch tablet, as outlined in the table below. But it's also nearly half a pound lighter, and its 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor should still deliver solid performance and compatibility with the extra Windows 11 features available on Copilot+ PCs.

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Microsoft switched the Surface Pro tablet and both sizes of Surface Laptop from Intel and AMD's processors to Qualcomm's Arm-based processors last summer, part of a renewed hardware and software push to make the Arm version of Windows a thing. That ended a few years of a bifurcated approach, where the Intel and AMD versions of Surface PCs were the "main" versions and the Arm variants felt more like proof-of-concept side projects.

But if you work in a large organization or you're an IT administrator, the bifurcated approach continues. Microsoft announced some business-only versions of the Surface Pro tablet and the Surface Laptop last year that continued to use Intel processors, and today it's announcing two more, this time using Intel's Lunar Lake-based Core Ultra CPUs.

The refresh includes a new Surface Pro tablet and both 13- and 15-inch versions of the Surface Laptop, updated with most of the same design tweaks that the Qualcomm versions of the devices got last year (for example, a slightly larger 13.8-inch screen on the smaller version of the Surface Laptop, up from 13.5 inches). Generally, they have similar dimensions, weights, and configuration options as their Arm counterparts, including an OLED display option for the Surface Pro.

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At an event in New York City on Thursday, Microsoft unveiled two additions to the Surface line of PCs. The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop both arrive with Copilot+ PC certification. Announced in May 2024, the program aims to identify business-focused devices that are designed specifically for the company’s AI platform, Copilot. It’s a […]

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