Microsoft has taken the wraps off the new Surface Laptop — an Arm-based laptop for consumers that’s available for preorder today, starting at $999.99 (13.8-inch) or $1,199.99 (15-inch), and shipping on June 18th. It’s got one big difference from the Surface Laptop 6 for Business announced in March — it’s equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or Plus chip instead of Intel’s Core Ultra, leveling the playing field, the company hopes, with Apple’s powerful and efficient MacBook laptops.
The Surface Laptop comes in several configurations, starting with a base 16GB of RAM (please take notes, Apple) and 256GB of SSD storage with the Snapdragon X Plus chip, but storage can be bumped up to a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM (though 64GB is available as a preorder exclusive, for now) on both the 13.8-inch and 15- inch versions with the Elite chip. Either model comes equipped with a Qualcomm Adreno GPU. The laptops also come in four colors: black, platinum, dune, and sapphire, although it looks as though only platinum is available for the 256GB base models of both screen sizes.
Depending on which size you buy, the laptop has either a 2304 x 1536 (13.8-inch) or 2496 x 1664 (15-inch), 120Hz variable refresh touchscreen display with Dolby Vision IQ support. Microsoft updated the display for this model, giving it smaller bezels with rounded corners. Both sizes get two USB-C ports and one USB-A 3.1 port and sport a 1080p camera. They also come equipped with 3.5mm headphone jacks and can be fast-charged using a 65-watt power supply, which the 15-inch model ships with. The 13.8-inch version ships with a 39-watt charger, though.
The 13.8-inch model weighs 2.96 pounds and measures 11.85 inches x 8.67 inches x 0.69 inches — still a fair bit thicker than a MacBook Air. Then the 15-inch is 3.67 pounds and 12.96 x 9.41 x 0.72 inches. You can dive further into the specs by clicking “show all specs” about three-quarters of the way down Microsoft’s Surface Laptop page.
The company says the new Surface Laptop is “80 percent faster than our previous generation” and offers “up to 22 hours of local video playback.” It’s got a haptic touchpad, just as Apple’s MacBooks have had for years, and unlike the MacBook Air, Microsoft said it will support three 4K monitors — on top of the laptop’s own display.
Microsoft calls the new Laptop a “Copilot Plus PC” thanks to a neural processing unit that will power Windows 11 AI features like Recall, an on-device feature that lets users search for information from places like apps, documents, and folders using Copilot. Microsoft also highlighted features like on-device video call translation during its event by doing live translation of three languages at once — something any videoconferencing app will have access to. The company says only so-called Copilot Plus PCs can handle such features.
Microsoft says these AI machines will get Windows AI features before their Intel counterparts. Whether these computers can match or outdo Apple’s custom silicon remains to be seen, but at least when it comes to battery life, they should fare better than their Intel Core Ultra siblings.
The Surface Laptop starts at $999 for the 13.8-inch model or $1,199.99 for the 15-inch and is up for preorder now and shipping on June 18th.
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Microsoft announces an Arm-powered Surface Laptop
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