In a fresh development, now Microsoft is preparing to ship the Surface Laptop 8 as well as the Surface Pro 12 with Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 processors inside. Will anything change? The Microsoft Surface premium: for years, laptop buyers have criticized Microsoft for charging more and delivering less.
Industry observers note that and yes. Microsoft is not chasing cheaper laptops with these models. It is using Surface to push premium Windows-on-Arm devices. No.
In a fresh development, it will also charge $1,599 and up for the 13.8-inch and 15-inch configurations of the Surface Laptop 8, shipping today, versus $999 for the Surface Laptop 7. (Officially, Microsoft is just calling these fresh models the Surface Laptop and the Surface Pro, which means that you might see them referred to as the Surface Laptop (2026) or the Surface Pro (2026), too.). Microsoft is launching and shipping the 13-inch Surface Pro 12 at $1,499 on up, versus the $999 and up price Microsoft launched what it called the Surface Pro 11th Edition in 2024.
As part of the ongoing story, still, Microsoft is hinting that there’s a plan in place to address lower-cost competitors like the Apple MacBook Neo…just not now.
Industry observers note that “We have plans in place to how to address those, but stay tuned. [This] week is about Pro and Laptop. Maybe the week after, we’ll have some incremental news about how to address some lower price point devices.”. “What I will say is we certainly are aware of pricing pressures,” Brett Ostrum, the corporate vice president of Surface Devices at Microsoft, said in an interview.
In a fresh development, in the meantime, Microsoft is going to focus on what it does well — leveraging what it calls the top laptop webcam of all, among other fresh functions — and its place in the ecosystem to carry it home. That could hint that Microsoft has its smaller 13-inch Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro waiting in the wings.
In a fresh development, all told, Ostrum said that the split between Laptops and the Surface Pro is still about 50-50 in terms of units sold.
Industry observers note that but the two Laptops won’t skimp on memory or storage, with 16/24/32/64GB memory options, and between 256GB, 512GB, and either 1TB or 2TB of removeable PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage, an upgrade over the 1TB storage cap on the 2024 model. The fresh 13.8-inch and 15-inch Laptops will include the Snapdragon X2 Plus 10-core chip, as well as the Snapdragon X2 Elite 12-core processor, passing over the 18-core X2 Elite and the 18-core X2 Elite Extreme that Qualcomm launched last year.
As part of the ongoing story, microsoft’s revised Surface Pro 12 includes the same specs, though without the 2TB storage option.
The report highlights that “I think you’ve seen the focus that Pavan [Davuluri, the head of Microsoft’s Windows + Devices team] has shared broadly about our focus on fundamentals,” he said. “Part of that fundamentals work stream is to make sure that 8GB solutions are a viable solution for the OEM ecosystem out there. I am not announcing anything today about Surface and 8GB devices.”. Again, Ostrum played cagey when asked about devices with 8GB of RAM.
According to the latest update, (An OLED display option has been preserved.) Microsoft killed the Sapphire color from the prior generation, leaving just Dune, Platinum, and Black — though the optional Pro Flex Keyboard now ships in Dune, too. The Surface Pro is a tougher sell, with very little that’s changed from the previous model excepting the processor.
As part of the ongoing story, surface Laptop buyers can get a free Arc Mouse during the same timeframe. Microsoft will actually bundle a Pro Keyboard for free if you buy before June 30; the catch is that the Pro Keyboard must remain physically attached to the Surface Pro to function, while the Pro Flex keyboard can be detached and works wirelessly.
The report highlights that microsoft will also allow you to trade in an old device for up to $900, the publisher said.
As part of the ongoing story, microsoft also says that the the fresh 13.8-inch Laptop was also awarded the top integrated webcam by DXOMark, capitalizing on the strength of its webcams Microsoft began highlighting during the pandemic. The 13.8-inch Surface Laptop, meanwhile, ships with a fresh Jade color, while the 15-inch screen was upgraded from 201 PPI to 262 PPI (3,270 x 2,180) with Dolby Vision IQ support and 600 nits of peak brightness both in SDR and HDR modes.
As part of the ongoing story, perhaps the biggest advantage that a MIPI camera offers is that it can transmit large amounts of data quickly, while other camera sometimes have to compress their data to achieve the same speed. Somewhat surprisingly, both Laptops use a 1080p camera, but the Pro’s webcam supports up to 1440p resolution. In part, that’s because both Qualcomm-based laptops and Apple MacBooks use MIPI cameras, leveraging their history in the smartphone market.
According to the latest update, this is a nuanced measurement; we’ve already seen Qualcomm show off X2 chips with about double the graphics performance of the X1 generation, but those were the Elite Extreme versions, not the slightly less powerful Elite and Plus models. In addition, the cooling of the recent Surface Laptop for Business with Intel’s Panther Lake chip inside was poor enough that graphics performance plunged over a prolonged stress test. Given that Microsoft often leaves the design of its Pro and Laptop unchanged, we could see the same on these fresh consumer devices, too. Microsoft claims that the Snapdragon X2 is about 58 percent faster than the previous generation in terms of graphics.
In a fresh development, i’ve tested an Asus ZenBook A16 laptop with an X2 Elite Extreme chip inside it, streaming video, which I consider to be a better test. That laptop lasted 784 minutes (slightly over 13 hours) which told me that Qualcomm is pushing performance harder than battery life with the X2 generation. Still, thirteen hours of battery life is exceptional. Microsoft is also claiming up to 20 hours of battery life on the 13.8-inch Laptop, and 19 hours on the 15-inch Laptop.
Industry observers note that “And so, whether it is touch, Windows Hello, pen, Arm with Qualcomm, haptics, or MIPI-based cameras, we are there to lead the ecosystem and help show what is possible.”. “ARM on Windows has come a long ways, and so when we leaned into Copilot+ and our Qualcomm partnership from two years ago, internally, it was recognized that if we actually want to move the needle and convince OEMs to come on the journey, Surface has to be all in on this solution,” Ostrum said.
Industry observers note that microsoft doesn’t really see it that way. Remember, Dell and Asus and Lenovo and other laptop vendors want to dominate the market.
In a fresh development, “One of the benefits that we have as Surface [is that] I don’t have to address every single price point that’s out there,” he said. Ostrum said that Microsoft doesn’t feel obligated to carry the torch for the entire computer industry.
In a fresh development, “We chose to hold prices for as long as we could and offer some predictability on when that would happen to give to give our customers some continuity,” Ostrum said. Microsoft decided to push the price higher all at once.
According to the latest update, “It’s a continuous thing, and I never know what to expect. For us, we did a step function change. They’re like, Wow, that was a big change. We’re like, well, if you paid attention to the other guys, we’re on the same trajectory, we just did it all at once, instead of, you know, slowly over time.”. “The feedback we got was, people get a little bit tired of the [price increases],” Ostrum added.
As part of the ongoing story, still, Ostrum said, “we feel like the design of the Laptop, the enclosure itself, is a pretty robust and high-quality solution.”. Yes, the Surface design hasn’t changed, though Microsoft launched the smaller Surface Pro and Laptop — again, which we haven’t seen during this generation — as well as the Surface Book Ultra with an RTX Spark chip from Nvidia inside.
As part of the ongoing story, instead, Microsoft wants Windows PCs to succeed, and it views any other publisher that doesn’t run Windows as the enemy that the whole of the Windows ecosystem needs to defeat.
In a fresh development, “I say that because I’m a part of Windows, and the way Windows is approaching [the Apple MacBook] Neo is to sandwich Neo with OEM devices,” Ostrum added, saying that a product like the Dell XPS 13 will be slightly more expensive at arrival, but match it on a promotional price.
According to the latest update, “The other version is we will OEM-wise hit Neo with a slightly lower price, and sandwich what is happening there,” Ostrum added, without explaining who the PC OEM was in this case.
In a fresh development, finally, if you were hoping for a Surface tech industry laptop — well, that future doesn’t look good.
Industry observers note that “I say that about Surface not participating in every single solution out there, because we’ve lived in this space where we are attempting to lead the ecosystem, where the ecosystem is already doing well, or the ecosystem is well positioned — we don’t need to participate there,” Ostrum said.
According to the latest update, if Surface was looking for just growth, we could have added a device that was a laptop — a high-performance, tech industry-focused, rainbow keyboards, lights and bells and whistles and all those things — but the ecosystem is healthy,” Ostrum said. “We don’t need to lead in that space, and so we have chosen not to.”. “An example of that is for the past five or eight years the tech industry space from a Windows laptop, in an ecosystem perspective, has been a healthy place.
The report highlights that i can live with that. So for now, Surface equals productivity.
In a fresh development, this story was revised at 9:34 AM with additional detail.
The report highlights that he has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Highly adopted Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room. Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology.