Microsoft’s Thursday today didn’t give us any bold new hardware ideas. Instead, the company settled for only modest updates to the Surface Laptop Go and Surface Laptop Studio.
Surface Laptop Studio 2
The newly unveiled Surface Laptop Studio 2 is essentially a refresh of a product that now starts at $1,999, instead of $1,599.
The company says the Studio 2 is "the most powerful Surface we’ve ever built." It supports Intel’s 13th generation Core processors and Nvidia RTX 4050 and 4060 laptop GPUs. The consumer model will run Intel’s i7-13700H processor while the business model will come with the i7-13800H.
The upgrades promise to deliver a two-times increase in graphics performance and up to 18 hours of battery life. (The first-gen Laptop Studio reached 14 hours of battery life in our tests.)
Interestingly, Microsoft said during the event that the Laptop Studio 2 will feature an Intel-powered “Neural Processing Unit” designed to smoothly process AI-based workloads, such as Windows Studio effects. (The product's spec sheet specifically mentions a "Gen3 Movidius 3700VC VPU AI Accelerator," which seems to be what Microsoft is referring to here.)
The laptop’s 14.4-inch screen should also be more vibrant than before, boasting a so-called “PixelSense Flow” touch screen. Other changes include the addition of a microSD card slot, and the option to max out the RAM to 64GB or buy it with an Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada GPU.
Surface Laptop Go 3
The second product, the more affordable Surface Laptop Go 3, is also getting a refresh. Microsoft updated the specs for the 12.4-inch laptop to run Intel’s 12th generation Core processors, specifically, the i5-1235U.
The big change is that you can now buy the laptop with 16GB of RAM instead of merely 8GB. The product’s battery life should also reach up to 15 hours when the previous generation topped out at 12 hours, according to our tests.
But on the downside, Microsoft is raising the starting price for the Surface Laptop Go 3 to $799, up from $599 for the previous model. Meanwhile, the web camera is still at 720p.
Both products launch on Oct. 2. The company is kicking off preorders today at Microsoft's online store. Stay tuned for our hands ons with both devices.
Surface Go 4 for Business
Surface Go 4 for Business (Credit: Microsoft)On the convertible tablet side, Microsoft quietly introduced the Surface Go 4 for Business, which seems to be an update for the consumer-focused Surface Go 3. The new model uses an Intel N200 chip for a performance boosts, and only 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM instead of 4GB. There's no word on price, although it looks like Microsoft plans on selling it exclusively to businesses.